Question Best Air Cooler, period ?

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Regev

Regev

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Jul 3, 2020
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Assume you're not limited by case dimensions, which air cooler would be able to cool the beefiest CPU today without throttling, when results normalized by sound? I'm thinking of buying the Frost Spirit 140 ($30) / Frost Spirit 140 v3 ($38), Phantom Spirit 120 SE ($39), and Phantom Spirit 120 EVO ($43). I saw the Frost Commander performed worse compared to both of them. If there's any other recommendation - by all means fire it my way :)

Thanks
 
You will have to find the someplace that actually tested those models.

In general most modern air coolers have no issue keep the current CPU under the thermal limits. The exception is going to be things like 13700k and 13900k and similar CPU that you remove the power limits. Those will thermal limit even with the largest water coolers most times.

The key thing to remember is if one cooler runs say a 75 degrees and the other runs at 79 degrees but the thermal limit of the cpu is 100 degrees then even though one cooler has a 4 degree advantage is makes no difference in the real work performance.

The only time it would matter is if you are messing with overclock settings and for some reason one particular chip only runs stable at lower temperature. Mostly this is the guys trying to get their name on the benchmark high score sites it makes no real difference in real world use. The crazy guys that use liquid nitrogen do not speed hundreds of dollars a hour in nitrogen so they can play fortnite with higher frame rates.
 
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Phantom Spirit Evo certainly reviewed well beating out the NH-D15. Also plenty of other Thermalright dual towers that would work almost as well.

There are quite a few coolers in that class though. be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4, Deepcool AK620, Deepcool Assassin, Scythe Mugen 5. Just don't seem that relevant since Thermalright kicked off their price war.
 
Eximo said:
Phantom Spirit Evo certainly reviewed well beating out the NH-D15. Also plenty of other Thermalright dual towers that would work almost as well.

There are quite a few coolers in that class though. be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4, Deepcool AK620, Deepcool Assassin, Scythe Mugen 5. Just don't seem that relevant since Thermalright kicked off their price war.
Click to expand...
Does the Phantom Spirit Evo beat the Frost Spirit 140?
 
Evo is a new model with different fans, so can't directly say with that video.

They are all going to be pretty close as they are quite similar fin stacks. I would think the Frost Spirit 140 would perform better with older CPUs that had a smaller hotspot and the newer model with the 7 heat pipes would be better able to handle the heat from Ryzen and LGA1700 chips that are more spread out.
 
Define "best"
If you mean price, the I9-14900 (non K) is a base 65w chip and comes with an excellent RH1 laminar flow cooler. I would try that cooler first and see how you do. Can't beat the price.

Coolers do better with large fans running at high rpm.
Noise can become an issue for some, but a twin tower cooler with 140mm fans will have the best cooling. Probably the best is the noctua NH-D15.
At maximum cooling, the noctua fans are hardly audible.
 
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geofelt said:
Define "best"
If you mean price, the I9-14900 (non K) is a base 65w chip and comes with an excellent RH1 laminar flow cooler. I would try that cooler first and see how you do. Can't beat the price.

Coolers do better with large fans running at high rpm.
Noise can become an issue for some, but a twin tower cooler with 140mm fans will have the best cooling. Probably the best is the noctua NH-D15.
At maximum cooling, the noctua fans are hardly audible.
Click to expand...

I'll use the RH1 on a case limited for 69mm coolers. But I have another case as well (another build altogether, same CPU) that can fit any size of a cooler. I feel like the RH1 should be replaced when world-class coolers are just $30.

https://www.digitec.ch/en/page/how-good-are-intels-new-stock-coolers-22707

"As you can see, the i7-12700 reaches the thermal limit of 100 degrees Celsius with both the RM1 and RH1. Only the Noctua cooler [NH-U12A] is capable of keeping the CPU within a reasonable temperature range, that is under 80 degrees Celsius. The i7-12700 throttles most with the weakest cooler, the RM1. Although the CPU also runs at its thermal limit with the RH1, a level of 200 MHz on the performance cores and 100 MHz on the efficiency cores is possible. Only the Noctua cooler doesn’t lead to a throttling CPU. The change in sound output follows a similar pattern to the cooling performance. Noctua is the quietest, at 35 dB when idle and 39 dB at full power. Meanwhile, Intel’s stock coolers reach the same idle volume, but are louder at full power. The RH1 reaches a 47 dB maximum, with the RM1 even going up to 50 dB."
 
You are looking at old test data much has changed in the last 2 years.

You have to be careful a lot of the noctua recommendation are from "fan" :) boys. It used to win almost every test but a lot of the cooler manufactures have caught up and exceeded it.

If cost is not a issue you can pay for brand name but there are many other coolers for a fraction of the price.

Still since you are not running a "K" cpu they are designed to work with the included stock coolers. It should not thermal limit. Buying a differnet aftermarket cooler may give you lower numbers on the heat but it will not give you higher numbers on the performance. Again as long as the cpu it not hitting the heat limit it will run at its rated clock rate.
 
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