Test setup and results …
For this review of the ASRock Steel Legend LCD water cooling system, we are using our AMD AM5 test system, which consists of the following components.
| Mainboard | ASRock X870E Taichi OCF |
| SSD | Crucial T700 1TB M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD CT1000T700SSD3 |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D |
| RAM | 2x 24GB DDR5-8000 |
| PSU | Seasonic Vertex GX-850 |
| Graphics card | AMD Radeon RX9070XT |
| Operating System | Windows 11 – Version 25H2 |
While testing the performance of the ASRock Steel Legend LCD water cooling system, we noticed that the radiator’s ball-bearing fans can be quite finicky when it comes to speed control. Due to the higher bearing resistance compared to fluid-bearing fans, the Steel Legend water cooling fans are designed to start only at 30% PWM or higher. Starting from a standstill, one of the fans usually starts up between 20% and 25%, but all three fans reliably started only at 30% PWM, which is a very high value. For silent operation, you would first need to set the fans to 30% after turning on the PC and then slowly reduce the speed again. With a bit of luck, you can get the speeds down from higher levels to about 800 RPM or 10% PWM, but it’s also possible that at 15% PWM, one or two of the three 120mm fans have already come to a standstill again. However, this behavior may improve after a few hours of operation.
In terms of performance, we have absolutely no complaints about the ASRock Steel Legend 360 LCD. It achieves temperatures typical for Asetek coolers, which is more than sufficient for an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D. At 10% PWM, the CPU temperature is 87°C, which is a good result considering the barely audible operating noise. At 25% PWM (or 1250 RPM), the temperature drops to just 83°C while the noise level remains very low. The sweet spot is at 40–50% PWM, where the CPU temperature stabilizes at 77–78°C and the noise level is still quite tolerable. At 100% PWM, noise levels rise sharply, though the CPU temperature of our 9800X3d barely drops. At full speed, the CPU temperature reaches 74.9°C at 144W.
Noise level …
As long as you don’t overdo it with the fan speed, the ASRock Steel Legend 360 LCD water cooling system remains pleasantly quiet while providing good cooling. Although we always ran the pump at 100% (3100 RPM) during our tests, it was barely audible and is therefore highly recommended for noise-optimized PC systems. The fan blades, made of modern LCP plastic, also contribute to the low noise level. This is because the vibrations of the fan blades—which are a major source of noise—are effectively reduced by the use of this particularly rigid, high-performance plastic.
The 70mm VRM fan reaches up to 3000 rpm and effectively cools the voltage regulators on the motherboard. At full speed, its cooling effect is considerable, but its operating noise is also clearly audible. With a little tuning, however, you can easily adjust it to an acceptable noise level while still maintaining decent cooling performance. The key here is to find your personal sweet spot, as high cooling performance through powerful, active ventilation is usually not necessary with modern motherboards.
ASRock Steel Legend 360 LCD Result and general impression …