Fractal Design Celsius & S28 Prisma Review

There are many companies that come to us late in the Middle East, and this is not wrong with anything especially if it is companies like Fractal Design that come to offer different assortments of high-end products for PC users. We mean…the market is a bit tricky due to a lot of factors, but if you don’t know who Fractal Design is, we think it’s time to welcome it now and get to know it with the Celsius+ S28 Prisma cooler.

Fractal Design has introduced many products since it came on the market in 2007. The Swedish company, known for its innovative designs and aesthetics in its products, now comes to offer us its new Celsius+ series, which is based on the sixth generation Asetek pumps with many other features in the sizes of 240, 280 and 360 mm with or without RGB fans.

Today, we are hosting the 280mm radiator with RGB lighting, which, as mentioned, comes with a new design and a completely updated cooling system from the company. Can you outperform the standards some companies have previously set? This is what we will see today in our review of the cooler.

A first look at Celsius+ S28 Prisma liquid cooling

The box that comes in the S28 Prsima cooler is very simple in terms of design, and it is clear that the company always likes moderate designs and does not like to make its boxes flashy-colored packages even if the cooler screams at them while working. When we opened the cooler box, we found the following things:

• 280mm radiator with pump.
• Two Prsima AL-14 propellers.
• Intel processor backboard.
• Mounting brackets for Intel and AMD processors.
• 4 screws for Intel LGA20 sockets.
• 4 pins for LGA1200 and LGA115 sockets.
• 8 long screws.
• RGB cable.

The brackets and screws we saw inside make sure this cooler are nearly compatible with most sockets except for the new LGA1700 socket for Intel 12th Gen processors, and most likely an upgrade package will be offered for these processors. What we also learned about this cooler is that there are no extra cables for the luxuries, and that’s because fan speed and lighting control are already built into the cooler itself, which makes me give it a well-deserved point from the start of the review now.

Starting with the radiator, it comes in dimensions of 284 x 122 x 31 millimeters. Yes, the thickness of the radiator alone is 31 millimeters and we will explain why later. The radiator is made of aluminum, which doesn’t make it heavy at all and that’s what we know from the 6th generation designs from Asetek. The radiator does not take the shape of a full rectangle because its edges are curved on both sides.

The density of the radiator fins is 20 per inch, which are the pieces that play the role of a metallic dissipator in the radiator to absorb the heat of the fluid. There is also a layer in the screw holes to prevent the screw from entering the radiator body itself in case you press it too much, and this feature will give a point to the cooling as well because it is one of the few that provides this feature. This is the reason for increasing the thickness of the radiator as well, and this is what we wanted to tell you about for a minute.

The radiator is connected to the water block via rubber tubes that come in lengths of 400 millimeters and are covered with complex nylon. The tubes carry not only liquid, but also the cables for ARGB and PWM that come from the hub located on top of the radiator itself, so we will feel that the cooler comes with fewer cables than other coolers, and this idea is great.

As for the Hub, which is located above the radiator, it comes to host the ARGB headers with two inputs, the PWM headers with four inputs, and we also do not forget that one is vacant here and one there, which means that one can be installed for the ARGB and three for the PWM.

As for the liquid block, the block comes in a circular shape in black. Above the pump we will find a tinted glass cover with the Fractal Design logo inside, and this logo is illuminated by 6 LED units at the back. The block comes in dimensions of 86 x 75 x 45 mm and a diameter of 62 mm if you need to know the dimensions, but it will be compatible with most modern panels.

The block comes with a three-pin inlet for the ARGB cable that is connected through the radiator tubes. The block is divided into two parts, the upper part is rotated, but not for the sake of shape, but rather to convert patterns for thermal performance from settings you set to automatic settings.

The base of the water-based block is made of copper, and the thermal paste was previously applied to it, and what we also heard about the paste is that it gives better performance now that it is on the same level as any paste of the higher class.

The cooler fans are AL-14 RGB Prisma. These fans are designed for optimum airflow with strong static pressure as well. If you care about extreme aesthetics, these fans will either like you very much or you may not like the look as well. The fans are white as snow, which would make them match up nicely with your computer case if it’s the same color, but they’re not transparent so they won’t reflect their RGB lighting.

The fan comes with seven blades and is supported by four arms, and one of them takes more space than the rest because the wires pass through it. Of course, the Fractal Design logo is in the middle of the fan. The fan also comes with two cables, one for PWM adjustment and the second for ARGB lights with two heads to support the installation of more than one fan and avoid crowded cables.

Oh. We forgot to tell you about the specifications of the fan from a technical point of view. The fan comes at a speed between 500 and 1700 rpm with a flow of 103.9 CFM. Great numbers for fans if you ask us. However, will the cooling specifications that think are best help deliver good performance rates? to see!

Cooling Performance Tests

The performance conditions we’ve set for any cooler this year are the same as the ones we’re going to put in this cooler, and don’t forget that we don’t factor in room temperature, which is 24°C, knowing that this combination was the benchmark for most of our cooler reviews this year:

• Motherboard: MSI X570 Godlike.
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, clocked at 4.9 GHz.
• Random memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 4x8GB 3600MHz.
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeFroce RTX 3070 Ti.

Well, we can say that the performance is closer to excellence than just good. The cooler actually rises to what we saw before, and this is because with the rendering tests that we consider to be a crisis of coolers, it scored 47 degrees Celsius with Blender and Corona, knowing that we do not see these degrees lower than them except with coolers based on three fans, which is the highest liquid cooling based on two fans. In our arrangements almost in this respect, at the same time when fully loaded on the fans it recorded 44 degrees Celsius, and this figure is also considered good when loading on the fans completely.

When loading up on the processor in terms of commands and tasks using the AIDA64 tests, the cooler came close to the same scores we see with the three-fan coolers. The differences were very slight in terms of whether the fans were fully loaded or not. Withstand 42-46 degrees Celsius is enough to reverse the power of the cooler that comes with only two fans. The same goes for Cinebench because the cooling scored impressive numbers in the 35-40°C region, which not many coolers could score on the same test.

With the games, we saw a great performance as well. There is no comment on the record-breaking cooler, but it only stood out against the EK AIO Elite, which has performed really well in these tests before and is also based on three fans. The cooling recorded numbers not exceeding 42 degrees Celsius, which are impressive numbers for what we have seen before.

Final Verdict on Celsius+ S28 Prisma Cooler

The price of the cooler is currently $160. The price is not the best, but it is not overpriced like some other coolers. The radiator provides a great look if we are going to talk about the design with strong performance if we talk about the cooling power it provides. The radiator includes the controller built into the radiator itself and that was a great idea if you ask us too.

With a 5-year warranty, we can say that Fractal Design has blind faith in this cooler. There is no objection to what it offers other than its price and some taste issues if we decide to talk about aesthetics, and taste varies from person to person. If there’s a problem with this entire package it’s the price, but let’s overlook it, it’s one of the best coolers we’ve seen in recent times and well worth it.

Hawke Centre rating

• Performance: 9
• Price: 7
• Accessories: 10
• Ease of installation: 9
• Design: 8

Positives

• Five years warranty.
• A radiator protection system that we rarely see.
• Strong cooling stiffness.
• A great performance for its type.
• A fascinating design for some.
• The pattern conversion feature of the water block is great.
• The integration of the controller and cables into the radiator and block is great.

Negatives

• Quite a high price.
• Its design may not please some.