Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 CPU cooler review

Our Verdict

76%

Monstrous cooling power, but it’s expensive compared with the competition.

As its name suggests, the Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 comes with new Phanteks T30 120mm fans. They’re fantastically well made and they shift a huge amount of air, not only for the amount of noise produced, but also in absolute terms. There’s no RGB lighting on the fans either, but the fancy RGB infinity mirror effect on the pump unit more than makes up for this.

At Custom PC, we’ve been reviewing the latest PC hardware since 2003, and we run a number of tests in order to gauge performance. We use Prime95’s smallest FFT test with AVX instructions disabled to load the CPU and take the temperature reading after ten minutes.

When testing CPU coolers, we use CoreTemp to measure the CPU temperature, before subtracting the ambient air temperature from this figure to give us a delta T result, which enables us to test in a lab that isn’t temperature controlled. For more information, see our How we test page.

While there’s no software control for the pump or fans, each fan has a switch to toggle between Advanced, Performance and Hybrid modes. The latter cuts the rpm to zero until a 50 percent PWM signal is applied, before spinning up to a lowly peak of 1,200rpm.

Performance mode raises the speed steadily to 2,000rpm and Advanced mode peaks at an unpleasantly noisy 3,000rpm, but this gives you a huge range of speeds with which to play.

The benefit here is that each setting offers a maximum sound level and rpm speed, as well as an easy way to control fan speed ranges. That said, we recommend that anyone who’s familiar with their motherboard’s EFI should just opt for the 3,000rpm mode and fine-tune their fan speeds in the EFI themselves.

In addition to the high-performance fans, the Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 radiator is also much thicker than the others on test, sitting at 38mm deep, while most others are around 10mm thinner. This allows the radiator to dissipate more heat, thanks to an increased surface area, and make real use of its powerful fans, which can then properly push air through the extra thickness.

The rest of the cooler is the same as Phanteks’ previous designs, though, with an identical PWM-controlled 7th-generation Asetek pump, and Phanteks hasn’t yet added LGA1700 support to its liquid coolers either.

Instead, a mounting kit is available for free by contacting its customer support, or you can buy one for a few bucks from retailers. Thankfully, installation is straightforward on all sockets, with the familiar Asetek mounting mechanism making use of backplates, pins and thumbscrews.

Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 cooling performance

As expected, the Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 cooling performance was exceptional, although we couldn’t help feeling that a more powerful pump could have yielded even better performance.

Still, in Advanced mode it was the best-performing 240mm AIO cooler we’ve recently tested, with CPU delta Ts of 49°C and 45°C in our AMD and Intel systems respectively, outpacing the Sapphire Nitro+ S240-A and bettering the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 RGB and Corsair iCUE H100i Elite Capellix by wide margins. However, it was extremely noisy at this setting, which we certainly wouldn’t recommend using for everyday computing.

Dropping to Performance mode and cutting 1,000rpm from the fan speeds saw it match the Corsair cooler in our AMD system, with a delta T of 51°C and hit the same 49°C delta T as the EK EK-AIO 240 Basic in our Intel system, with comparable noise levels.

Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 pros and cons

Pros:

• Fabulous fans
• Extreme cooling
• Snazzy RGB lighting on waterblock

Cons:

• Poor value
• No LGA1700 compatibility as standard
• Noisy at high speeds

Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 specs

The Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 specs list is:

Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 price

Price: Expect to pay $170 (£160).

Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 review conclusion

The Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 certainly has formidable cooling, and it comes at a cost in terms of price and noise, but even at lower speeds, it’s still a match for the best-performing coolers on test this month.

The price for the Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 is steep, though, especially given that the Corsair iCUE H100i Elite Capellix was never more than a few degrees off the pace and costs significantly less money.

The Phanteks is most at home when it’s dealing with significant amounts of heat, so if you want the ability to tap into some extreme cooling, the Phanteks is by far the most powerful 240mm liquid cooler we’ve tested, but you have to pay for it.

If this top end AIO liquid cooler with its infinity mirror effect isn’t right for you, we’ve reviewed plenty of other alternative 240mm AIO liquid cooler models, including the EK Nucleus AIO CR240 Lux D-RGB, as well as the Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL240 Flux. If you’re looking to upgrade your CPU, make sure you also check out our full guide to the best CPU for gaming, where we outline the very best options at a range of prices.