Air Cooler for 1700x OC'd?

[Kiddles]

Hello! I'm building a new comp over this year and am in the process of gathering the parts.

I'm gonna be building this computer specifically in the Fractal Design Meshify C.
(With a focus on airflow, thus why I'm wanting an air cooler(plus I like how air coolers look 😉))

I'm, ofc, going to be using a Ryzen 1700x and will be trying for an OC of hopefully 3.9-4 GHz.
(I'm going for the 1700x since I do a good amount of content creation and plan on streaming lightly)

This'll be my first time actually constructing a PC, and thus want it to look nice for the first time.
Of all the air coolers I've been looking through, I've found these few:
The Dark Rock Pro 3
Noctua NH-D15
Cryorig R1 Ultimate

In my current PC I've got an R1 Ultimate, but find it to be a bit loud under load, so this narrows it down a bit. So between the D15 and the DRP3, I've seen that the D15 is generally better. But here's the wrinkle with it and most normal Noctua products... the color of the fans. Dear lord, I'm not too picky on this kinda stuff, but I'd like my cooler to at least look neutral in my Black Case instead of early-80s browns.

I've seen that there's the new Chromax color replacement fans, but if I were to replace the fans on the D15 the two replacements would cost another $26.90 per fan(ala Amazon). This drives the overall price of what I'm getting here waaay up past what something like the DRP3 costs.

Now, I'm fine with spending extra money on this so long as the performance difference between these two on an OC like this would be worth it. What're the opinions of those here on Tom's Hardware here?

((Feel free to suggest other coolers, even AIOs so long as they can fit into the Meshify C))

 

[zoltan.boese]

Hello Kiddles!

The Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH Edition out of the box or even with fans replaced cost less then the Noctua and performs just as well well.
As this review states, the the AIOs can have similar or better performance, but I would not recommend them , as you would have disturbing noise levels without replacing the fans.
The Corsair H150i should fit into the front of the Fractal Design Meshify C, is more silent out of the box, performs good but cost twice as much as the Noctua.

 

[Karadjgne]

Cpu coolers are for all intents and purposes, dead silent. Be it an aio or heatsink, both are hunks of metal that do nothing. The noise only comes from the fans. Pretty much any cooler used, if fans are kept under @900rpm will be next to silent. You want that Cryorig to be quiet? Set a fan curve. With my kraken x61 AIO, the difference between 1500rpm performance mode and 900rpm silent mode is 3°C at 100% loads, which is stress testing. At 50ish% loads (gaming) it pulls @600-700rpm. Dead silent basically as nothing gets heard over the really quiet OC 970 fans.

At gaming loads, there's no real difference between any of the mentioned air coolers, any twixt results are on a test bench, and done at max speeds, or low voltage max speeds (9v), under 100%load. So there's no real advantage to the Noctua fans. Sacrificing @3°C cpu won't hurt in the slightest and will only be noticed at stress levels.

So pick the cooler that best suits your case and aesthetics tastes.

Personally, I'd look at the Scythe Fuma, it's also a very good cooler, right in the same range as the DR 3 Pro, NH-D15 etc.