Testing the MasterLiquid 360 ION
The following components are used for our AIO cooling testing.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Cooling: Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360 ION
Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VI Hero
Graphics Card: PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580
Memory: HyperX Savage DDR4-2666 16GB
Storage: Corsair Force MP500 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Case: Fractal Design Define R6 Tempered Glass
Power: EVGA G3 650W
List of coolers being compared:
– Cryorig H5 Universal
– SilverStone PF240-ARGB
– ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240
– Corsair iCUE H115i RGB PRO XT
– Alphacool Eisbaer Aurora 360 CPU
– NZXT Kraken X63
– NZXT Kraken Z73
– Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX
– Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML280 Mirror
– Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
– DeepCool LS720 WH
– EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 LUX D-RGB
– Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB White
– Lian Li Galahad II Trinity SL-INF
– Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360 Atmos
– ASUS ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB White Edition
– AZZA Cube 360
– Iceberg Thermal IceFLOE OASIS 360
– HYTE THICC Q60
– DeepCool Mystique 360
– Lian Li HydroShift LCD 360S
– Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360 ION
For performance testing we will first test idle temperatures. These are taken on the Windows 10 desktop an hour after the system has been turned on.
For load testing we will be running the AIDA64 system stability test with the CPU only checked. This puts a full load on our CPU. We run this test for 1 hour and record the highest temperature throughout the test.
Software
Cooler Master designed the Master Liquid 360 ION to be compatible with their MasterCTRL software, via the aforementioned cabling. With all of the hardware connected to power and data, it is time to take a look at the software options for controlling and monitoring the test PC. Below I will be covering the various menus within MasterCTRL.
Home
The Home menu gives the ability to monitor system resources like CPU, RAM, and GPU utilization, speeds, and temperatures, in addition to system storage and network statistics. The simple design language is easy to read and understand, and provides a modern interface for interacting with Cooler Master products. You can also select many of the modules from the Home page to interact or adjust them in more detail.
Devices
The Devices menu displays compatible components, and this is where we see the MasterLiquid 360 ION as an available option. Clicking the image of the 360 ION takes you to a sub-menu where you have all of the control options for the cooler.
This sub-menu provides access to lighting control, LCD control, as well as fan control. While there is monitoring for the pump, it is set at 2,900 RPM, and can not be adjusted here. This area allows you to configure the information and imagery displayed on the 2.1″ LCD on the pump housing. Each display setting has multiple, sub-settings for more customization, however, you are limited in that the 360 ION does not support video files. While this lack of functionality is a bit of a bummer, there is still support for gifs and other image file types. You also have have options for system monitoring information, custom text, animations, and more.
Cooling
The Cooling menu provides access to multiple temperature graphs for monitoring your various system components. You can also adjust the fan speeds from this menu as well, though again, there is no control of the 360 ION’s pump speed. Thankfully the 2,900 RPM speed of the pump doesn’t produce much noise at all, and as the testing results indicate, it is most likely tuned for optimal performance.
Gallery
Here are a few images of some of the display options available by default with the Cooler Master Master Liquid 360 ION.
