In the lineup of almost four dozen processor coolers from PCCooler, the new RT500 Digital heads the series of single-tower cooling systems. Its arsenal includes five six-millimeter heat pipes with advanced direct contact technology, an optimized radiator of a decent area and a 120 mm fan. However, the main feature of the RT500 is the digital display on the lid that shows the current CPU temperature readings. We have already seen this solution in cooler models in the upper price category, but in the middle price segment this is still a novelty. Well, let’s get acquainted with this new product and evaluate its efficiency and noise level in comparison with its main competitor.
⇡# Specifications and cost
Наименование технических характеристик
PCCooler RT500 Digital
(RT500-BKNWYL-GL)
Размеры кулера (В × Ш × Т),
151 × 124 × 71
вентилятора, мм
(120 × 120 × 25)
Полная масса, г
618
(462 – радиатор)
Коэффициент полезной массы, ед.
0,7476
Материал радиатора и конструкция
Башенная конструкция из алюминиевых пластин на 5 медных тепловых трубках диаметром 6 мм, являющихся частью основания (технология прямого контакта)
Количество пластин радиатора, шт.
53
Толщина пластин радиатора, мм
0,35~0,40
Межрёберное расстояние, мм
1,8~1,9
Расчётная площадь радиатора, см2
5 560
Термическое сопротивление, °С/W
н/д
Тип и модель вентилятора
PCCooler F5 R120
Диаметр крыльчатки/статора вентилятора, мм
113 / 45,5
Масса одного вентилятора, г
153
Скорость вращения вентилятора, об/мин
500–2200 (±10%)
Воздушный поток, CFM
73,32 (макс.)
Уровень шума, дБА
34,9 (макс.)
Статическое давление, мм H2O
3,28 (макс.)
Количество и тип подшипников вентилятора
1, гидродинамический
Время наработки вентилятора на отказ, часов/лет
60 000 / >
⇡#Packaging and equipment
PCCooler RT500 Digital comes in a compact box made of thick cardboard with an image of the cooler on the front side and technical specifications on the back.
Inside the box, the cooler and fan are protected by two polyethylene foam inserts, and the accessories are sealed in a separate flat box. In the latter you can find a plastic reinforcing plate for Intel, two pairs of steel guides, a set of bushings and nuts, a packet of thermal paste, two wire brackets for the fan and instructions with a warranty leaflet.
By the way, the warranty for the Chinese cooler is three years, which is quite unexpected for mid-price cooling systems. The cost of PCCooler RT500 Digital in our stores is 2,899 rubles.
⇡#Design features
The new PCCooler RT500 Digital is a tower CPU cooler with a single 120mm fan. It is available in both black and white, which will allow the user to choose the model that best matches the case and other components. We are testing a stylish black version of the cooler.
Please note that the plastic radiator cap does not indicate the presence of a monitoring screen in any way.
PCCooler RT500 Digital can be called a compact cooler, since its height should not exceed 152 mm, width – 120 mm, and depth – 70 mm. And although during measurements we obtained slightly different indicators (151 × 124 × 71 mm), by today’s standards the cooling system is very modest in size.
As for the mass, it is equal to 618 g, of which 462 g is the radiator. This means that the useful mass coefficient is 0.7476, which allows us to classify the PCCooler RT500 Digital in the middle group.
Structurally, the PCCooler RT500 Digital is nothing new: a package of aluminum fins is pressed onto five heat pipes, slightly shifted forward in the direction of the fan air flow. The radiator has one 120mm fan.
The top plate and the ends of the heat pipes are covered by a plastic cover, and the base with direct contact is protected by a film sticker with a warning that it must be removed before installation.
The radiator consists of 53 aluminum plates no more than 0.4 mm thick, pressed onto heat pipes with an interfin distance not exceeding 1.8 mm.
The calculated radiator area of the PCCooler RT500 Digital is 5560 cm2 – a standard value for a single-tower cooler. The stated maximum thermal power of the cooling system is 245 watts.
At the entrance of the air flow into the radiator, the ends of the fins do not have any optimizations, which is quite strange, but at the exit from the radiator they are made in the form of pyramids.
This solution, called “Wavy Flow Finstack” by the developer, should help reduce the noise level of the cooler.
The PCCooler RT500 Digital uses five copper heat pipes with a diameter of 6 mm, arranged in the body of the radiator with an offset relative to each other to evenly distribute the heat flow across the aluminum fins.
The method of contacting heat pipes with fins is crimping. This is standard for coolers in this price category, and sometimes for more expensive models.
The PCCooler RT500 Digital has a direct contact base, but without aluminum inserts between the heat pipes. In theory, such a base should provide the most uniform heat exchange with the processor cover.
As you can see, the quality of processing of the base leaves much to be desired, but its evenness is close to ideal, which allowed us to obtain almost uniform prints on the convex heat spreader of the LGA1700 processor design.
By the way, pay attention to how precisely the heat spreader of the LGA1700 processor fits onto the five heat pipes. Are we expecting a new leader for Intel in terms of efficiency in the mid-price segment?
The cooler uses a PCCooler F5 R120 fan as the active part, but not with a nine-blade, but with a seven-blade impeller with a diameter of 113 mm, mounted on a stator with four curved struts.
The impeller rotation speed is automatically controlled by pulse width modulation (PWM) in the range from 500 to 2200 rpm. The maximum airflow generated by the fan is stated at 73.3 CFM, static pressure is 3.28 mm H2O, and the noise level is 34.9 dBA.
The diameter of the fan stator is 45.5 mm. Its sticker shows the electrical characteristics and the manufacturer. The hydrodynamic fan bearing must last at least 60 thousand hours.
There are damping inserts in the corners of the fan frame on the radiator side, but they are absent on the opposite side.
Wire brackets are used to secure the fan to the radiator.
Unfortunately, the cooler does not come with a second pair of brackets. Moreover, this point, which at first glance is insignificant, is of particular importance in today’s material.
⇡#Compatibility and installation
PCCooler RT500 Digital can be called a universal cooler, since it is compatible with motherboards for AMD processors of the Socket AM5/AM4 design and Intel processors of the LGA1851/1700/1200/115x design. Installing a cooler on the board is as easy as shelling pears, but if you need instructions, you can not only take them out of the box, but also download them from the PCCooler website (PDF format, 4.4 MB).
This is what the entire process of installing a cooler on an LGA1700 motherboard looks like.
Do we need any explanation here? We doubt it very much. Well, except that once again we recommend tightening the clamping screws evenly, 1-2 turns of thread on each side. The clamping force is very high, but the screws still need to be tightened all the way.
The distance from the motherboard to the bottom plate of the PCCooler RT500 Digital radiator is 39-40 mm, and to the fan is 7-8 mm less, but the cooler is narrow, so it will not interfere with RAM modules with high radiators.
The height of the PCCooler RT500 Digital installed on the processor is 156 mm – this is indeed a very compact cooler.
Finally, to activate the temperature indicator on the plastic radiator cap, you need to connect the cooler’s USB cable to the internal USB 2.0 connector on the motherboard and install a small utility from the PCCooler website. Among the settings, it only has temperature measurement units and nothing else.
The mini-display works without delays and does not “fall off” under high processor loads.
That’s all, all that remains is to test the efficiency of the new product and measure its noise level.
⇡#Test configuration, tools and testing methodology
A comparison of the efficiency of PCCooler RT500 Digital and its competitor was carried out in a closed system case with the following configuration:
- Motherboard: MSI MPG Z790 Edge WiFi (Intel Z790, LGA1700, BIOS H.D2 from 12.08.2024);
- Socket amplifier: ID-Cooling ABF-1700;
- Processor: Intel Core i9-13900K 3.0-5.8P/2.2-4.3E GHz (Raptor Lake, 10 nm, 8/16P+16E cores, 36 MB L3, TDP 125/253 W);
- Thermal interface: ID-Cooling Frost X35 [14.2 W/(mK)];
- RAM: DDR5 2 × 24 GB Team Group T-Create Expert (CTCED548G7200HC34ADC01), XMP 7200 MHz 34-42-42-84 CR2 at 1.4 V;
- Video card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super Fe 8 GB / 256 BIT, 1470-1650 / 14000 MHz;
-
- System and benchmarks: Crucial T700 1 TB (CT1000T700SSD3, PCIe 4.0 x4);
- Benchmarks and games: Patriot VIPER VP4300 1 TB (VP4300-1TBM28H, PCIe 4.0 x4);
- Benchmarks and games: Netac N950E Pro 1 TB (NT01N950E-001T-E4X, PCIe 3.0 x4);
- Benchmarks: Gigabyte GP-AG4500G 0.5 Tbyte (PCIe 4.0 x4);
- Benchmarks: SSTC Hammerhead P990 Pro Plus 1 TB (PCIe 4.0 x4);
- Storage: Intel SSD 730 480 GB (SATA III, BIOS vL2010400);
- Archival: Samsung Ecogreen F4 HD204UI 2000, 3 GB (SATA II, 5400 rpm, 32 MB, NCQ);
- Body: Thermaltake Core X71 (six 140 mm be quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM: three in front for blowing 800-1050 rpm, two on top for blowing 800-1020 rpm, one in back for blowing 800-1610 rpm , PWM adjustment);
- Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC3;
- Power supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 (1.65 kW, 80 Plus Gold), 135 mm fan).
To obtain stable and objectively comparable results, the main processor parameters were fixed in the following values: BCLK frequency – 100 MHz, performance core multiplier – 51, frequency – 5.1 GHz, energy-efficient core multiplier – 41, frequency – 4.1 GHz , Vcore voltage – 1,060 V. In the BIOS of the MSI motherboard, the third level of voltage stabilization on the processor core (CPU) was set load-line calibration).
According to HWiNFO64, the heat dissipation level of the processor with these settings reached 220 watts at peak load. The effective RAM frequency was fixed at 6.933 GHz with a VDD voltage of 1.33 V (VDDQ 1.32 V), and its main timings were fixed at 34-42-42-54 CR2 with additional adjustment of secondary and tertiary timings. The VCCSA voltage was fixed at 1.060 V.
Testing was carried out on the Microsoft Windows 11 Pro operating system version 24H2 (26100.2605). Software used for the test:
- Cinebench R23 – to create a stress load on the processor (Test Throttling mode, two consecutive cycles of approximately 10 minutes each);
- HWiNFO64 8.16-5600 – for monitoring temperatures and visual control of all system parameters.
A screenshot of the monitoring during one of the testing cycles looks like this.
The CPU load was created by two consecutive cycles of Cinebench R23. 10 minutes were allotted between cycles to stabilize the CPU temperature. The final result, which you will see in the diagram, is taken as the maximum temperature of the hottest of the eight productive cores of the central processor at peak load and in idle mode, as well as the average maximum temperature for all such cores. In addition, a separate table will show the temperatures of all productive processor cores, their average values and the temperature delta between the cores. The room temperature was controlled by an electronic thermometer installed next to the system unit with a measurement accuracy of 0.1 °C and with the ability to hourly monitor changes in room temperature over the last 6 hours. During this testing, the temperature ranged from 24.0 to 25.2 °C (delta was included in the results).
The noise level of the cooling systems was measured using an OKTAVA-110A electronic noise meter from midnight to three o’clock in the morning in a completely closed room with an area of about 20 m2. The noise level was measured outside the system unit case, when the only noise source in the room was the cooling system and its fans. The noise meter, fixed on a tripod, was always located strictly at one point at a distance of exactly 150 mm from the fan rotor. The cooling systems were placed in the very corner of the table on a foamed polyethylene substrate. The lower limit of the noise meter’s measurements is 22 dBA, and the subjectively comfortable (please do not confuse with low!) noise level of the cooling systems when measured from such a distance is around 36 dBA. We take 33 dBA as a conditionally low noise level.
To evaluate the cooling efficiency and noise level of PCCooler RT500 Digital, we included in testing a cooler of the same design, which is, if not a leader, then certainly one of the leaders in the mid-price segment – ID-Cooling SE-224-XTS. Its cost at the time of completion of the article (01/05/2025) was 2,299 rubles.
I obviously went too far with the thermal paste this time, I apologize.
Not for comparison, but as an efficiency standard, the PentaWave Z06D supercooler was included in the testing, however, with basic processor overclocking (P5.1/E4.1 GHz), you will not see its results, since such a load is simply not serious for it.
Let us add that the rotation speed of the fan impellers of the tested cooling systems was regulated in the range from 800 rpm to their maximum in steps of 100 or 200 rpm using a special controller, the accuracy of which is ±10 rpm.
⇡#Cooling efficiency
Despite five heat pipes and improved direct contact technology at the base, the PCCooler RT500 Digital lost a couple of degrees Celsius to the ID-Cooling SE-224-XTS in each of the speed modes of one standard fan, and also could not cope with the load at 800 rpm. Moreover, this assessment is also valid if we take into account the noise level of these two coolers. For example, at a noise level of 40.5 dBA, the PCCooler fan rotates at 1400 rpm, while the ID-Cooling fan with the same noise level only runs at 1100 rpm. However, this did not prevent the SE-224-XTS from beating its competitor by 2 degrees Celsius at peak load. The situation is approximately the same in other fan speed modes. However, this is just the beginning of testing.
Next, we increase the frequency of the productive processor cores to 5.2 GHz at a voltage of 1.075 V and peak heat dissipation, according to HWiNFO64, to 230 watts. The energy-efficient cores operated at the same fixed frequency of 4.1 GHz.
And in this mode of processor operation, we have significantly increased the volume of tests. Each cooler was tested with two identical fans. To do this, we used three pairs of turntables: DeepCool FT12, PCCooler P120 Pro and PentaWave PF-K12B PWM.
DeepCool FT12
PCCooler P120 Pro
PentaWave PF-K12B PWM
Such testing made it possible to determine that the PCCooler RT500 Digital and ID-Cooling SE-224-XTS show the best results with a pair of PentaWave fans, which is what we chose. In addition, the testing finally added the performance of the PentaWave Z06D supercooler at maximum speeds of its standard fans and in quiet mode at 800 rpm. Let’s look at the results.
ID-Cooling SE-224-XTS is still more efficient by a couple of degrees Celsius, but what’s more interesting here is something completely different, namely that the efficiency of the PCCooler RT500 Digital is greatly increased when using two fans instead of one. If at maximum speed the temperatures decrease by no more than 6 degrees Celsius, then already at 1400 rpm the temperature gain is more than 10 degrees Celsius! In addition, the RT500 Digital can now withstand the load across the entire fan speed range, including quiet mode at 800 rpm. To be fair, I note that with the same ID-Cooling fans, the SE-224-XTS is also more efficient than its opponent, where its advantage over the PCCooler RT500 Digital ranges from 1 degree Celsius at maximum speed to almost four degrees at 900 rpm.
The next and final stage of testing the coolers was testing them on a processor with a fixed frequency of productive cores of 5.3 GHz, energy-efficient ones of 4.2 GHz, at a voltage of 1.110 V.
Here the heat dissipation level already reached 245 watts, which the PCCooler RT500 Digital in its standard configuration could cope with only at maximum speed.
Installing a second fan on the PCCooler RT500 Digital increases the efficiency of the cooler by 8 degrees Celsius or more, and at maximum speed it even managed to provide the processor with slightly lower temperatures than the ID-Cooling SE-224-XTS. Also, the second fan allows the RT500 to provide stability to the processor when the speed is reduced to 1000 rpm, which is already quite comfortable in terms of noise level in a closed system case.
⇡#Noise level
Noise level measurements were carried out in a standard configuration with one fan. In the graph, in addition to the results of the three tested coolers, we included the results of the DeepCool AK400 as the quietest model of the same design and size as the PCCooler RT500 Digital.
As you can see, the PCCooler RT500 Digital is significantly quieter than the ID-Cooling SE-224-XTS, and almost as quiet as the DeepCool AK400, up to a speed of 1200 rpm, and then the latter still wins. The new fan does not hum or vibrate, and its electric motor and bearing operate silently throughout the entire range. In other words, in this component the RT500 Digital can easily outperform other coolers in its class.
⇡#Conclusions
The new PCCooler RT500 Digital proved to be a balanced processor cooler, capable of removing up to 245 watts of thermal energy from the processor, although at the cost of the maximum speed of one standard fan. But to unlock the full potential of its radiator, we recommend installing two 120 mm fans on it at once, which will reduce temperatures by up to 10 degrees Celsius, depending on the operating speed. It’s only a pity that PCCooler did not include an additional pair of brackets with the cooler, and also did not make optimizations in the radiator fins on the side of the air flow inlet. In general, these are the only shortcomings in the RT500 Digital, and the advantages include versatility and ease of installation, a quieter fan than competitors, a processor temperature monitoring display and a three-year warranty. In addition, in white the cooler looks no worse than in black.
