Antony Leather is Custom PC’s modding editor @antonyleatherThe MasterFan
SF360R uses
one PWM cable
and one RGB
cable for three
fans, significantly
reducing cable
clutteroverclocked cards that cost around £70
more than a typical reference Radeon
RX 5700 XT. PowerColor’s Red Devil RX
5700 XT, for example, has a boost
frequency of 2010MHz and costs £450
compared to £375 for the cheapest
card that I could find equipped with
AMD’s standard blower fan cooler.
This saving covers more than half
the cost of a waterblock for the RX
5700 XT, so if you were planning on
buying one of AMD’s new 7nm
graphics cards and already have a
water-cooled CPU, adding the
hardware necessary to water-cool it
might not cost that much more than
stepping up to a pre-overclocked card,
and will likely offer higher boost speeds
and the same or better overclocking
headroom. Plus, of course, your
graphics card will then be one of the
quietest components in your PC too.
Cooler Master’s MasterFan
SF360R ARGB
Last month we looked at Cooler
Master’s MasterFan SF120R ARGB fan
(see Issue 194, p44), which offered
decent airflow and RGB lighting for a
reasonable price, and did pretty well
for itself in our 120mm fan Labs test.
However, this model is only one small
part of Cooler Master’s latest range of
fans, and this month I’m looking at the
larger MasterFan SF360R ARGB – a
triple 120mm fan bracket equipped
with three embedded 120mm fans.
The MasterFan SF360R ARGB is
designedforonejob– tomake
installing fans easier, whether they’re
being fitted inside cases or onto
360mm radiators, by creating a single
object that can be installed in one go.
There are two benefits to using the
MasterFan SF360R ARGB here. Firstly,
instead of needing 12 screws to install
a trio of fans in your case or onto a
radiator, you just need four.
That’s a massive boon in my eyes. It
not only reduces time, but it also cuts
down on faffing. When you’re lining up
a 360mm radiator inside a case and
mounting the fans on the other side of
a fanmount– atthefront of your case,
forexampl ouwon’t need to fiddle
around with
individual fans,
trying to get them
to line up with
the radiator
mounting holes.
The second
benefit is cable
tidying. Installing
three or four fans
on a radiator
means you have
to deal with ahuge amount of cable spaghetti in a
small space. The situation quickly
gets ridiculous if those fans have
separate cables for RGB lighting too,
with you ending up with six cables for
just three fans. Plus, due to the size of
the radiator, one fan often ends up
sitting too far away from the rest for
its cables to be routed neatly, and
then requires an extension cable.
Cooler Master has thought of this
situation too, as the MasterFan
SF360R ARGB links these connections
together internally. A single 4-pin
PWM cable controls all three fans,
while a single 3-pin digital RGB cable
deals with the lighting.
The lighting includes effects that
make use of the three fans, although
they’re not as fancy as those that can
be deployed using a more advanced
RGB controller, such as those from
Corsair. However, as the MasterFan
SF360R ARGB costs just £60 inc
VAT, and can be connected to your
motherboard’s 3-pin RGB headers, it’s
an affordable way to add three RGB
fans to your case or liquid-cooling
radiator, and it’s convenient.forexample –yoCooler Master’s
new SF360R
ARGB makes fan
installation easier
while also giving
you pretty lighting