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Valkyrie has labelled this cooler “Lite”, which usually means that some features have been taken away or slimmed down to make the price more competitive or budget. I would only consider a 360mm AIO to be budget if it's under £100 these days, since there are loads of cheaper AIOs about that are priced well under £100, so the V360 Lite is competing in the mid-range price bracket at £110. However, the performance of the V360 Lite is more in line with budget models and some much more affordable AIOs, such as the Montech HyperFlow ARGB which offers superior performance.
That said, it's got a pretty cool look to the CPU block with what Valkyrie call a ‘Mecha Aesthetic'. The PCB of the top cover is on show alongside the Valkyrie logo illuminated with ARGB – it's different from any other AIO block that I have seen before and looks fresh. It may not be everyone’s taste but hats off to Valkyrie for trying something different. RGB effects are OK, nice and bright, easily configured using motherboard software and use standard connections. LED diffusion on the fans could be better, but it's not bad.
The installation process is OK too, is pretty quick and simple, the cooler uses all standard motherboard type connections for RGB and fan/pump speed control. There are a couple of additional metal brackets needed for AMD installation, which seem unnecessary. This could have been designed better to make the install more efficient, but overall it's fine. It is good to see PWM speed control of both the fans and pump, some coolers in this price range will use voltage control on one or the other, so Valkyrie hasn’t cut costs here.
Overall it's not a bad cooler, the performance is a little underwhelming, and as mentioned already it's beaten by some cheaper coolers. The other problem is the price – it's not overly expensive at £110 but when you have loads of options under £100 nowadays it's hard to ignore those when they perform as well, if not better, than the Valkyrie V360 Lite. Plus some of these cheaper options run quieter too. At 53dBA with the fans running at max speed it’s quite loud and distracting so you will need to play around with fan curves to get it to a tolerable noise level, which will reduce thermal performance further.
Pros:
- Installation is pretty quick.
- RGB lighting effects are OK.
- Mech Aesthetic looks interesting.
Cons:
- Thermal Performance isn’t anything special.
- Two sets of brackets for AMD installation seem unnecessary.
- Strange choice of wording used to describe some parts.
- A little expensive to be classed as a budget cooler.
KitGuru says: Valkyrie knows how to make a product look appealing, but still the thermal performance is a little off some of the rival models which is a shame.
