Since their arrival last year – CRYORIG has already made a lasting impression in the cooling segment with the R1 Ultimate. The Ultimate was CRYORIG’s debut cooler and was a dive into the deep end with a flagship offering – today’s product steps back from this to provide a cheaper option for the mid-range.

H5 Universal manifests the sleek and sophisticated style which CRYORIG has already presented in their current portfolio. It’s rare to see such care in the packaging and the aesthetics of a product from a company which is still only very new but we’re really pleased to see this consistency. Due to the nature of H5’s visual appearance, pairing the cooler up with other hardware will be easy – especially if you have components which follow a neutral colour-scheme.

We found the installation process particularly easy thanks to the clear instructions, high-quality parts and efficient technique to attach the cooler to the motherboard. Though we were a little dismayed at the fact there is only a single application thermal paste tube – usually brands will include a full tube for future use and multiple applications.



On the performance front H5 did an admirable job with the CPU at stock settings. H5 finds itself amid a number of strong contenders and yet is lower in cost. But unfortunately ramping the intensity up with a substantial overclock creates some rather big obstacles for H5. We found the cooler to really struggle in this scenario – the single 1400RPM cooling fan and four copper heatpipes were insufficient to effectively keep the high-temperatures down and we almost had to cease testing with the temperatures exceeding 93C. To tackle this issue, we really need to use a dual-fan configuration and use fans which offer between 1800-2000RPM as a maximum PWM rating.

At a cost of just £35 GBP / $46.99 USD – H5 is a worthwhile consideration for those who don’t have the cash to spend on a high-end cooling solution, but do bear in mind that H5 is only really suitable in it’s out of the box condition to handle stock settings.

H5 Universal is another nicely presented product from CRYORIG. Care has been taken in the development of this CPU cooler – it looks great, performs reasonably at stock settings, is easy to install and doesn’t cost a great deal.