A Closer Look
Valkyrie has a strong reputation for awesome designs, and the Surge SL125 is no exception. While this is still an affordable single tower and compact cooler, it’s certainly very attractive. With a matte black design on the top plate and fan, it has a more premium aesthetic. Of course, the white version comes with all-white fins too, but a slightly higher price, so you can pick whichever better matches the look of your build.
The slim design is going to offer excellent compatibility, as it’s not going to impact your choice of taller RAM modules.
Plus, the fan can be mounted on either side of the cooling tower to best suit your needs in terms of airflow direction.
On top of the cooler, there’s this wonderful top plate that’s covering up the top fin and the ends of the heatpipes, giving it a much cleaner look.
The pattern is very interesting, with deep, curved ridges cut into it at a 45-degree angle, which certainly looks cool.
There’s also a small RGB Valkyrie logo located in the centre, pretty simple stuff, but it looks neat and tidy.
The fan is really nice, and is one of Valkyrie’s own B12 ARGB fans, which can be found on a range of Valkyrie products. It’s equipped with ARGB lighting in the motor housing and frosted fan blades to capture the illumination.
The fan is rated to operate from 800 RPM up to a whopping 2150 RPM, which is pretty darn fast, but that’s likely a large factor in why this smaller cooler can deal with higher TDP CPUs by throwing significant airflow into the mix.
On the underside, there’s a nice contact plate, with the bare heatpipes cut to allow for direct contact with the CPU; it’s a cheaper solution, but a pretty effective one.
There’s also a built-in mounting kit, with an arm passing over the CPU block and two screws/springs pre-installed that can be screwed down to the motherboard mounting kit. The fan is mounted with clips, and there are four in the box, so you could add a second fan in the future if you needed to.
