Fair enough but what is the 330w test you mentioned that a PA120 fails at but a U12A passes? I find it highly unlikely given that the PA120 easily beats the U12A at 120w, 165w and 260w.
Best air cooler AM4?
- Thread starter Matty8787
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What about users like me who use powerful CPU at 70-90%?
We do need 300w TDP coolers!
Sure, it's only 5-10% of our running time, but we do need and use them regularly.
As for your "everything else a 30€ of the shelf cooler is enough", my 300w cooler are "off the self cooler" same as your 30c ones are.
And they are not near as expensive as NH-D15 and similar stupidly high priced coolers. Ones I use are almost all less than 50€
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I posted a few pages ago, ycrunchef at 330watts
You don't need to use any cpu at 300w unless we are talking about best parts with 50+ cores. Desktop cpus hit a wall with scaling at 170-200w, pushing for more wattage only gives you a small amount of performance.What about users like me who use powerful CPU at 70-90%?
We do need 300w TDP coolers!
Sure, it's only 5-10% of our running time, but we do need and use them regularly.
As for your "everything else a 30€ of the shelf cooler is enough", my 300w cooler are "off the self cooler" same as your 30c ones are.
And when you get to the 300w point, from my experience heatsink plays a smaller role, fans start taking over that high
That's just for the U12A, it doesn't compare it to anything or show that a PA120 fails.
Yes but there is a clear trend, the higher the wattage, the more the gap closes. At 260w noise normalized there is 1C difference between the single tower u12a and the dual tower PA120. That's...disastrous, is it not?
You said noise doesn't matter so the difference is 4 degrees at full fan speed which is quite substantial. If it's the fans that matter most at 330w, then my suggestion earlier of upgrading the fans to Arctic P12 Max would absolutely annihilate the U12A for less than half the price (£54 vs £110).
Are you trolling or just 5? WTF...
Neither, why would you say that?
The gap in cost is the same at every wattage.
Because you are quoting out of context and then pretending you are smart.
I said noise doesn't matter when you are running at low wattage, which was 120 and 165w, since most coolers can handle that wattage at very low noise level. Most coolers can't handle 260 and 330w at low noise levels, so yeah noise starts to matter that high. Anyways, as evidenced by the results, a single tower noctua cooler competes with a dual tower cooler from TR, with 1c difference between them. If that doesn't speak volumes about quality, what does? And then you look at noctuas dual tower cooler and there is a gap as big as the atlantic.
And so is the gap in size
It either fits or it doesn't. If it fits, it works well and costs much less.And so is the gap in size
If it doesn't fit, it's performance and cost don't matter anyway.
I also think the bare-metal version would do a bit better then the white one used in this test. (Don't know if the U12A was bare metal).
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But that's the point. You buy the u12a in situations where a dual tower doesn't fit (or when you don't want a dual tower for whatever reason, like me). And it delivers - surprisingly - at higher wattage, even though logic would dictate the opposite. To me that shows the noctua engineering quality. If space is no concern, then you go for the 9 year old nhd15 which still pummels the PA120 into submission with old outdated mediocre fans nonetheless.
Low noise level is subjective, for me an NH-D15 can't handle a 142w 5950x at low noise levels. It seems like noise does and doesn't matter depending on if it fits the point you're trying to make
If you're just doing a 330w benchmark once in a blue moon and not running it daily I don't see why noise would suddenly become extremely important to you. You also completely ignored my point that you could upgrade the fans and still be less than half the price.
The 5950x is a different beast, AMD cpus are notoriously bad at transferring heat. Intel at 150w is a breeze to cool, especially the latest ALD and RPL cpus. Even a freezer 34 can handle 150w with pretty low noise levels. Probably not whisper quiet, but pretty close.Low noise level is subjective, for me an NH-D15 can't handle a 142w 5950x at low noise levels. It seems like noise does and doesn't matter depending on if it fits the point you're trying to make
If you're just doing a 330w benchmark once in a blue moon and not running it daily I don't see why noise would suddenly become extremely important to you. You also completely ignored my point that you could upgrade the fans and still be less than half the price.
Yes you can upgrade the fans but we don't have any data about what the impact of that is
That's like buying a 1600w power supply for a 5600G because it "pummels" quality power supplies that cost less and are capable of less power.
Both the TR and the Noctua can handle my 5950X with ease, and I can't see the cooler in the case.
I don't care if the D15 can hand 5.5 Gigawatts. I'm not trying to cool 5.5 Gigawatts and I'm not spending money for the sake of spending money.
The $35 cooler does the job well and that's why it's in the build.
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We can have a pretty good idea given that it beats the NF-A12x25 (on the U12A) in noise normalised tests and it goes up to 3300 RPM.