Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 240 AIO Review: Raising the Bar

The best-performing 240mm AIO we’ve tested.

Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 240 AIO
Editor's Choice
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

Tom's Hardware Verdict

Lian Li’s Galahad II Trinity Performance 240mm offers an unbeatable combination of cooling performance and value, outperforming many larger 360mm AIOs.

Pros

  • +

    Class-leading performance

  • +

    Competitive with 360mm AIOs

  • +

    Low noise levels in common workloads

  • +

    Reasonably priced

Cons

  • -

    None!

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Over the past two years, as high-end CPUs have become more thermally demanding, cooling manufacturers have released upgraded liquid coolers to more effectively dissipate heat. This summer in particular has seen the release of many impressive liquid coolers from Cooler Master, DeepCool, and other competitors.

Today we’re looking at Lian Li’s latest 240mm AIO, the Galahad II Trinity Performance. Does Lian Li’s new 240mm AIO stand out from the crowd and earn a spot on our Best AIO Coolers list? Its larger 360mm sibling is already there. Will Lian Li take the top spots in both size categories? We’ll have to put it through testing to say for sure. But first, here are the cooler’s specifications, direct from Lian Li. 

Specifications 

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CoolerLian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance
MSRP$119.99 USD
Installed Size277.5mm (L) x 119.2 mm (W) x 52mm (D)
Radiator MaterialAluminum Single Wave Fins
Pump Sped3200 RPM
Socket CompatibilityIntel Socket LGA 115x/1200/1700 AMD AM5 / AM4
BaseCopper
Max TDP (Our Testing)~250W on Intel i7-13700K
Warranty5 years

Packing and Included Contents 

The GA II Trinity 240 arrives in a package similar to other coolers of it’s class. The inner contents are surrounded by molded cardboard and plastic coverings for the protection of the contents during shipping.   

Included with the package are the following:

  • Two 120mm fans, pre-installed
  • 240mm radiator 
  • Thermal paste and application tools
  • PWM splitter
  • Mounts for all modern CPU sockets (including AM5 & LGA1700)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

 LGA 1700 Cooler Installation

Installation of Lian Li’s 240mm AIO is simple on Intel LGA 1700 systems. 

1. I would advise securing the radiator prior to other installation steps. It makes the rest of installation easier, at least in mid-tower and larger cases.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

2. Intel users begin by pressing the backplate against the motherboard and secure it by screwing in the mounting standoffs from the front side of the motherboard.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

3. Apply thermal paste to the CPU, and then place the CPU block against the motherboard and secure it with the included screws.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

4. Apply thermal paste to the CPU and then place the CPU block against the mounting bars, secure it with the included thumbscrews. 

5. Connect the PWM and ARGB headers to the motherboard.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Features of Lian Li’s Galahad II Trinity 240 

⋇ Large Copper contact plate

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The GA II Trinity 240 features a large copper CPU contact plate with significant revisions compared to previous-generation coolers from Lian Li. The skived fins have an increased spacing to prevent build-up of internal debris, and the height and thickness of the fins have been improved. Additionally, a trench down the middle of the skived fins has been implemented for better heat dissipation of the coolant over the copper plate.

(Image credit: Lian Li)

The seal for the copper cold plate has also been improved, with straighter pathways for reduced turbulence and increased airflow. 

(Image credit: Lian Li)

⋇ Full RAM compatibility

As the CPU block does not impede or overhang the DIMM slots on a motherboard, all sizes of RAM – no matter how tall – are compatible with this cooler.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

⋇ Multiple CPU block options

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The CPU block has three choices for customization out of the box. The default style is an ARGB Infinity Mirror.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

You can replace the large infinity mirror with the opaque diffused lighting ring. When this attachment is used, the center can be replaced with either a small infinity mirror or another diffused lighting attachment.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

 Sleeved tubing with increased width

The inner diameter of the water tubes has been increased from 5.8mm to 7mm, increasing the total volume of liquid by roughly 20%, which allows for better heat absorption.

(Image credit: Lian Li)

The rubber tubes of the unit are reinforced and protected with fine sleeving which also looks good. Lian Li includes a leather cable management tie to keep the tubes tidy.

(Image credit: Lian Li)

 ⋇ 27mm thick radiator

The 240mm Galahad II Trinity has a standard 27mm thick radiator, for a total thickness of 52mm when you include the fans.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

 Two 120mm FDB fans

There’s more to a cooler than just the heatsink or radiator. The bundled fans have a significant impact on cooling and noise levels, as well as the cooler’s looks.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Like the fans included on the previously reviewed EKWB CR360 and Lian Li’s Galahad II Trinity Performance, the fans here feature unique connections that simplify cable management by converting PWM and ARGB connections into a single header inside a micro-fit 8-pin connector that has a similar form factor as CPU power connections. This results in a more secure connection with less cable management to worry about.

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ModelLian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 240 AIO
Dimensions120 x 120 x 25mm
Fan Speed300- 2450RPM
Air FlowUp to 79.9 CFM
Air PressureUp to 3.26 mmH2O
Bearing TypeFluid Dynamic Bearing
LightingARGB
MFFTUnlisted

 Optional software control

 Manufacturers of AIO cooling systems often fall into one of two extremes when it comes to cooler control: Either they force you to use bloated software to control the device, or they don’t include any software and rely only on motherboard PWM and ARGB controls. 

With Lian Li’s Galahad II Trinity Performance, you have a choice. You can use the default motherboard controls if you prefer, but the company also offers an optional download of the L-Connect3 software for a more customized experience. 

This software offers in-depth lighting and pump/fan speed customization options, with the ability to control other compatible ARGB devices. Ironically, you can also return control of these options to the motherboard with “MB Sync” option within the software.

LGA1700 Socket Bending

Note there are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance, including the case you use and the fans installed in it. A system's motherboard can also influence this, especially if it suffers from bending, which results in poor cooler contact with the CPU. 

In order to prevent bending from impacting our cooling results, we’ve installed Thermalright’s LGA 1700 contact frame into our testing rig. If your motherboard is affected by bending, your thermal results will be worse than those shown below. Not all motherboards are affected equally by this issue. I tested Raptor Lake CPUs in two motherboards. And while one of them showed significant thermal improvements after installing Thermalright’s LGA1700 contact frame, the other motherboard showed no difference in temperatures whatsoever! Check out our review of the contact frame for more information. 

Testing Methodology

Modern high-end CPUs, whether Intel or AMD, are difficult to cool in intensive workloads. In the past, reaching 95C+ on a desktop CPU might have been a cause for concern – but with today’s processors, this is considered normal operation. Similar behavior has been present in laptops for years due to cooling limitations in tight spaces. 

All testing is performed at a 23C ambient room temperature. Multiple thermal tests are run on each CPU to test the cooler in a variety of conditions, and acoustic measurements are taken with each result. These tests include:

1. Noise normalized testing at low noise levels

2. “Out-of-the-box”/default configuration thermal and acoustics testing

     a.)  No power limits enforced 

      b.) Because CPUs hit Tjmax in this scenario, the best way to compare cooling strength is by recording the total CPU package power consumption

3. Thermal and acoustics testing in power-limited scenarios

      a.) Power limited to 175W to emulate a medium-intensity workload

      b.) Power limited to 125W to emulate a low-intensity workload

The thermal results included are for 10-minute testing runs. To be sure that was sufficiently long to tax the cooler, we tested both Thermalright’s Assassin X 120 R SE and DeepCool’s LT720 with a 30-minute Cinebench test with Intel’s i9-13900K for both 10 minutes and 30 minutes. The results didn’t change much at all with the longer test: The average clock speeds maintained dropped by 29 MHz on DeepCool’s LT720 and 31 MHz on Thermalright’s Assassin X 120 R SE. That’s an incredibly small 0.6% difference in clock speeds maintained, a margin of error difference that tells us that the 10-minute tests are indeed long enough to properly test the coolers.

Testing Configuration – Intel LGA1700 Platform

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CPUIntel Core i7-13700K
Comparison Coolers TestedBeQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Cooler Master Master Air MA824 Stealth Cooler Master Hyper 622 Halo Cooler Master Master Liquid Core 360L Cougar Forza 85 Essential DeepCool Assassin IV DeepCool LT720 EKWB Nucleus CR360 Lux Jiushark JF13K Diamond Lian Li GA II Performance Thermalright Silver Soul 135 Thermalright Peerless Assassin Montech D24 Premium MSI CoreLiquid MEG S360 Noctua NH-D15S
MotherboardMSI Z690 A Pro DDR4
GPUIntel ARC A770 LE
CaseBe Quiet! Silent Base 802, system fans set to speed 1 setting.
MonitorLG 45GR95QE
PSUCooler Master XG Plus 850 Platinum PSU
Albert Thomas
Freelancer, CPU Cooling Reviewer

Albert Thomas is a contributor for Tom’s Hardware, primarily covering CPU cooling reviews.

  • Soaptrail
    Is spell check and editing dead?
    Reply
  • phxrider
    Lian Li is definitely a rising star - I just did a build with their 216 case and it is amazing how well thought out and well built it is.
    Reply
  • Zforgetaboutit
    Soaptrail said:
    Is spell check and editing dead?

    This vague post could've been more helpful with at least a few examples.

    The "pump seed" in the "Specifications" table is funny as a double entendre,
    Reply
  • Soaptrail
    Zforgetaboutit said:
    The initial error of "pump seed" is funny, but the poster's lack of evidence isn't helpful.
    I did not even catch that, I found the other 2 before it. Hilarious!
    Reply
  • Ravestein NL
    "The inner diameter of the water tubes has been increased from 5.8mm to 7mm, increasing the total volume of liquid by roughly 20%, which allows for better heat absorption."

    It's not the volume that has influence on heat absorption! I could have a bucket of cooling fluid but if the flow and absorption in cooling block/ discharge heat in radiator aren't up to par it will be a bad cooling system. It's the flow of coolant and the delta T over cooling block and radiator that makes an AIO-cooler good or bad. And the rule is that "to" is always bad (as we say in dutch). So it really means the balance between flow and Delta T has to be exactly right to have a good cooling system. In this case I think they upped the rpm of the pump and enlarged the hose (and also changes in block and radiator ofcourse) to get a higher flow and keep the Delta T in block and radiator as small as possible. And here to small ain't good and to large ain't good either, every part must be in balance to make a good cooling system
    Reply
  • Udyr
    Albert.Thomas said:
    We have to list a "con" for our articles.

    Personally, I don't feel that there really are any "cons" for this product.
    Cons-
    None!

    Huh?
    Reply
  • MoxNix
    Soaptrail said:
    Is spell check and editing dead?
    It's done by AI now.
    Reply
  • helper800
    This is going to be a bit of a long one, buyer beware of these new Lian Li products.

    @Albert.Thomas Did you have any issues with either version of the Galahad trinity II?

    I bought the 360mm Galahad II Trinity Performance to replace my 360mm Coolermaster ML360R that I had before because it was getting long in the tooth for permeation and the pump. I have had several issues with the Lian Li AIO.

    I have a strange issue where the pump does not start and my CPU quickly goes to 90c. I thought to myself I forgot something simple like, bad mounting, not plugging in the pump to the Motherboard, or even a low or bad duty cycle on the pump in BIOS. I checked everything and nothing was amiss. So I tried starting up the PC again and the previous issues were gone, pump was working, temps were normal even under stress testing. I restart after a firmware update to the AIO through the Lian Li L-connect software, and the pump does not start again. Scratching my head at this point, I decide to do a few reboots as a test. Four of the ten reboots I did on my PC would cause the pump to not start pumping. I would get as far as my desktop before I see that the CPU is at 90C and the fans are blaring at 100% as I log into windows. I thought to myself that I should see if it is related to the Lian Li software that has pump and fan controls causing the issue due to bugs by booting straight into BIOS. I get to BIOS and everything is normal. I reboot and again go back to BIOS, but this time while watching the CPU temps, I can see them climbing all the way to 90c and on the fan control page I can see that the pump is not responding to the CPU temps. Pump was at 0 RPM. So I am left with having to restart my PC after booting up if I notice my fans spinning up trying to compensate for no RPMs on the pump until the pump magically decides to start working.

    I went over my PC three times making sure everything is connected where it should be, updated BIOS, and still no resolution to this issue. I also have another issue with this AIO while it is working. The pump is, while "working," loud, very loud even. This issue of the pump being loud happened gradually over time. I figured I would go to Lian Li support to potentially get a software or firmware update to fix the 0 RPM pump issue on startup, so I kept it installed and would restart when it did not start pumping until it worked. I have had the AIO for three weeks now and the first week the pump was nearly silent with a small amount of whine at 4200 rpm so I kept it at 3600 rpm. In week two I noticed that it would have a slight grinding sound every once and a while. Now, and in the third week, the grinding sound is constant, but is lesser or greater at different RPM breakpoints. I can stand buggy, or janky software / firmware because that is fixable, but the pump was also seemingly failing as well. Because of these issues, I decided to return the AIO to amazon because it is still within the return window. I will be replacing it with an Arctic freezer 2. Wish me luck, I think I need it at this point...

    TLDR, 0 RPM pump at startup randomly, and when it does work after about a week the pump itself became louder, and louder...
    Reply
  • Albert.Thomas
    helper800 said:
    This is going to be a bit of a long one, buyer beware of these new Lian Li products.

    @Albert.Thomas Did you have any issues with either version of the Galahad trinity II?
    I haven't experienced any problems with them, but there will always be a few defective units. I'd advise RMAing the unit, honestly this 360mm AIO and Cooler Master's new 360 Atmos are what I consider the best AIOs on the market right now.
    Reply
  • helper800
    Albert.Thomas said:
    I haven't experienced any problems with them, but there will always be a few defective units. I'd advise RMAing the unit, honestly this 360mm AIO and Cooler Master's new 360 Atmos are what I consider the best AIOs on the market right now.
    I was able to return the Lian Li unit to amazon. I was also able to get a next day drop off of the Arctic liquid freezer II. The Arctic AIO is so much quieter and is performing better than when the Lian Li unit did work, though that may be due to the AM4 offset bracket it comes with. Also, i do not know if the Lian Li could perform as intended considering the issues it had. Either way, I am with the Arctic AIO.
    Reply