Question Need help getting an air cooler where the GPU lever is accessible

[Blouge]

I tried an Noctua NH-D15 to cool my AMD 5950x and the cooler was so big, the GPU / PCI-E slot lever was inaccessible.
The GPU, in turn, blocks access to the SATA cables.
So if I want to plug in a hard drive I basically have to take apart my entire PC, removing the motherboard and cooler and using new thermal paste.
Is there a good air cooler that still allows access to the GPU lever?

 

[ThatVietGuy]

What is your motherboard?

 

[Ralston18]

Motherboard?

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

 

[Blouge]

What is your motherboard?

AMD 5950x
MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk WiFi (AM4 socket)
Asus TufGaming 3090 Ti OC 24 GB
Rosewill Thor V2 case

I don't want water cooling if I can help it. The Noctua NH-D15 got reasonable temps (50C-70C max) on the CPU, but it makes the GPU lever inaccessible so it's hugely frustrating.

 

[ThatVietGuy]

https://noctua.at/en/whats-the-difference-between-nh-d15-and-nh-d15s

The NH-D15S may be better since it's offset a little bit from the PCIe slot. I use one on an ITX motherboard with an RTX 3080 ti and it have juuuuust enough room to release the latch.

 

[DRagor]

So if I want to plug in a hard drive I basically have to take apart my entire PC

Not necessarily. You could just connect a few SATA data cables to motherboard when building your rig and leave them hanging. There is no harm doing it this way, and when you need to connect hard drive just use the other end of cable that is already there.