Thermalright's Peerless Assassin 120 SE is the best CPU air cooler, now only $33

[Admin]

One of our favorite reviewed air coolers, thanks to its impressive performance and superb value, the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE is only $33 on sale at Amazon.

Thermalright's Peerless Assassin 120 SE is the best CPU air cooler, now only $33 : Read more

 

[peachpuff]

This is what should be used when testing cpus, 360mm aio shouldn't be used at all.

 

[Amdlova]

Noctua killer... (and all other brands).
Got second air cooler from thermalright (these new ones) and are perfectly made... no issues at all. Only downside the thermal paste is a mess and not good at all.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Noctua killer... (and all other brands).
Got second air cooler from thermalright (these new ones) and are perfectly made... no issues at all. Only downside the thermal paste is a mess and not good at all.

Is this the same company who basically copied Noctua's fans?

 

[jefferzbooboo]

I had to replace the fans on the Peerless Assassin. They had a pitch/hum that I didn't like.
I ordered an Assassin King, and heat pipes were jacked up. I don't know how it made it through quality control, but they put in the box.

 

[Notton]

Is this the same company who basically copied Noctua's fans?

No, that was Thermaltake and their Toughfan series.
The 120mm was a good copy, except it costs as much as Noctua's LCP fans.
The 140mm is not a copy, but it is extremely loud. Probably because they decided to enlarge the 120mm, instead of doing proper R&D.

I find Thermalright designs good heatsinks, but the fans they include leave a lot to be desired. If you decide to combine a Thermalright heatsink with Noctua fans, they end up costing similar.

 

[Trake_17]

Noctua is gonna need to do some marketing to differentiate its product or it's gonna be a bad day for business

 

[NedSmelly]

I’m genuinely curious about how Thermalright is achieving such a high level of performance per dollar. Either everyone else has major inefficiencies in their supply chain, or Thermalright is staffed entirely by Oompa Loompas.

 

[Math Geek]

I’m genuinely curious about how Thermalright is achieving such a high level of performance per dollar. Either everyone else has major inefficiencies in their supply chain, or Thermalright is staffed entirely by Oompa Loompas.

i'm pretty sure we are seeing nothing more than not gouging on the price. makes you seriously think about how much mark-up is involved in the industry as a whole.

 

[Heiro78]

I’m genuinely curious about how Thermalright is achieving such a high level of performance per dollar. Either everyone else has major inefficiencies in their supply chain, or Thermalright is staffed entirely by Oompa Loompas.

A tech YouTube channel commented on this exact question with the answer being, they are looking for market share. Thermalright barely has to invest in marketing because reviews and users are hyping them up and with good reason. Their peerless assassin and phantom spirit dual tower air coolers are great performers in general and even more so at this price point.

So they are pretty much undercutting every competitor and I expect in 5 years, they'll have things costing more. I don't know how that could possibly work in the long term, especially considering even their AIOs are cheaper than most others.

 

[thestryker]

I’m genuinely curious about how Thermalright is achieving such a high level of performance per dollar. Either everyone else has major inefficiencies in their supply chain, or Thermalright is staffed entirely by Oompa Loompas.

The same way Deepcool does: they have large OEM volumes and generally produce a lot in their factories. Their fans are lower tier than say Noctua and they don't modify the heatsink designs much. There are lots of little things that go into the equation here.

Hardware Canucks did some testing of the two fan versions that come with the Phantom Spirit and found that the newer, better, fans didn't actually perform any better. They hypothesized that the heatsink had been designed with the original fans in mind so the new ones made more noise at any given RPM.

 

[systemBuilder_49]

This is a fantastic cooler I put it into my heavily tuned 5950x system with a single Tower and the system instantly ran 6% faster! I predict bankruptcy for Noctua any day now.... In the past I have bought Noctua U14 three times but now I don't think I will be buying them again!

 

[Amdlova]

Thermalright on china is the top one... but they produce in Mass scale. Have other brands with same models with lower quality, It's easy to have low price when they sell tons of same product.

 

[jefferzbooboo]

No, that was Thermaltake and their Toughfan series.
The 120mm was a good copy, except it costs as much as Noctua's LCP fans.
The 140mm is not a copy, but it is extremely loud. Probably because they decided to enlarge the 120mm, instead of doing proper R&D.

I find Thermalright designs good heatsinks, but the fans they include leave a lot to be desired. If you decide to combine a Thermalright heatsink with Noctua fans, they end up costing similar.

I initially replaced the fans on my Peerless Assassin with the Arctic P12's, but I was one of the unlucky ones that got one of the first couple batches that have the noise. They were more than adequate performance wise, and are a great alternative. I ended up with the Asus ROG Strix fans.
Overall, I spent about $55 for the fans and cooler. I'm happy with the performance, but I could have gotten something that looks a lot better for the same price.

For those considering a Peerless Assassin right now, the Cooler Master Hyper 620S Dual Tower cooler is $35 after a coupon on Amazon.

 

[Beonewithme]

Ive been in the industry way too many years...but I heard that Thermalright is selling these at or below manufacturing costs in order to get additional Chinese government subsidies for reaching volume targets.