u/Wiredhardware

Posted earlier today asking if I should do it.
So I removed the heat spreaders from four perfectly good G.Skill sticks, installed the Alphacool heat spreaders, and got everything mounted on the motherboard.

The RAM block isn’t connected to the loop yet — this was just the part where I permanently removed my ability to pretend I might change my mind.

All four sticks survived though, so… progress.
Necessary? Absolutely not. That’s kind of why I wanted to do it.

That title is much more accurate: you’ve committed to the idea, but you’re not claiming it’s actually water cooled yet.

Disclosure: ASUS provided the PG32UCWM for review. This was not a paid post, ASUS had no control over my testing or conclusions, and all opinions are my own.

A couple of weeks ago I asked the ROG community what you guys wanted me to test on the PG32UCWM. After spending more time with it, I finally have some answers.

The biggest improvement for me is text clarity. The Tandem RGB Stripe layout looks noticeably cleaner than the PG32UCDM3’s QD-OLED subpixel layout, especially with smaller text. The TrueBlack Glossy coating also gives the image that deep, inky look I like without making the monitor overly reflective.

Color looked very close to the PG32UCDM3 in normal use. My unit did show a slight green tint out of the box, but after calibration it measured 100% sRGB and 97.65% DCI-P3 with a 6539K white point.

HDR looks great, but it isn’t the brightest OLED monitor I’ve tested. You can also see some ABL when moving large white windows around. Uniformity was solid overall, and I didn’t find any obvious banding or dead pixels on my unit.

The dual-mode feature gives you 4K 240Hz or 1080p 480Hz. Personally, I would stay at 4K 240Hz most of the time, but the 480Hz mode with ELMB is extremely clear if you mainly play competitive games.

For my own setup, I’m leaning toward the PG32UCWM because of the cleaner text, glossy blacks and overall image presentation. However, the PG32UCDM3 still makes a strong argument if HDR brightness, color volume and price matter more to you.

I included all of my testing, comparisons and gameplay footage in the full video here: https://youtu.be/2rMFmMnFS3Q

Which one would you choose: the PG32UCWM or PG32UCDM3?

Disclosure: ASUS provided this monitor for review. ASUS had no control over the review, and all opinions are my own.

I’ve spent over a week testing the ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG32UCWM for gaming, editing, browsing and general productivity. This is a 31.5-inch Tandem RGB OLED monitor with a native 4K 240Hz refresh rate, FHD 480Hz Dual Mode and a TrueBlack Glossy coating.

Most of my testing was performed on firmware MCM102 in Racing Mode with uniform brightness turned off.

Design and connectivity

The front is relatively restrained for an ROG monitor, but the translucent rear section gives it much more personality. The stand was stable during my testing, although the long ROG-style legs occupy a considerable amount of desk space.

Connectivity includes full-bandwidth DisplayPort 2.1a at up to 80Gbps, two HDMI 2.1 ports, USB-C with 90W power delivery, USB connectivity and a headphone jack. The ports were easy to access, and the opening inside the stand helped with cable management.

RGB-stripe panel and text clarity

The panel uses a vertical RGB-stripe subpixel arrangement without a dedicated white subpixel in the visible pixel structure. At 4K and approximately 140 PPI, text looks very clean.

Compared with my PG32UCDM3, text on the PG32UCWM looks sharper to my eyes. The difference is most noticeable while browsing, reading documents and working inside Premiere Pro. The improvement isn’t transformative at this pixel density, but I can see it during normal use.

The color difference between this panel and QD-OLED also appears much smaller than it did with previous WOLED monitors. QD-OLED may still have an advantage in measurable color volume, but the PG32UCWM doesn’t look noticeably dull or washed out beside it.

TrueBlack Glossy and reflections

TrueBlack Glossy is one of my favorite features. There is no obvious matte grain over the image, blacks look properly black under ambient light and colorful content has a clean, glass-like appearance.

Unlike QD-OLED, the blacks don’t develop the same purple or magenta appearance when light hits the panel. The tradeoff is that this is still a glossy monitor. In a brightly illuminated room, windows and lights are visible during dark scenes. Reflections become much less noticeable when brighter content appears.

If you can control the lighting behind you, the coating looks beautiful. If you sit directly opposite a large window, reflections need to be considered.

Green tint and viewing angles

I specifically checked for the green tint that people have mentioned. Looking straight at my unit from a normal viewing distance, I don’t notice it. I can see a slight shift toward the edges if I deliberately look for it on full-screen gray or white patterns.

During games, movies and ordinary desktop use, it hasn’t bothered me. This behavior can vary between individual panels, so my observations only apply to this particular unit.

ABL and screen uniformity

I started with a small white window and gradually expanded it until it filled the display. With uniform brightness disabled, brightness remained fairly consistent. Enabling uniform brightness produced a relatively small change during the same test.

Uniform brightness can reduce maximum brightness, but it keeps the desktop more consistent when moving between dark applications and bright webpages or spreadsheets. For my normal desktop use and gaming, I prefer leaving it disabled.

Screen uniformity on my unit was very good. I didn’t find any obvious banding, dirty-screen effect or distracting uneven areas across the panel. White also appeared reasonably even without any major discoloration.

SDR calibration

I calibrated the monitor using ASUS ProArt Calibration. I targeted 236 nits with a 6500K white point.

After calibration, I measured approximately 239 nits at 6539K. The display covered 100% of sRGB and 97.65% of DCI-P3. These are my calibrated results and shouldn’t be interpreted as guaranteed factory performance for every unit.

After calibration, I would feel comfortable using this monitor for photo and video editing.

HDR performance

ASUS advertises up to 1,000 nits of peak HDR brightness and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. I wasn’t able to properly measure peak HDR brightness, so I’m not claiming that my unit reached the advertised figure.

Visually, HDR games look excellent. Cyberpunk 2077 at night is a particularly good demonstration because bright signs, headlights and explosions can appear directly beside deep OLED blacks. Dark games such as Resident Evil also benefit from genuinely black shadow areas and impactful smaller light sources.

Large bright scenes don’t illuminate the entire room like a powerful Mini-LED display. The monitor’s strengths are its black levels, contrast and smaller HDR highlights. I found the HDR presentation impressive, but I wouldn’t consider its brightness class-leading against the strongest QD-OLED alternatives.

The monitor supports DisplayHDR 400 True Black, Gaming HDR, Cinema HDR, Console HDR, HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Adjustable HDR can make the presentation brighter, although the highest setting can raise shadows and make the image look washed out.

ELMB and motion clarity

ELMB is available at 4K 120Hz and FHD 240Hz. At 4K 120Hz, it made the moving TestUFO image look slightly sharper and easier to follow.

The tradeoff is that ELMB disables HDR and variable refresh rate, meaning G-Sync and FreeSync are unavailable while it’s active. Native 4K 240Hz already looks extremely clean, so I would personally keep HDR and VRR instead. ELMB makes more sense for a competitive game locked at 120 FPS where maximum motion clarity is the priority.

480Hz and simulated screen sizes

Dual Mode allows the entire panel to operate at 1920 × 1080 and 480Hz. ASUS also includes simulated 27-inch and 24.5-inch modes that continue to support 480Hz over DisplayPort.

My monitor reported 1632 × 918 in the 27-inch mode and 1472 × 828 in the 24.5-inch mode. These modes reduce both the active display area and resolution, so they aren’t intended for maximum image quality.

For normal games, I would use the full 4K screen at 240Hz. For Counter-Strike, Valorant or Overwatch, the smaller 480Hz modes provide useful flexibility.

OLED protection and thermals

ASUS OLED Care Pro includes pixel cleaning, pixel shifting, screen saving, logo brightness adjustment, outer dimming controls and the Neo Proximity Sensor.

The updated sensor now includes an auto-away timer that can be set as low as one minute, along with adjustable motion sensitivity. If the monitor detects that nobody is sitting in front of it, it can automatically darken or turn off the screen.

ASUS also uses a GaN power design. During my thermal-camera test, the warmest visible surface area reached approximately 33°C, while the center visible area measured around 22.4°C. I couldn’t independently verify ASUS’s percentage claims without an otherwise identical monitor using a conventional power supply.

Final thoughts

The three things that impressed me most were the RGB-stripe text clarity, TrueBlack Glossy coating and the flexibility of having both 4K 240Hz and FHD 480Hz.

My biggest concerns are the sharp reflections, HDR brightness that isn’t necessarily class-leading and the premium $1,399 price.

For my own mixed gaming and productivity setup, I would lean toward the PG32UCWM. I prefer the deep-black appearance of TrueBlack Glossy, use my monitor for more than gaming and like having the 480Hz option available.

For the same price, would you choose the PG32UCWM or a premium 32-inch QD-OLED such as the PG32UCDM3?

Nothing quite like turning it on and immediately seeing coolant go somewhere coolant definitely wasn’t invited. 😭

The build survived. My confidence needed a minute.

Took the ROG NUC 16 with me to Monte Rio, California and paired it with the PG27UCWM.

The NUC has a Core Ultra 9 290HX+, 32GB of DDR5 and an RTX 5080 Laptop GPU. For something this small, it’s kind of ridiculous how much hardware is packed inside.

Now, pairing a mini PC with a 27” 4K OLED might be stretching the definition of “portable” a little… but being able to throw everything in the car, plug in and basically have a full desktop setup by the river was pretty damn nice.

Backpack portable? Maybe not.

Car portable? Absolutely.

Built this about a year ago and realized I never really posted the full montage here.

Still one of my favorite builds I’ve done. I wanted the white and gold theme to carry through the entire system, and the Bitspower brass tubing ended up becoming the part that really defined the build.

The tubing definitely made the loop more complicated than it needed to be, but that was kind of the point 😂

Specs:
• Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
• ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090
• ROG Maximus Z890 Apex
• 48GB G.SKILL DDR5
• EK-Quantum Velocity² Edge D-RGB CPU block
• EK-Quantum Vector³ Astral RTX 5090 GPU block
• EKWB P360 radiators
• Bitspower gold brass tubing
• Creative Solutions The Crow

I rarely watch HDR content, but I tested Dolby Vision on the PG27UCWM and apparently I’ve been disrespecting my own monitor this entire time.

One thing worth remembering is that HDR primarily expands brightness, contrast and dynamic range. It won’t necessarily make every color more saturated. If Windows looks washed out after enabling HDR, you may be viewing SDR content—or your SDR mode may have been overly saturated to begin with.

Do you leave HDR enabled constantly or only turn it on for proper HDR content?

Disclosure: ASUS provided the monitor for testing. This was not a paid post, ASUS had no control over the content and all opinions are my own.

Build photos

I finally finished this pink HYTE X50 build. It was originally supposed to be completed around Valentine’s Day, but delays with the components pushed everything back.

The system uses a Core Ultra 7 265K, ROG Strix Z890-A Gaming WiFi motherboard, ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of XPG LANCER DDR5, a Gen 4 NVMe SSD and a white Seasonic 1000W ATX 3.1 power supply.

I kept the custom loop CPU-only. The Bitspower CR-803 combines the pump and reservoir into one relatively slim unit, which made it easier to install in the front without finding another location for the pump. Cooling includes three HYTE FA12 fans along the side, three at the bottom, one beneath the reservoir and another at the rear.

The X50 was enjoyable to build in, especially considering that I normally prefer much larger cases. The wraparound glass and unusual geometry give it a different look without making the internal layout unnecessarily difficult.

The main issue I encountered was around the PSU cage. A regular ATX power supply doesn’t completely cover the opening, leaving part of the PSU fan visible. A larger PSU would fill more of that space, but it would also reduce the available cable-management room.

Would you leave the 5070 Ti air-cooled, or would you eventually add it to the loop?

Disclosure: The components used in this build were supplied by HYTE, ASUS, Bitspower, XPG/ADATA, Seasonic and Intel.

Finally finished the pink HYTE X50 build. This was originally supposed to be done for Valentine’s Day, but the parts had other plans.

I kept this loop CPU-only and left the ASUS TUF RTX 5070 Ti on air. For the pump and reservoir, I used the Bitspower CR-803. It’s slimmer than a typical 360 reservoir and combines the pump and res into one unit, so I didn’t have to find another location for the pump. It fit nicely in the front section of the X50.

The fan setup consists of three HYTE FA12s along the side, three at the bottom, one below the reservoir and another at the rear. The rest of the system uses a Core Ultra 7 265K, ROG Strix Z890-A Gaming WiFi motherboard, 32GB of XPG LANCER DDR5 and a white Seasonic 1000W ATX 3.1 PSU.

The X50 was genuinely fun to build in. My only real complaint is the opening around the PSU cage. A standard ATX PSU doesn’t completely fill it, so part of the PSU fan remains visible. A larger PSU would cover more of the opening, but then you start giving up cable space.

What do you guys think of the loop placement? Would you leave the 5070 Ti on air or add it to the loop?

Full build video for anyone interested in the process: https://youtu.be/mhhgYdWEIvQ?si=i3QMByUGbAy-ZI3S

Disclosure: HYTE, Bitspower, ASUS, XPG, Seasonic and Intel supplied the components used in this build.

This was originally supposed to be a Valentine’s Day build, but parts got delayed and Valentine’s Day clearly moved on without me. I still wanted to finish it because the pink HYTE X50 was too good to leave sitting around.

The system uses an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, ROG Strix Z890-A Gaming WiFi motherboard, ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of XPG LANCER DDR5, a Gen 4 NVMe SSD and a white Seasonic 1000W ATX 3.1 PSU.

I only water-cooled the CPU this time. The loop uses a Bitspower CR-803 pump-res combo, which fit nicely in the front without needing a separate pump. I used three HYTE FA12 fans on the side, three along the bottom, one behind the reservoir and another at the rear.

Honestly, the X50 was fun to build in. The wraparound glass and geometry give it a different look from the big cases I normally use. My only real issue was the opening around the PSU cage. A normal ATX power supply doesn’t completely fill it, so part of the PSU fan remains visible. A larger PSU would cover more of it, but then you sacrifice some cable space.

I’m curious what you guys think. What part of the build works for you, and what would you have done differently?

Full build video: https://youtu.be/mhhgYdWEIvQ?si=LsFv-XADWEHS7_ds

Disclosure: HYTE and the other partners mentioned above supplied the hardware used for this build.

I put the PG32UCDM3 Gen 3 QD-OLED and PG32UCWM Tandem RGB OLED side by side using the same Cyberpunk 2077 scenes. There’s no commentary—I wanted the displays to speak for themselves.

The camera and Reddit/YouTube compression can’t perfectly reproduce what they look like in person, but the comparison should still show the relative differences in color, brightness, blacks, and overall presentation. The PG32UCDM3 is on the left and the PG32UCWM is on the right.

Which one looks better to you?

Video: https://youtu.be/qNFotQdSCf8

Disclosure: ASUS provided both monitors. This was not sponsored, ASUS had no editorial control, and all opinions are my own.

Testing the PG27UCWM
WWHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Thoughts so far:
● 166 PPI is crispy asf
● Noticeably sharper than the PG32UCWM
● Glossy RGB OLED still looks unreal
● My desk is now having a size crisis

Anything you want tested?

ASUS sent me the new ROG Swift OLED PG32UCWM and PG27UCWM to test, and I’ve finally spent a few hours with the 32-inch model.

Just to be clear, this is not my full review. I still need to properly test HDR, brightness, text clarity, uniformity, banding, stand stability, Dual Mode, and overall gaming performance. These are simply my first impressions after getting it out of the box and using it for a short time.

The TrueBlack Glossy coating immediately stood out to me. Blacks look incredibly deep and the picture has a lot of pop. The downside is that reflections can become distracting in a brightly lit room. I actually had to turn down several of my studio lights while filming B-roll.

The true RGB-stripe Tandem OLED panel also looks extremely clean. Text appeared sharp during normal browsing, and colors looked noticeably richer than the XG32UCWMG to my eyes. It doesn’t have quite the same heavily saturated appearance as QD-OLED, but it definitely doesn’t look washed out. I’ll need proper side-by-side comparisons before making any final conclusions.

I played a few games on it, including some darker content in Resident Evil, and the combination of OLED blacks and the glossy coating looked fantastic. The monitor supports 4K at 240Hz and FHD at 480Hz through Dual Mode, although I haven’t spent enough time with the 480Hz mode to comment on its clarity or performance yet.

Build quality feels consistent with ASUS’s premium ROG Swift monitors. I especially like the black transparent rear design—it reminds me of all the translucent electronics from the ’90s. The stand was straightforward to assemble and supports height, swivel, and tilt adjustments. There is a little movement when shaking the desk, but nothing concerning from my limited time with it.

Overall, my first experience with the PG32UCWM has been very positive. I’m excited to spend more time with it and see how it performs during proper testing. I’ll also be taking a closer look at the smaller PG27UCWM.

What excites you most about these new panels—the Tandem RGB-stripe technology, TrueBlack Glossy coating, improved text clarity, or 4K 240Hz / FHD 480Hz Dual Mode? Are you more interested in the 32-inch or 27-inch model?

Full early-impressions video:

https://youtu.be/yIHf4shCIYI?si=vrFtC8cGZLZyEYkh

Disclosure: ASUS provided both monitors for testing.

The PG27UCWM and PG32UCWM are both here. I’m starting with early impressions, then full reviews and comparison videos, including the PG32UCDM Gen 3.

Major thanks to ASUS for sending these out so I can share everything with you guys, and seriously, thank you to everyone who always supports the monitor videos. None of this happens without you guys.

Expected North American release windows are early to mid-September for the PG32UCWM and late October to early November for the PG27UCWM, but those dates can still change.

Let me know what you want checked before I start testing.