Asus ROG RYUJIN II 360 CPU Cooler Review

Asus has given us the costly RYUJIN II CPU Cooler to put through its paces and we’ve put it to the test under both synthetic and real-world workloads against other AIOs to determine what kind of temperatures you’d expect to achieve in both scenarios.

Asus has dominated the PC component space with their brand “Republic of Gamers” or “ROG”. If you don’t know ROG then you probably know “Strix” – actually my personal favorite brand of PC components.

What’s In The Box?

The box comes in a black and grey textured line pattern with a red secondary accent on the top and base of the box. There’s iridescent ROG branding on the front and side displaying the name and the one-line product description “liquid CPU cooler”. But what do you get inside the box?

The contents of the box are as follows:

• 1x RYUJIN II AIO Cooler
• 1x AIO Fan Controller
• 3x 120mm (12cm) NOCTUA ipcc Fans
• 1x Intel Mounting Bracket
• 1x Intel Backplate
• 1x AMD Mounting Bracket
• 1x ARGB to MB Cable
• 1x 3-way Fan Cable (splitter)
• 1x ROG Fan Controller VHB Tape
• 12x 32x30mm Fan Screws
• 24x 32x8mm Radiator Screws
• 4x LGA 115X/1200/1366 Standoff Screws
• 4x LGA 2011/2011-3/2066 Standoff Screws
• 4x AMD Standoff Screws
• 4x Thumb Screws
• 24x Washers

Design

Let’s start with the radiator, and as they go this rad is pretty rad. The aluminum monster is coated in matte black paint with a beautifully even finish with the italic letters ROG stamped on each side in Asus’ usual font. There are also four strutting support rivets spaced evenly on each side of the radiator adding to the overall industrial look this whole AIO seems to be going for… and I love it.

The RYUGIN II’s 380mm long tubes are comprised of thick rubber and are sleeved to give them a very appealing look and feel. The heavy-duty rubber really bestows confidence in their durability.

 

There’s more than enough to talk about here. The CPU block is where the RYUJIN II really flexes its well-designed muscles. The main feature is the 3.5″ full-color LCD screen situated front and center that has a multitude of different uses, even sporting support for Aida64’s sensor panel feature straight out of the box.

The rectangular look of the CPU block along with its vent-like texture on each side supports the industrial look I mentioned earlier, and the 7th gen Asetek pump gives this beast of an AIO some serious pumping power. Painted again in matte black with ROG branding on each side, “republic of gamers” printed in text diagonally on the top and bottom of the block, and, of course, the ROG logo on the left and right side.

A very interesting point to note about this block and pump is that the screen is magnetically attached to the pump housing and is completely removable to help ease the installation process, as the blocky shroud obstructs the thumb screws needed to install the block to the CPU. The screen itself has two wires attached to it, one USB to connect to the motherboard and one micro USB to connect to the fan controller. Under the LCD screen and pump housing sits a small internal fan, presumably to keep the 2800rpm pump nice and cool, but how does the pump get power? There’s no hardwire solution for the pump that I can see?

That’s the question I asked myself when I first unboxed the RYUJIN II but the brains over at Asus have engineered a genius way for the pump to receive power. Situated just under the screen inside the pump housing is a male copper contact point that corresponds to a female contact point on the CPU block itself – this is how power is transferred between the two components.

This is genius, but, being a benchmarker I do have to swap CPUs quite often and after a good 30-40 times of taking the screen off and putting it back on, I am starting to notice some wear on the female contact points. Could this be a potential point of failure in the future? Maybe, but under normal circumstances, I’d put good money on the RYUJIN II’s longevity.

Not only does the RYUJIN II look the part, but It’s also pretty cool, literally! And it’s all thanks to the three Noctua NF 2000rpm fans, again following the matte black aesthetic. It’s great to see some Noctua fans in something other than brown. These Noctua fans can push 121.8m3h of air and have a static pressure of 3.94mmH2O! FANtastic.

Not only are the Noctua fans top quality, but the fan power cables are also sleeved in a shrink rubber and woven rubber-like material combo. This makes them look incredibly clean, fit the aesthetic of the build, and feel super-premium! They’re also incredibly easy to cable manage.

The RYUJIN II’s PWM/DC fan controller has a lovely machined metal outer shell in the consistent matte black finish corresponding to the rest of the AIO with glossy black accented corners that house both the ROG logo and branding. The connection points are located on the left, right, and bottom of the controller. You can attach four fans to this controller with its four fan power connectors and four ARGB connectors for any Aura-Sync compatible RGB fans on the left and right. The controller power, motherboard ARGB In-connector, and the micro USB connector for the LCD screen are all situated on the bottom of the controller.

Installation

Installation of the RYUJIN II follows most well-known AIOs with the first step being installing whatever mounting solution you need for your motherboard.

 

I’m using an AMD board so this includes removing the Intel mounting hardware and twisting on the AMD mounting bracket, very reminiscent of the way fractal design chooses to mount their bracket onto CPU blocks.

The next step includes prepping the motherboard by removing AMD’s standard clip-based mounting system and replacing it with the RYUJIN II’s included standoff pillars – all easily done.

 

I decided to mount my radiator into the front of my Corsair 5000X mainly because of aesthetics and I wanted to test the temperature differences in the case with a front-mounted intake cooling solution in this configuration.

Installation is pretty standard to most AIO’s – screwing the radiator and fans into the front of the case using the included long fan screws, remembering to first feed the fan’s wires through to the back of the case to save a headache later.

The CPU block then sits on top of the standoff pillars I mentioned earlier and screw in with the included thumbscrew (remember to tighten in an X pattern).

You’ll find it much easier to remove the screen when tightening the thumbscrews. It’s not impossible to mount with the screen attached but it removes for a reason so why make the job harder for yourself?

Cable management is very easy with the RYUJIN II’s fan controller and with the fans being matte black and none-RGB there are three fewer cables already. Now it’s just a matter of plugging everything into the correct header on the motherboard and fan controller respectively and you’re good to go.

Performance

All of the cooler testings took place in an as controlled environment as we could achieve, with an ambient room temperature of 20.5°C. The ambient temperature of the PC case was recorded at 23.3°C. For testing, we used a powerful system equipped with a Ryzen 9 5900X and an MSI Gaming X Trio RTX 3080, running a 20-minute synthetic (CPU Only) test and a real-world gaming benchmark with a 20-minute Battlefield 5 gaming session.

 

Synthetics

As you can see we got good thermal performance across the board, with the exception of the stock cooler really, with the RYUJIN II coming in at 72.3°C after a 20-minute Synthetic load, second only to the Lian Li Galahad. But the Galahad does win by a very large margin. It also seems based on the data that there is a trend based on cooling performance having a direct correlation with increasing internal case temperatures. In this configuration, the more efficient your cooling on a front-mounted intake cooling solution like this one, the toastier it will be for other components. Interesting to note when thinking of radiator mounting.

Real world

Before performing the real-world tests, I allowed the CPU and the case to return to within control temperature. You can see the RYUJIN II coming in second place again to the Galahad by just over eight degrees. However, both tests indicated that the performance of the RYUJIN II is similar to that of the H150i. After a very intense 20 minute stint of Battlefield 5 gameplay, the final temperature for the RYUJIN II comes in at 68.2°C, only a 29.9°C increase. This is surprising considering the heat convection coefficient states essentially that the hotter the temperature around something is, the harder it is to cool it when speaking in terms of liquid.

Summary

Cooling performance is a team effort and not essentially all down to one component. It’s all well and good having a great AIO but you also need a good set of fans and a case with good airflow to cool effectively. Check here to see our review of the Corsair 5000X I used to test the RYUJIN II.

The configuration also matters. If you have an AIO in the Intake configuration, it’s going to heat up your case and have a detrimental effect on the temperature of other components in your case, especially the passively cooled components. On the other hand, if you have the AIO set up in an exhaust configuration then you might be damaging your cooling efficiency by sucking already hot air from inside your case through the radiator.

Final Word

When it comes down to CPU cooling, AIOs are reserved for the higher-end, higher-budget PCs. You wouldn’t slap an AIO in a $200 budget PC, but with that being said for bigger budget builds you’ll probably want to consider one to help improve overall performance. The confirmed MSRP by Asus of the RYUJIN II comes in at £279.99 ($386.99) for the 360mm AIO and £239.99 ($331.70) for the 240 version. The USD prices are at the currency’s conversion rates and are not the confirmed MSRP for the RYUJIN II in USD, (we don’t have that yet) but the GBP price is the confirmed MSRP from ASUS. So it doesn’t exactly break the bank either.

Saying that I also absolutely fell in love with the look and feel of this AIO and if I didn’t already have a custom loop on my personal PC I definitely would have considered this. But, with that being said, despite its all-singing, all-dancing LCD screen, it is only the second-best contender on our roster today. The Galahad not only beats the RYUJIN II in thermal performance but also just beats it in Bang for Buck, coming in at around the $200 mark. This is a significant deciding factor for choosing an AIO – better cooling performance for $80 or so fewer dollars than the RYUJIN II’s MSRP. If you have your heart set on this AIO there are people shipping from mainland China at the $525 mark. We won’t be seeing the RYUJIN II hit the market over here just yet as there are delays due to manufacturing issues with the LGA 1200 mounting hardware. With that being said we can’t wait for this cooler to hit the market. It truly is one of the best-looking cooling solutions I’ve seen in my 10+ years of being a PC enthusiast.  Well done Asus.