Question Single Tower Cooler for 9700X?

[Sixo]

Deciding between a 9600X or a 9700X, which single-tower cooler is good for 9700X (65W, no OC, can undervolt)?

Care about temps/noise and price should be $50 or less.

CPU will be used for 1440p gaming and productivity, want to be able to compile, compress/decompress files, and work with audio/video files, but not doing content creation or streaming.

Case could be a NZXT H3 Flow with 2-4 140mm fans and one 120mm fan.

Room temperature is above 80F.

Examples of coolers:

be quiet! Pure Rock 3 Black
ID-Cooling Frozn A410
Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 EVO Dark

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Care about temps/noise and price should be $50 or less.
Where are you located? What is your preferred site for purchase?

https://nzxt.com/products/h3-flow?srsltid=AfmBOoobnnq9BvdoJxiA5xVrwCpy-HxeUqhINCYXqJjRByQ9zWFfAsWo
You have 170mm of clearance to play with. If you're located in the USA, you can look at these;
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu-cooler/#sort=price&page=1&H=14000000,170000000
of note;
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/r3...-argb-704-cfm-cpu-cooler-as120-evo-white-argb

 

[Sixo]

Wanted to get an idea of how easy is to cool the 9700X without using a dual-tower since both CPUs are on sale (US).

Have not seen noise-normalized tests since the GN review on 2024 and those are for dual-tower coolers.

Ideally, would like to see CPU temps between 50-80F.

Most of the time, the higher temps for long periods of time would be from gaming, not productivity tasks.

 

[Lafong]

Temps and noise are constantly working against each other.

More of one typically means less of the other.

You are somewhere on that spectrum, but we don't know where....maybe temps of 80 terrify you regardless of noise. Maybe not. Maybe noise above X is intolerable to you regardless of temps. People vary widely in their noise tolerance.

For a 65 watt processor, I'd think any "good" single tower up would likely suffice. There would be some difference in temps and perceived noise among them, but you don't have much of a chance of determining which without actual comparison......which is unlikely because you probably aren't going to buy 3 or 4 coolers to do the experiment.

I wouldn't get bogged down in the decision.

You should be able to reduce fan speeds to as low as 500 rpm if need be, but it would remain to be seen what temps might be at that rpm. So....do some testing with your eventual choice regardless.

 

[geofelt]

I would rank the Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 EVO Dark
The best choice by far.
But, it is a dual tower cooler if that really matters.

 

[Sixo]

What would be the Thermalright single-tower version (or close) of the Phantom Spirit 120 SE since HC places its performance above the Noctua NH-D15 G2?

How do you identify the latest version/variant of the Thermalright coolers?

 

[bill001g]

I really wish thermalright had not come out with the "version" numbers on their coolers. In a way it was a minor change since it was just a different fan running a bit higher rpm.
You have to read the fine print in the ads and people say sometimes you get shipped the wrong one from the smaller sellers. The difference not going to be detectable except in very controlled benchmarks.

You should have no issue cooling your cpu with a single tower cooler. What is strange is there is not a huge difference in the price between thermalrights single tower and dual tower even though you get twice the metal and at 2 or 3 times the fans. Of course if it won't fit then it doesn't matter at all.

 

[Sixo]

The Burst Assassin has 6 heat pipes.

 

[bill001g]

The Burst Assassin has 6 heat pipes.

Maybe on some benchmark it will come out higher or lower but in actual real world use it makes no difference.

Key here the temperature number you see does not directly correspond to performance. As long as the cooler keeps the cpu under it thermal throttle limit it doesn't matter if it is 10 degrees below or 20 degrees below it all runs the same.

 

[Sixo]

I would rank the Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 EVO Dark The best choice by far.
But, it is a dual tower cooler if that really matters.

Getting the Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 EVO Dark for the 9700X and it is a single tower cooler.

With so many variants it can get confusing, but for single tower coolers the Assassin Spirit is the way to go and the EVO model has the new fan.

The single tower coolers with a second fan are not better most of the time, maybe a bit lower noise in some cases.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va0zCIzwQYE