Question What's the best air cooler for a Ryzen 9800X3D ?

[CalDaMan]

Hi, what's the best air cooler for a Ryzen 9800X3D? I want to put it into a Fractal Pop XL Air case.
I assume that case is big enough to accomodate any of the large air coolers?

Thanks

 

[jeremyj_83]

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-cpu-coolers,4181.html#section-best-air-coolers

I would probably go with the Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120.

 

[geofelt]

The best would be the Noctua NH-D15S G2.
Yes, it is expensive.
Here is a review:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ASRock/com...ua_nhd15_g2_do_you_even_need_a_aio/?rdt=38972

 

[Small_Town_Gamer]

Noctua NH-D15 G2
or
Noctua NH-D15S if you need extra clearance for high RAM kits

I have never used an AIO, favoring the simplicity of an air cooler, and the NH-D15 outperforms many AIOs.

 

[CalDaMan]

Do you think this ram will need the extra clearance?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/32g...00-6000-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-30-14v-amd-xmp

 

[LordVile]

Basically any as it’s not a hot chip and u less you’re torturing it with all core rendering workloads it won’t cause an issue with smaller air coolers.

Large air coolers now are effectively pointless. They cannot effectively cool the hottest CPUs and cost the same as AIOs which perform better.

 

[LordVile]

Noctua NH-D15 G2
or
Noctua NH-D15S if you need extra clearance for high RAM kits

I have never used an AIO, favoring the simplicity of an air cooler, and the NH-D15 outperforms many AIOs.

Which ones does it outperform? Also how many of those are actually cheaper than the NHD15

 

[jeremyj_83]

Do you think this ram will need the extra clearance?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/32g...00-6000-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-30-14v-amd-xmp

From what I can tell that is standard height RAM. It has a heat spreader so it is slightly taller than ones without a heat spreader but isn't crazy tall like G.Skill Trident.

 

[geofelt]

Not a clearance problem with vengeance ram.
The normal vengeance ram is 35mm tall:
https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explo...sdRUCTOPVjO1A0K2fi3YuT3wZP4VtqwkwidRT0QBJSsy4
The rgb version is 9mm higher.
On the NH-D15G2 the ram clearance with the normal front fan is 32mm:
https://noctua.at/en/nh-d15-g2/specification
This is not a problem since you just move the front fan up 3mm.

Performance has two components: cooling and noise.
The G2 is tops in both.
The NH-D15s is not far behind.
Noctua measures the NSPR of each of it's coolers.
https://noctua.at/en/noctua-standardised-performance-rating

 

[JayGau]

Basically any as it’s not a hot chip and u less you’re torturing it with all core rendering workloads it won’t cause an issue with smaller air coolers.

Large air coolers now are effectively pointless. They cannot effectively cool the hottest CPUs and cost the same as AIOs which perform better.

I have a 9800x3d and while it's true that it runs impressively cold durng gaming, it can get really hot when games are compiling shaders. At stuck (without curve optimization) it can reach 90c+ when shaders are compiling from scratch (Hogwarts Legacy is one of worst offenders). And I have a high-end 360mm AIO.

 

[LordVile]

I have a 9800x3d and while it's true that it runs impressively cold durng gaming, it can get really hot when games are compiling shaders. At stuck (without curve optimization) it can reach 90c+ when shaders are compiling from scratch (Hogwarts Legacy is one of worst offenders). And I have a high-end 360mm AIO.

But you’re not actually playing when compiling shaders, or shouldn’t be at least, so a FPS drop on a menu or loading screen isn’t really an issue

 

[JayGau]

But you’re not actually playing when compiling shaders, or shouldn’t be at least, so a FPS drop on a menu or loading screen isn’t really an issue

No, but nowadays compiling shaders can take a while (several minutes) especially in Unreal Engine games and if you have poor cooling, your 9800X3D will reach 95c immediately and throttle down during the whole process (I wouldn't like that).

And the shader compilation was an example. This can also happen during other regular tasks that requires some heavier CPU load than gaming. It's why your claim that the 9800X3D doesn't require much cooling is not completely true. It can get really hot and not only during synthetic torture benchmarks.

 

[LordVile]

No, but nowadays compiling shaders can take a while (several minutes) especially in Unreal Engine games and if you have poor cooling, your 9800X3D will reach 95c immediately and throttle down during the whole process (I wouldn't like that).

And the shader compilation was an example. This can also happen during other regular tasks that requires some heavier CPU load than gaming. It's why your claim that the 9800X3D doesn't require much cooling is not completely true. It can get really hot and not only during synthetic torture benchmarks.

Where does it get really hot exactly? Generally the only things that light up all cores are quicker if you use the GPU and are never ran on the CPU now.