DEEPCOOL Captain 360X WH RGB AIO CPU Liquid Cooler, Anti-Leak Tech Inside, Stainless Steel U-Shape Pipe, Cable Controller and Motherboard with 12V 4-pin RGB Header Control, 3-Year Warranty

UPDATE: my replacement arrived and the doesn't appear to be any damage to the radiator fins at all, looks like it was just a one off.-----------------------Firstly, I'll preface this with saying my experience may be an isolated case. I've used DEEPCOOL products before and I find their cooling fans and cases to be of very good quality for the money - practically falling in love with their old DUKASE mid-tower case, for the limited time they seemed to make them. Lets look at the negatives first, then the positives.Negatives:My main issue that I had with this cooler was the Radiator fins: you can see by the photos that quite a few of them are bent where it looks like something has dragged across one side, and the pump has been dropped on the corner of the other side. It came out of the box like this, I hadn't even touched the radiator and I noticed these bent fins. I really wouldn't expect this to get past QA for a component, when all is said and done, has the greatest chance of destroying all your other parts in the computer if something goes wrong. I plugged everything in and gave it a test to see how it performed and hoped this was an isolated incident. After doing some tests and making sure it would all mount in my case, I set up a return and ordered another one - I'll report back when that one arrives.Now, my main driver for making this purchase over paying £30 more for an NZXT or Corsair water cooler was aesthetics: White radiator AIO's are few and far between, with the only other one I can find on amazon being an ASUS ROG for double the price, in typical ROG fashion. This leads me to my first (non-damage) problem - when I opened the box I thought "Wow, this thing looks amazing!" but when I actually began to put it in my white case I thought "This isn't actually white".While when viewed in isolation everything looks white, when it's next to something that is actually white, you realise it's more of a cream colour. This ends up just being a small nitpick as once it's in your case and your lighting is in full swing, it's pretty hard to notice. The supplied 120mm fans are also this same off-white colour, so it doesn't stand out too much unless you go looking for it.My second problem is the water-pipes, they seem too long. I have a Lian Li o11 Dynamic, which while isn't as large as it's XL counterpart, has plenty of clearance in front of and above the motherboard, more so than many other mid towers. The only way you can mount the rad is to have the pipe intakes towards the front of the case on either the top or side intake because to have the radiator oriented any other way would force you to twist or squish your water pipes in awkward ways. An example of this can be seen on Tech Tesseracts Youtube review of the DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX, which is the same rad and pipes with a different pump. He doesn't mention its a problem (because I'm not 100% confident Tech Tesseract is a competent tech channel), but you can see his twisted heatpipes yourself at the back of the case towards the end of the video, and his case is also an o11 Dynamic. If you had a rear exhaust fan, the pipes would be smashing in to the fan blades.Other minor niggles include the radiator, due to the anti-leak bladder, is fully squared on the corners. This made it too tight to fit to my radiator front 360mm mount as the front panel wires occupied the space where other radiators would have had rounded corners. Finally, you're probably already are aware of this but with it being RGB instead of ARGB means its very limited in what it can do in terms of lighting. To test I hooked this up to my MSI X470 gaming Pro and found that because it has no DEEPCOOL management software of its own, it was beholden to the lighting colours supported by mystic light on a 12V RGB header, of which there are only 7 colours. It's possible the included in-line controller was capable of more, but I never tested this in my short time with it. There is a Pro version of the Captain with full ARGB support, however it's only available in black and they don't make a 360mm radiator version, which is a shame.Positives:Design wise, the pump looks superb. I love the little reactor-esque design of the cooling pump and I don't think I've ever seen a watercooler pump look as unique as this one. I especially love the metal pipe running from the lower chamber to the center in the top chamber. The lighting fins also look pretty sweet. It's just such a shame that there is no 360mm white ARGB Pro version, otherwise I'd have been on it quicker than a fat kid on cake.The supplied fans, while a little loud at full-speed, perform admirably - shifting more air and with higher static pressure than a lot of more expensive fans. As a comparison, the DEEPCOOL fans have higher CFM and SP values than something like an Alpenfohn Wing Boost 3 which will cost almost double, but also have a much higher DB output at full load.The cooling performance of the AIO as a whole was also pretty good, while waiting for a replacement to turn up I've shoved my Wraith cooler back on my 2600X, and it helped me realise that the captain was knocking a whole 20C off my idle temps at 4.2GHz over the stock wraith. Again, really disappointed there isn't a PRO ARGB version of the 360mm in white, as your only alternative is the DEEPCOOL Castle 360, which (IMO) doesn't have an as-interesting looking pump design and I've heard isn't as great as shifting heat as the Captains pump is.Finally, the mounting bracket supplied is visually pleasing and simple to install the pump on. While other mounting brackets usually rely on you mounting the pump or the cooler to the backplate, you first build a separate mounting frame over the socket, then just screw the pump on to the frame, which is, quite frankly genius: no awkward holding the backplate while you awkwardly push the cooler to make contact with the standoffs while you make tentative quarter-turns in all four corners to ensure equal pressure: you just start the pump screws on the mounting frame and tighten. So simple, so elegant, perfect. All coolers should use a similar system.Summary:This would be a no-brainer recommendation if you're looking for a white water-cooler with RGB lighting. Great performance as an actual cooler, coupled with a visually-pleasing CPU pump are great selling points here - it would be better if you could get the PRO version in white and with a 360mm rad, but this works great.What stops me from telling you to rush out and buy it are the odd design-niggles and that questionable QA. The pipes being too long and the white not actually being white are small things that can be ignored, but the state the radiator turned up in really urges me to tell you to proceed with caution. Horror stories of people buying DEEPCOOL water coolers (prior to the introduction of their ANTI-LEAK tech) and having them leak and destroy their expensive GPU or PSU are balanced with plenty of stories of DEEPCOOL being a great company for service and actually paying to replace the parts that were damaged too - but what if I told you there are also plenty of stories on Reddit where DEEPCOOL have refused to even replace the AIO because the screws supplied with the cooler were too long and pierced the radiator pipes when tightened? It doesn't matter if it's a design flaw, the final step of damage was caused by the customer - ergo no replacement.With that in mind, it brings the problem I had about receiving a radiator with bent fins in to perspective: as was proven from testing, the cooler worked perfectly fine and achieved great temperatures, however what would happen if a leak developed from the rad in a couple of months? Would DEEPCOOL see the bent fins and assumed I'd been knocking the rad about? This was a risk I wasn't willing to take and opted to set up a return to Amazon. I like the cooler, I REALLY like the cooler, but the QA side of things just makes me worry this thing could leak and I would be a few hundred out of pocket.Lets see what happens when the replacement I ordered turns up in a couple of days - if the rad fins are bent on this one too, then I'll probably be contacting DEEPCOOL to see if any future issues that could arise would be covered under the warranty.