dpeel :
I have decided to go with a Ryzen 5-2600X in my new desktop computer. I initially was planning on just using the stock cooler. I have read several articles that would give me the impression that just upgrading the air cooler wouldn't give this CPU much of an improvement overclocking. If I'm wrong and buying a better air cooler would be a real benefit, please let me know and your suggestions as to the cooler you would recommend.
Thanks in advance for your input.
2nd gen ryzen boosts much better...more cores, longer and higher... than first gen. But to do so it has to be well cooled, so better cooling helps it quite a lot. But, with an X variant especially, conventional overclocking isn't always the best way to get performance out of these chips because they don't generally hold an all-core OC as high is it will boost, as needed.
The way you OC these chips is to get it to boost more cores high and hold them longer. The way they do that depends heavily on the type of motherboard you have: it has to support off-set VCore voltage selection and a range of PBO - Performance Boost Override - settings BIOS to relax max current and power limits among other things. But of course it also monitors core temperature and lowering the boost if it goes to high. That just doubles down on the benefits of better-than-stock cooling. A decent 240mm AIO will definitely help a lot with that and be quiet going about it.