Fractal Design Kelvin S36 AIO CPU Cooler Review

Installation

Installation of the unit was not as straight forward as I would have liked, I had to enlist the help of my fiancée to help me hold the bracket. While it does come with sticky pads to help with this issue holding the bracket onto the motherboard, it seems that Intel Skylake processor based builds have a slight issue. The cpu is marginally thinner that its Haswell counterparts meaning brackets don’t always fit correctly. I did have a Corsair H110i GT lined up to compare this unit to but the bracket was loose, flapping around and it’s currently under going an RMA.

Luckily the S360 AIO liquid CPU cooler does not suffer from this issue!

1. Install the mounting bracket on CPU block

2. Attach retention screws to the mount

3. Mount the block onto the motherboard

As you can tell from the beautiful hands, this is where I needed the help of my significant other. Normally you can just stick the bracket in place, lay your pc flat and away you go but Skylake is making things hard consistently with different units and custom loops.

4. Stand back and smile

Fractal Design’s Kelvin S36 really does look the part. A lovely scratch free gloss finish on the front of the block and very minimal branding coupled with shiny black tubing and anti king coils.

Let’s see what this AIO CPU Cooler is capable of in our performance test.

• 1. Intro
• 2. Unboxing
• 3. Installation
• 4. Performance Testing
• 5. Conclusion