Ryzen 9 9700X & Ryzen 7 9700X spec sheets recommend liquid cooling and premium air cooling...

[ceemuk]

...but is this really necessary when running at stock, or would a 3rd party air cooler such as Hyper 212 or Freezer 36 be fine with either CPU?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Tetras]

Freezer 36 type cooler is fine for these CPUs. If you're just gaming they could even be cooled by a stock cooler.

 

[Hotwired]

...but is this really necessary when running at stock, or would a 3rd party air cooler such as Hyper 212 or Freezer 36 be fine with either CPU?

Thanks in advance!

Depends. These cpus can throttle fast enough to run with no heatsink. The performance will be atrocious but they will run.

What is being recommended is what you'll need for the processor to perform with no temperature throttling.

And it's not a popular thing to increase the power above stock anymore. Modern cpus will aggressively boost within their maximum power and temperature limits, keeping them cool enough to boost high is what matters. Modern tinkering is about lowering voltages to get more boost before hitting the limits and pushing that as low as possible before the cpu starts crashing.

Basically any cpu cooler will work, if you ever do something heavy enough and actually notice throttling (it may happen and you don't notice) you'd look at getting a bigger cooler or tinkering with the voltages yourself.

 

[WARburton]

...but is this really necessary when running at stock, or would a 3rd party air cooler such as Hyper 212 or Freezer 36 be fine with either CPU?

Thanks in advance!

my 9700x can hit 80c in some games with an NH-D15 cooler.
i would think a Freezer 36 would be ok, but your going to see high temps

in squads i see 60c to 70c, in broken arrow i got 80c

case size and air flow would make a differance. what case do you have?