Great Value, Kirkland, Signature Select, Husky: House brands, copied or repackaged products sold under a store label as inexpensive alternatives to name brands, have a long and storied history in retail. But perhaps no company has embraced the idea as fully and ruthlessly as Amazon in the digital age. The company’s Amazon Basics brand will sell you everything from diapers to lunch sets, and it’s now branching out into desktop PC components.
The first single computer part to get the Amazon Basics label is a CPU cooler, a rather modest little number sold for $26.99 in the US. It boasts a relatively compact design for full-sized desktops, with four heat pipes and a single 100mm RGB 2000 RPM cooling fan. It is compatible with the latest Intel and AMD CPU sockets: LGA 1700, 1200, 1156, 1155, 1151, 1150, plus AM4 and AM5. There’s also a handy installation video for both motherboard types, with and without RGB headers.
Amazonia
Observant readers might think the design looks a little familiar. As noted by Tom’s hardwarethe cooler appears to be a rebadged version of the Maestro H410R cooler, or a substantially perfect copy of the design, minus some cosmetic badges and approximately 10mm in height. Neither move would be unprecedented for Amazon. The company has previously targeted Chinese white box manufacturers directly for rebadged products, similar to retail store brands around the world. And it is also commissioned flagrant copies of branded products, as in the case of Peak Design EveryDay shoulder bag.
While the Amazon Basics computer cooling fan is less than half the price of the H410R on Amazon, it’s certainly not the only option in its price range. Single fan coolers from Arctic, Silence, thermal takeAND Zalman meet or beat its price, as well as several items from the usual weird brands that exist only on Amazon and other drop shipping sites. We may or may not see Amazon offering an additional variety of PC components under the Amazon Basics brand, which will likely be decided by an extremely complex internal sales algorithm that man shouldn’t have been ignorant of.
