Endorfy Fortis 5 Black ARGB CPU Cooler Review

TweakTown's Rating: 95%

The Bottom Line

If silence and performance are your thing, the Fortis 5 Black ARGB from Endorfy is a solid solution. It doesn't cost a fortune, delivers a ton of ARGB lighting, and performed much better than we expected.

Pros

• Universal hardware
• Unique look
• Silence
• Warranty

Cons

• Thermal performance per dollar

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

With little to go on, other than a fan overview we did for Endorfy not that long ago, we still do not have a decent grasp of what to expect from them. While they have a full list of products, everything from peripherals, furniture, monitor mounts, CPU coolers, cases, PSUs, and of course, their fans, this will be the first we get to gage much more about their quality control, packaging performance, and how well Endorfy stand up to the rest of this vastly flooded market.

A quick look at the Endorfy Fortis 5 Black ARGB CPU Cooler

From what we have gathered, looking at the product page and the information supplied to us by Endorfy, this CPU cooler has much of what the masses desire. Multiple copper heat pipes, check. Direct contact base, check. Unique fin shape, check. Paint it black and then toss in ARGB to the tower and the fan, double check. Out of the gate, Endorfy seems to have a lot going for them with this solution, but as you know, time will reveal everything you need to know.

As Endorfy attempts to impress us with their Fortis 5 Black ARGB, one of five versions of the Fortis 5 currently available, we have a good feeling. Even with a lack of fan specs available to their customers, they wouldn't doom themselves and put a lame POS fan on the front and swing for the bottom of the charts. If Endorfy wants to sell the Fortis 5 Black ARGB, 8it is going to need more than ARGB appeal to take on many of the bigger players in this game.

Specifications, compared to other manufacturers, are lacking. While we know that the Fortis 5 Black ARGB can fit on a slew of motherboards, well beyond the standard fare, we also see that this single tower cooler comes with a 220W TDP, which seems like a lot. We get the measurements with the 159mm height in it, they tell us there are six 6mm diameter heat pipes, and that it weighs 835g. After that, things get a bit hazy.

The included fan is a 140 Fluctus ARGB fan that delivers 250 to 1400 RPM, but no metrics on what that does. No CFM, no static pressure, not even a dB rating for the PWM controlled fan. We do know that it spins on a fluid dynamic bearing, and that the ARGB on the fan and the tower are powered with 3-pin ARGB connections.

While the Fortis 5 Black ARGB is not currently on offer, we are told it will be a few weeks, and they will list it on both Amazon and ModMyMods. When these do hit shelves, you will need to dig into that pocket for $57.00, which is the MSRP we were given. As far as specifications go and bonuses to a cooler purchase, we are big fans of Endorfy delivering the Fortis 5 Black ARGB with coverage for six years from the date of purchase. Pretty impressive for a virtual upstart to deliver better warranty terms than most of the market.

Best Deals: Endorfy Fortis 5 ARGB CPU Air Cooler

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$59.61 USD	$51.50 USD	$51.50 USD	Buy
	$63.51 USD	$63.51 USD	$63.51 USD	Buy
	$114.95 CAD	$114.95 CAD	$170.71 CAD	Buy
	$100.89 CAD	$100.89 CAD	$238.59 CAD	Buy
	£42.53	£42.53	£42.53	Buy
	$59.61 USD	$51.50 USD	$51.50 USD	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 3/18/2025 at 10:52 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Packaging

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Endorfy opts for plain cardboard packaging as the backdrop to the black screen-printed designs and information. On the front, we see that the Fortis 5 Black ARGB was designed by Endorfy, which, as the sticker shows, is in Poland. Below that sticker is a closeup of the fins, showing the serrated edge design, with a rendering of half the cooler to the right.

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Spinning the box shows us the other half of the cooler rendering at the left, while the right is used for features. Things like no compromise ARGB lighting, stealth black color, silence, use of a Fluctus fan, and the six-year warranty.

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One more spin and we land at the back of the box, which is topped with specifications, CPU compatibility takes up the central portion, while at the bottom, we find renderings of all the bits inside of this box.

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One more spin and we are onto a list of features and claims from Endorfy. High performance is at the top, followed by ARGB lighting, its finish, the fan, the range of fan RPM, and its semi-passive mode. There is also a nano ARGB controller and thermal compound included and ends with the warranty length and compatibility.

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With the box removed fr4om the picture, we find the Fortis 5 Black ARGB setting on a dense layer of foam, with a thinner layer on top. The front and back of the tower are protected by the fan and hardware in boxes, leaving the gap on the right and left of the tower to keep that bit safe.

Endorfy Fortis 5 Black ARGB CPU Cooler

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As its name states, this Fortis 5 is black, except near the top, where the ducting and ARGB lighting are. The aluminum base is blackened, the pipes are blackened, except near the center where we can see exposed copper, and the heavily toothed, forty-eight fins match the rest of the theme.

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Both sides of the Fortis' fin stack use bent over tabs on each fin to encase the air flow as much as possible, while still allowing locations for fan connectivity. This does a few things. It captures the air, adds more surface area, looks good, and helps to keep fin spacing even.

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The channel in the center of the fins is deep, allowing airflow a faster path out of the middle than near the edges. The sides are toothed to disturb the airflow as it enters but does much less on the back of the tower, while the edges are raised to support a pull fan.

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From the previous look at the side of the tower, it was tough to make out the teeth that hook onto the wire fan clips that ship with the cooler. While the box includes a single fan, Endorfy makes a dual-fan version, and you could always strap another Fluctus ARGB 140mm PWM fan to the back and get a couple to a few degrees worth of a thermal decrease.

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Under the tower is a pre-cooler made of aluminum, which is what sandwiches the heat pipes into the base. Above the pre-cooler, a steel bar is bolted to it, with spring-loaded screws at either end to mount the cooler.

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While having a look at the press fit design of the offset 6mm heat pipes, we noticed the "golf ball" approach to the Fortis fin design. Just as the tabs help, and the toothy fin profile helps, so does fin texture to help remove heat more efficiently than if it were flat.

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The base of the Fortis 5 is made of the heat pipes we mentioned before. There is just a sliver of exposed aluminum on either side of all that copper, which has been machined well, with a slightly convex shape. Sadly, as you can see, we have stains from cutting fluid, there are stains from air under the sticker covering this area, and it looks like it may have been drug on the floor before being boxed.

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At the other end of the tower is a thicker black textured plate, applied to the top of the fin stack. Its shape matches what we saw looking at the back of the tower, and with the Endorfy logo cut from the cover plate, your ARGB lighting will surround the top of the tower, and pop through the logo.

Accessories and Documentation

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Here is where Endorfy gets a bit genius. On the left is a universal backplate for all mainstream Intel sockets with a slight angle to it. LGA1851 and 1700 use the plate square with the motherboard, but to allow the rest of the sockets to be supported, the backplate angles left at 3° to accommodate it. To the right is the universal top "bracket" plate, which is used with all sockets and wit why there are four holes and eight hooks around the edge.

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On the left is a set of rubber inserts for the front of the Fluctus 140mm fan, and to the right are shaped inserts that match the fan frame, isolating the fan from the cooler. The four black Phillips screws mount the top plate to either the silver HEDT standoffs or to the black mainstream standoffs.

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Other goodies that come in the box are shown here. There are enough wire fan clips for two fans, a steel wrench for use with the mainstream standoffs, the nano ARGB controller, and a 1.5g tube of Pactum PT-3 thermal compound.

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To cool the tower, endor4fy sends the Fluctus 140 ARGB OS fan to deliver whatever sort of performance is in this fan to try to compete in our charts. To power the fan, you have a 4-pin PWM connection to make, as well as a 3-pin ARGB daisy-chain connector, which matches another on the tower, to light up the top of the cooler.

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The manual is not the best we have seen, but it gets the job done. Things start with wiring, and jump right into AMD, mainstream Intel, and then to HEDT Intel installation, each with a one-page diagram without parts identification or text. It then finishes things with many pages of various languages covering the safety instructions.

Installation and Finished Product

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Mainstream builders will either be using the supplied backplate (Intel), or in our case, we left the AMD factory backplate in place. Once that is sorted, you then take the universal mainstream standoffs and screw them down by hand. To ensure they do not back out, you can use the supplied wrench to snug them down a bit more.

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Ensuring we put the threaded posts to the sides of the socket, we secure the bracket with the four black screws in the appropriate "hooks." At this point, everything is locked down tight, and there should be no movement from this hardware.

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After applying paste to the CPU and screwing the cooler down to the hardware, we could then install the Fluctus fan on the Front of our Fortis 5 Black ARGB and see what shakes. The fan covers quite a bit of the tower, and we can see it sneaks in behind the RAM.

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Due to the asymmetric design of the tower, shifting the bulk away from the memory, the fan and tower fit well and leaves room for whatever RAM you choose to use. Although, it does appear that there is a height limit with the fan clip and rubber insert poking out.

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As shipped, the Fortis 5 Black ARGTB leaves plenty of room that you could install the tower to the board, and then add both to the chassis at once, while still leaving room for 8-pin EPS access. If you choose to use a second fan, considerations to motherboard covers may play into the choice between a 140mm or 120mm fan.

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With the Fortis all set and ready to get to testing, it is still a bit of a sleeper without any lighting. That will not last long, as what now blends into the build, will become the visual centerpiece.

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Once the system is fired up and your favorite sync software is in use, the cooler comes to life with little noise but a ton of illumination. The thick, illuminated portion of the tower adds lighting in all directions; even a thin band around the edge projects it toward the room. The fan is only illuminated in the hub, so there is less going on, but Endorfy makes sure it is just as bright.

Test System Setup, Thermal Tests, and Noise Results

Chad's CPU Cooler Test System Specifications

To see our testing methodology and to find out what goes into making our charts, please refer to our 2020 CPU Cooler Testing and Methodology article for more information.

Thermal Results

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The Fortis 5 Black ARGB lands in the middle of the chart of stock settings, which is deceptive. We are 6.3° from the best result in the chart, but only 2.2° behind the FROZN A620 Black, the current best air cooler. That 58.8°C result isn't seen nearly as bad as it appears.

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With an overclock applied, the gap widens slightly from the top of the chart, this time 7.6° warmer. However, against the top-performing air cooler, Endorfy keeps that 2.2° pace behind it. Averaging 65.8°C lands near the middle of the chart but is again better than one might assume.

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As we do, we let the fans run wild, to see how well the PWM curve is programmed and to see if the manufacturer leaves us any headroom. What we see with the Fortis 5 Black ARGB is that there is only 1.6°C left in thermal performance but doesn't come with a ton of noise.

Noise Level Results

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The Fluctus 140 PWM fan is spinning at 852 RPM in our stock PWM thermal test, and at this speed we found them to deliver only 21 dB into the office. Considering the small gap between this and the best air cooler while said cooler needs much closer to 30 dB to deliver that thermal difference.

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Overclock added, PWM still in control, the Fluctus fan spun at 1040 RPM with 26 dB worth of noise coming from it. 8 dB less than the best thermal performer in the category, and inside of a chassis, with anything else going on, you will be hard pressed to distinguish the Fortis 5 Black ARGB fan noise over any others.

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With our fan allowed to run at its fastest, which was shown at 1376 RPM, we obtained a little more thermal performance from the Fortis 5 and with just 34 dB coming from the tower. While you will gain little by doing this, we can see that silence in operation was no joke to Endorfy.

Final Thoughts

To be blunt, as we began this review, we did not have high hopes. We make charts for each review, but we ignore the placement pretty much unless it is a new chart-topper. It isn't until we write the review that we look at the competition, the costs, and where we feel a cooler fits into the market. Endorfy had us interested as we saw things inspecting the tower and grabbing images. Things like the patterned fin edges, the dimpling on all the fins, captured sides, equally spaced fins, direct contact heat pipes, an asymmetric tower design, the offset alignment of heat pipe distribution into the fins, Endorfy played all the cards, and came out with a winner.

We haven't even gotten into the sleeper appeal of the blacked-out theme the Fortis 5 Black ARGB delivers. Even without illumination, we love the contrast of black and white at the top of the tower, it is visually pleasing. However, once the lighting is doing its thing, Endorfy takes its basic Fortis 5 coolers into an entirely new realm of pleasing aesthetics and color delivery. We tested rainbow mode to look for hotspots and broken color shifts, and the tower showed us none of that. Smooth color transfers and brilliant blends of color are what the Fortis 5 Black ARGB is all about. However, we do wish the fan had better ARGB delivery. The hub illumination is cool and all, but it feels old hat.

Looking beyond the low noise we experienced and the more than decent thermal performance we saw, we get to things like cost and longevity. Cost comparison has the Fortis 5 Black ARGB tied with the best air cooler on our charts, yet it is more expensive than some others ahead of it, but none offer any illumination. With a $57.00 MSRP, we feel Endorfy is right on the mark. We then look at longevity, and we always tell people the warranty means how long the company expects it to work without failure.

Some companies offer two or three years, fewer offer four years, and there are slim pickings to find five-year warranties, but they are on the rise. However, Endorfy goes big with the Fortis 5 Black ARGB, delivering it to your door backed for six years. Endorfy laid all the cards out in front of us, and all their work paid off, as the Fortis 5 Black ARGB looks great, performs well, disappears into the hum of the office, and stacks up much better than we initially thought.