 I went to an all boys grade school and one of the toughest guys in my year level was named Huko. Out of hundreds of kids, this guy was considered to be top dog. These are the hukos of the air-cooling world. Noctuas NHD 15, Be Quiet's Dark Rock Pro 4. Massive coolers, massive performance. But today, a scrawny kid has beaten all of the tough guys. This is Deep Cool's AS500+, and it's smaller and cheaper than the big boys, but it gives the same, if not better, performance. Wala pa isang minuto, finished. May legit working CDK ka na sa software na pinili mo. Gamitin ang aming promo code para makakahuha pa ng extra 20% discount sa purchase mo. Kung naghanap ka ng mura, legit, and original software, check out CDKoffers.com. There is a subtle RGB strip on the top of the cooler for those of you who need your RGB bling-bling, and it does come with a physical ARGB controller for systems that have motherboards that don't have ARGB headers. Assetically, I really like this thing. It looks professional, it looks like it means business, but there are nice design flourishes that give an element of fun to it. What I really like though are the fans. There's a subtle crisscross radial design around the fans, which are reminiscent of the threads that you would see on a car's tire. So nice little touches just to make sure that aesthetically the AS500+, does not look boring. More importantly though, this thing is slim. The problem with the big boy coolers is that once they're installed, you might have a problem with your RAM. A lot of the big boy coolers protrude over the RAM slot, so either the RAM will hit the fan or you'll have to shift the fan around to accommodate the height of the RAM. And even if you're able to install both the cooler and your RAM properly, if you spent for RGB RAM, they might all be covered by the sheer size of the big boy cooler. That's not a problem with the AS500+, which is quite slim. We've installed it on an M80X MOBO, which is smaller than a regular-sized 80X, and yet the cooler fits quite snugly, it doesn't overhang the RAM slots at all. The tower itself, not including the fans, is only 48mm wide, so very slim. It's quite tall, though, just about the same height as the big boy coolers. It stands at 164mm. The DarkRock Pro 4 is at 163mm and Noctua's NH-D15 is 165mm. So it's right up there in terms of height. You'll need to check if your case can fit such a tall cooler. Although our test bench is using an M80X case also from Deepcool, it's the Machube 110, and we had no problem fitting the AS500+, in it. But again, best to double check your case that it can fit this cooler. In our testing, we used a Ryzen 3, 3100, the same setup we used for our thermal-paced video. We ran it at 100% fan speed on the stock cooler at 100% load for 30 minutes. And to make it fun, we overclocked it from the base clock of 3.6GHz to 4.2GHz. After 30 minutes of that setup, the max temperature we hit was 74 degrees. We installed the AS500+, ran the same setup, and the max temp we hit was 57 degrees. That's a 70-degree difference from the stock cooler. How does the AS500+, compared to the big boys? Unfortunately, we're out of stock of the NH-D15. However, Kit Guru does report that the AS500+, actually outperformed the NH-D15 by 2 degrees. We used the same setup for the DarkRock Pro 4, and the max temp it reached was 66 degrees, which is 9 degrees warmer than the AS500+. Now, we did run the test on separate days with the ambient temperature during the DarkRock test a bit higher than when we ran the AS500+, test. So take it with a grain of salt, but at the same time, the general trend is clear that the AS500+, can compete or even give better performance than the big boys. So there you have it, this is a very capable cooler, cheaper than the big boys and yet delivering the same performance. You just don't know when to give up, do you? I'm going to do this all day. Plus, you don't need to worry about whether it's compatible with your RAM. No joke that RAM compatibility or just physically assessing whether the cooler will hit your RAM slots can be a big headache. And so it really simplifies your build when you know that you can get quality air cooling without having to worry about the RAM problem. To be honest, the big boys have been getting a bit old. They should graduate out of their grade level already. I think both the NHD-15 and the DRP-4 have been around for at least two years. So it's nice to see innovation in the air cooling space, especially from a company that isn't as marquee level as Noctua or Be Quiet. The AS500+, proves that size isn't everything, that even if you're scrawny, you can still be tough. This guy is the new king of the hill. If you're interested in CPU cooler performance, you have a video tackling six different kinds of thermal paste. We'll link that in the video box below. Thanks for watching.