Deepcool Assassin III False Advertising, Heatpipe Dissection, & Statement

Deepcool's GamerStorm Assassin III CPU cooler marketed itself heavily -- and still does -- based on grooved-sintered heatpipes. We found out that that's a lie.

Cutting things open can answer a lot of questions and it's not uncommon for us to find poor design after dissecting a product, but one thing we didn't expect was that a company would flat-out lie about its heatpipe internals. At time of publication, Deepcool is still actively marketing its grooved-sintered heatpipes on twitter and on some retail pages, but a dremel proved that they're just sintered. Ultimately, this doesn't affect the validity of already-valid test results, assuming results were valid to begin with (and a lot aren't), but it does affect the trustworthiness of Deepcool and its brand credibility. In this video, we're benchmarking one of the other Assassin III marketing claims -- one of "spoilers" -- and reporting on Deepcool's official responses to GamersNexus.

If you want to support our ability to stand up independently like in this video, you can do so through either Patreon (where you get bonus videos!) or the GN store:

** Please like, comment, and subscribe for more! **

Links to Amazon and Newegg are typically monetized on our channel (affiliate links) and may return a commission of sales to us from the retailer. This is unrelated to the product manufacturer. Any advertisements or sponsorships are disclosed within the video ("this video is brought to you by") and above the fold in the description. We do not ever produce paid content or "sponsored content" (meaning that the content is our idea and is not funded externally aside from whatever ad placement is in the beginning) and we do not ever charge manufacturers for coverage.

Follow us in these locations for more gaming and hardware updates:

Editorial, Test Lead: Steve Burke
Testing, Additional Reporting: Jake Henderson
Video: Keegan Gallick

[Aech]

"It would certainly help with downforce in a corner if it were on a racetrack"
Not gonna lie, had a hearty chuckle

[LawrenceTimme]

Company at conputex "we have more copper in our PCB design than before"

Steve gets Dremel out cuts board up, melts board down. " You lied it's 0.13458 grams less than before."

Company "bruh that was like our only sample in the world"

[Arashmickey]

"No one is grooved" -Deepcool

[BenK]

funny they thought Steve "wouldn't have to mention it", if they had just told him ahead of time. mmm yeah Deepcool, THAT was the problem.. sure..

[jasongooden]

Deepcool is having nightmares of a rotary cutting tool cutting off their pipes.

[sbeve]

We all know spoilers would increase your gaming FPS by 200% duh

[jimmmmypop]

I just can't help but picturing Deepcool when they got the email:


"Oh hey, we got an email about our heat pipes"
"OK, who was it from?"
"Tech Jesus"
"MOTHER OF GOOD, we are screwed"

[Stuka]

Having worked in manufacturing, I am willing to bet Deep Cool was told by the OEM that they were grooved. And maybe early prototypes were. Marketing then takes off and runs with it, which is typical for marketing. Marketing as a whole should always be taken with a grain of salt. I know I, as an engineer, was constantly at odds with the marketing people that marketed the product that I helped to develop.

[radicalxedward]

I love this channel. It’s so refreshing to get calm, rational, logical, breakdowns of issues without all the sensationalism/access journalism of most outlets.

[hammerheadcorvette]

I'm glad we have a "Consumer Reports" of the YouTube in Gamers Nexus

[timothystevenhoward]

nobody is going to cut one open, therefore nobody really knows whats inside, therefore nobody is going to fact check us, therefore we can say whatever we want.

[ivanalvarado]

"Deepcool calls this plastic a spoiler."


Never thought I'd see the day we'll be ricing up CPU coolers.

[michaelkuper]

The 15% number is probably related to the fact that this thing has 7 heatpipes instead of 6. That's about 15% more.

[sovietbirdz]

No CPU Heatsink could ever be as "cool" as Snowflake

[S]

Love how the water molecules fly away in the animation. Heat pipes must be leaking.

[melvin]

Deepcool: "its not needed to mention that part!"
They obviously didnt watch any of your videos Steve.

[JackDisturber]

Please consider reviewing Scythe Fuma2, that one needs far more attention than it got and been reviewed only by small channels

[thuggfrogg]

Hey Steve, Patrick, Josh, and Svoboda! Thanks for all of these vids. Totally amazing material. I love your informational style. No showmanship, just professionalism. This is what I want out of my YouTube. Thank you all for your great work!

I've been watching your videos to try to answer my current conundrum: what case is best for a deep learning machine that I intend to keep and extend for about 8 years? Basically for this, what I'm trying to optimize for is (1) GPU cooling, and (2) big mobo that can hold 128 gigs RAM (for data pre-processing) and up to 4 GPUs (for training deep learning models) so I can add to this for the next 8-or-so years. (I should note that a lot of deep learning software packages/apps like pytorch will only use one GPU, but some will let you use multiple, and I'm sure that all will let you use multiple GPUs soon). Based on your reviews, I'm probably going to go with the Lian Li 011 Dynamic XL, but I want to know what you think given what I'm optimizing for. I'm going to Japan for two weeks in a few days so I have time to think about it :) . I should also note that I've always been a Mac user, but I'm switching for one reason and one reason only: deep learning / AI requires NVIDIA's CUDA toolkit to instruct the GPUs. Apple told NVIDIA to fuck off back in 2009 or so, and now that Apple doesn't support NVIDIA GPU drivers, my hand is forced. (I know I'm being long-winded, but I really don't get a chance to geek out, so this is fun!). It's no wonder that MacBook sales declined by 2% in their last financial period. DECLINED! They're shrinking!

[rogehmarbi]

The problem is, like you said, this isn't something that an average consumer can check by themselves. I'm sure as heck won't take a dremel to my cooler or whatever. Someone could spend their money for something they don't actually get and live without ever knowing it.
It's good on them to actually 'clarify' the mistake on their part, but still.

[agenericaccount]

It's really the perfect marketing crime because they probably expected absolutely nobody to tear one open. Then along came you.

As an aside, do you figure the factory gave them a bamboozle. Sent grooved samples and tried to be sly with the rest? Haven't watched through, maybe you bring it up. If so, maybe DC had to run with the lie once they found out, thinking nobody would know.