Review Endorfy Fortis 5 Black ARGB Review: All you need for AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D

[Admin]

We tested Endorfy’s Fortis 5 with Intel’s i7-14700K and AMD’s flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPUs. Can it handle the heat?

Endorfy Fortis 5 Black ARGB Review: All you need for AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D : Read more

 

[Mindstab Thrull]

Glad to see AMD finally added into the testing, considering how strong a platform they have for gamers and beyond.
But I've never heard of Endorfy. Who are they? Are they known in other areas (like Tyan) and just not consumer PC cooling?

 

[Albert.Thomas]

Glad to see AMD finally added into the testing, considering how strong a platform they have for gamers and beyond.

Thanks. I felt like the 9950X3D would be perfect for these type of reviews. Today's review was published out of order, you might be interested in the Liquid Freezer III Pro review which has more comparison results!

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/liquid-cooling/arctic-liquid-freezer-iii-pro-review

But I've never heard of Endorfy. Who are they? Are they known in other areas (like Tyan) and just not consumer PC cooling?

TBH, I don't know much about them. I only first encountered them last year, and originally I didn't find their products impressive - but they seem to be improving their lineup rather well!

I've got their Navis F360 ARGB AIO on hand, if Tom's Hardware will take it I'll test it soon and submit it for review.

 

[thestryker]

But I've never heard of Endorfy. Who are they? Are they known in other areas (like Tyan) and just not consumer PC cooling?

https://www.techpowerup.com/299617/...n-brand-on-the-international-technology-stage

 

[LinuxDevice]

Don't forget you'll also need ear plugs! 😛

 

[bit_user]

That's a good win over the Noctua D15 (gen 1). I always wondered why Noctua didn't used direct-touch heat pipes. Made me wonder whether direct-touch was more of a gimmick than a good idea, maybe Cooler Master locked the IP with patents, or maybe something that hotspots on modern CPUs had rendered obsolete. So, I'm quite interested to see others with direct-touch models.

I have an old Cooler Master with 5 direct-touch heat pipes (Geminii M5) that's still waiting for just the right project. Weirdly, I had to import it, because it apparently was never sold in the USA. I had previously bought its little brother, the M4 (which I think was sold here), but never used it due to discovering the sad fact of its sub-par performance. The M5 had not only one more heat pipe, but also "continuous direct touch technology", like what we see in the heatsink reviewed here. The few benchmarks I can find of it still aren't amazing, but I wonder how much of that is due to its low-profile fan.

 

[bit_user]

On an unrelated note... @Albert.Thomas , what do you think about doing some noise-normalize tests with the same model fan, on all heatsinks? This should be fairly revealing, as it should tell us more about how the heatsinks, themselves differ. A limited amount of this has already been featured on Toms, such as when the NH-D15 G2 review tried transplanting the G2's fans onto the G1.

IMO, we probably don't need a full set of results, but just like a shoot-out between some of the top-performing heatsinks. Probably doesn't make as much sense for less expensive "value" heatsinks, since most folks buying those models (unless they're also top performers) probably don't want to spend yet more money on a fan swap.

 

[Albert.Thomas]

On an unrelated note... @Albert.Thomas , what do you think about doing some noise-normalize tests with the same model fan, on all heatsinks? This should be fairly revealing, as it should tell us more about how the heatsinks, themselves differ.

This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure there would be enough user interest to justify a rate increase to management - and I'm already doing more testing than before. Some of the tests I'm doing haven't yet been published on the reviews you've seen with AMD's Ryzen 9950X3D, because they will only be relevant when looking at specific products.

 

[abufrejoval]

Apart from preferring Noctua because they speak my language (mostly), I'm happy to concur that CPU cooling no longer is that much of an issue, since AMD has pushed insane Intel power designs into oblivion.

However, no matter what the MTBF on the fan, once it fails, it hits hard, which is why I've switched to dual fan designs, not for the extra cooling capacity, but the resilience.

Not that I've really ever had a CPU fan fail outright in decades, only one choking on surprisingly little dust (easily rectified) and another announcing it's failure well in advance with ball bearing noises. The former shut down the home firewall and at that time I spent every second week in France with five remaining home users rather dependent on Internet access... I counted myself rather lucky I was home that week!

When a CPU cooler fan fails, it's never convenient, and waiting for a replacement part pretty near inacceptable. So paying a little extra for that peace of mind seems like a bargain.

I do ECC and RAIDs for the same reason, but those tend to cost quite a bit extra.

 

[bit_user]

When a CPU cooler fan fails, it's never convenient, and waiting for a replacement part pretty near inacceptable. So paying a little extra for that peace of mind seems like a bargain.

As long as you're around, to fix it, I don't really see why you need that amount of redundancy. I'd be surprised if you didn't have plenty of spare fans lying around. I do, but then I'm often swapping out the fans that come with my cases & CPU coolers for aftermarket ones. Even if the temporary replacement fan you use doesn't move as much air or is a bit louder, it's probably adequate until a proper replacement can arrive.

I do ECC and RAIDs for the same reason, but those tend to cost quite a bit extra.

I do those things to avoid silent data corruption, which can be insidious and infect even many of your backups, before you ever notice. For me, they aren't about uptime.