NZXT Kraken Plus 360 RGB (2025) review

It does feel like there's been a paradigm shift at the very top of the AIO liquid-cooling world. Once upon a time, these things were just graced with a plastic cover, a fleck of RGB (if that), and that was it. Since those early days though, we've now got screens, and curved OLED, and all sorts of mad and wonderful contraptions strapped to that humble aluminum block, but of course, with a steep price attached.

The Kraken Plus line is refreshingly not that. I mean, it's still got a screen strapped to it, but NZXT has managed to sort of cram all of its latest and greatest hardware into a design, that somehow shaves $100 off compared to its Elite 360 bigger brother, down to Asetek busting Turbine pump.

All shiny. Let's call it a day then and strap this thing up in lights at the top of our best U cooler list huh? No, not quite. Because although the Kraken Plus does a lot right, I've got beef with it, and most of that comes down to some seriously dubious design decisions. Particularly from a company that's been building these things for well over a decade now.

Take the U block for example. It's small, compact, complete with multiple brackets for AMD and Intel sockets, and even has its own TFT display. It's not quite as big as the Elite's, measuring only 1.54-inches and with a 240x240 resolution, but it's there. The surround itself has a nice soft-coated look to it, no gloss or cheap nasty plastic finishes here, and from a first glance straight out of the box, all looks in order. And then we get to the cable.

This thing is unbelievably frustrating. So basically NZXT has one large breakout cable stemming directly from the U block itself. There's a single wide rectangular connector, that it plugs into, and then the cable immediately splits off into an equally wide, flat cable for the pump cable and NZXT's own F series fan line, along with a secondary USB 2.0 cable that's going to an internal header to power that screen.

My problem, if you hadn't already guessed it, is the cables themselves are massive. They're cumbersome and awkward to route. Whereas in competing coolers you can simply slip most AIO cables down the side of the DRAM and the upper most heatsink, working it into the rear of the chassis for cable management, with the Kraken Plus, you can't. I tried with the thick flat ribbon cable, and it's so unwieldy and large that it just juts out over the DDR and the heatsink, and the USB cable, is so thick, I can't shove it anywhere either.

This is ittedly a minor convenience (#justPCbuildingproblems). It doesn't impact performance at all, and well you do get used to it after a while, but given the company has so much experience in this department, and there are suitable options out there, it feels like an issue created by its own solution.

What I mean by that is that NZXT has been forced to do this, so it can pair the Kraken Plus with an F360 Core RGB fan frame. That of course has a proprietary thick rectangular connector, and so, the breakout cable requires that as well. Unlike the Elite, which has its breakout on the radiator itself, the Plus isn't afforded such luxury.

Then there's the screen. It's nice enough to look at, and easily configurable in NZXT's Cam software, with a whole host of gifs and live services, and infographics available, but it's surprisingly dim. In broad daylight it's a challenge to even read the thing at times, and, despite being in a circular U block, it's also a square display. So, you can configure it all up in Cam, which indicates it's going to show you a circular image, only for it to be square…. Again, annoying and it didn't need to be. Heck pull an Elden Ring and slap black bars around it for all I care.

Minor foibles aside, performance on the whole is solid. Average temperatures fell within margin of error for the thing, sliding in nicely into the 360 mm AIO product stack. A few standouts were Metro Exodus, which hit at a heady height of 58 degrees, versus the Tryx Panorama's 53, and the time taken for that F Core series frame fan to bring the U back down to idle temp was again quite high, similar to its older brother, with 127 seconds achieved. It's seriously noisy too, clocking in a whopping 55 dB under test.

Perhaps though, I'm being harsh. There's a lot to like here. The build quality is top-notch. Installing it super simple. Those 420 mm long tubes give it wide case compatibility, and it looks exceptionally clean. If you're a more mature individual, you'll likely just slap infographics on that square display anyway, and, well it's still $100-$120 cheaper than similarly performing flagship solutions.

Yet those tiny little details, that have been overlooked here, really grate with me. You can understand why NZXT has decided to make those decisions, but it feels like given its expertise, having fat cables like that, just jutting out, is a major misstep. Someone internally must have spotted that before this thing went to production, and if they didn't, well, ouch.