When it comes to affordable coolers, the market is heavily saturated. Wading into this sea of competitors is Sharkhan with their APEX4. Surprisingly enough, it delivered stellar performance for its size, managing to even survive our OC FPU torture test, although just barely. Its performance at that insane workload was 2°C behind the ID-Cooling SE 224 RGB. More important is the fact that it beat a fan favorite in the Cooler Master Hyper 212X. That said, I would not use this cooler for large overclocks; instead, it is a solid OEM replacement with ARGB lighting that will give you a bit more headroom for the processor to stretch its legs. As for the noise profile, it was surprisingly good as well with the cooler topping out at 44 dBA. In general, it's quite the steal for just $30 if you simple want an ARGB-equipped cooler.

There is, however, a very large but, namely the mounting hardware. While it is incredibly simplistic and easy to work with, it feels incredibly cheap and brittle at first handling. This proved to be a bit prophetic in that when I was done testing the cooler and checking the thermal paste spread after a few mounting cycles, the white plastic push-pins broke. Considering the heatsink's weight and my own experiences, I would not recommend the cooler to anyone that plans to change it often or move the system all the time. For a set it and forget it setup, it will be fine, but for anything else, I would not trust the mounting hardware on at least Intel's sockets. Due to the cooler using AMD's default backplate and mounting arms, it will be just fine in AMD systems.

A few other minor issues remain, such as the ARGB cable, which is too short. Connecting it to the motherboard requires running it across the motherboard, which is quite ugly. The inclusion of an extension cable would go a long way to fix this. Otherwise, my only other problem is with the lack of memory clearance. Suffice it to say, the cooler puts pressure on our G.Skill Trident Z memory in the DIMM slot closest to the motherboard. While it didn't impact operational stability or functionality, 1–2 mm of extra clearance is all it would have taken here for perfect clearance, which makes this an issue due to a lack of attention to detail. Other than that, the cooler has all the makings of a solid budget contender, but falls just short in its current incarnation.

Overall, the Sharkhan APEX4 is a good-looking ARGB-equipped air cooler that offers above-average performance for its size while also remaining fairly quiet. Only the mounting hardware for Intel systems and a few minor issues keep it from earning a proper recommendation.