360mm aio Vs tower fixed fans/ capped at 800ish rpm

Jasonst888 · 13 Oct 2025 at 18:28

Has anyone had any experience running one of the big tower coolers (nh15, peerless assassin, a720 etc) with low rpm fans 800rpm ish region

Thinking in a torrent or havn 360 etc with fans set low sub 800rpm as well.

I'm running a 9800x3d undervolted and just game so not too concerned about blazing speeds or temps so long as the performance is good etc. just looking to see if this works or if a 360aio is just more sensible. I am conscious of pump noise at low speeds as I am a bit obsessive about a quiet pc and pump noise has been an issue for me in the past.

jigger · 13 Oct 2025 at 18:48

The cooling performance will massively depend on the graphics card. A rtx5090 for eg will produce 7-8x the CPU will.

Jasonst888 · 13 Oct 2025 at 18:55

jigger said:
The cooling performance will massively depend on the graphics card. A rtx5090 for eg will produce 7-8x the CPU will.

True but the same would be true for both options. I.e tower cooler has hot GPU air blowing directly on to it, but does have cool intake from the top of the case. Aio sucks in the hot air from the GPU and while not direct heat, it would steadily increase. (I am no thermal engineer though).

For clarity though I have. 7900xtx nitro and possibly grabbing a 5090 FE.

mickyflinn · 13 Oct 2025 at 19:13

Jasonst888 said:
True but the same would be true for both options. I.e tower cooler has hot GPU air blowing directly on to it, but does have cool intake from the top of the case. Aio sucks in the hot air from the GPU and while not direct heat, it would steadily increase. (I am no thermal engineer though).

For clarity though I have. 7900xtx nitro and possibly grabbing a 5090 FE.

Your more likely to hear the GPU and or PSU fans under load it's best just to set a custom fan curve for the CPU .

Take a look at this cooler paying attention to noise normalised results it within a few watts if the arctic freezer aio 360mm

Why buy an AIO when this exists? Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 is the new best air cooler you can buy

Once again, Thermalright raises the bar for what’s considered possible with air cooling.

www.tomshardware.com

pastymuncher · 13 Oct 2025 at 19:18

I originally had my 7800x3d under a Thermalright Peerless Assassin SE120 with the fans set to run the motherboards silent profile and they never exceeded 8-900rpm but you are trading off silence for higher temps. I ended up adding a third fan (same as the Thermalright stock fans) at the rear of the Peerless Assassin and it helped the temps and stabilized the fan speed so they didn't ramp up every now and then. Temps while gaming never went over 65 degrees C but if I hammered the cpu it could hit 80+ degrees easily.

Top of the case should be exhaust really. As a rough rule, front and bottom as intake, roof and rear as exhaust. I have a Thermalright 360mm AIO now with the rad mounted in the roof exhausting air out of the case (Lian Li 011 Evo Dynamic RGB). I have three 120mm reverse flow fans in the bottom as intakes, three more 120mm fans in the side vertical position exhausting the air from my gpu (case is in inverted mode with the gpu on a riser and mounted vertically in front of the side fans), the rear is blocked off with a thick filter. All fans are again running the motherboards silent profile again and the AIO pump is set to a fixed 2700rpm and most of the time it's really quiet, almost silent but when the gpu is working hard it dumps a lot of heat into the case and the gpu fans do ramp up a bit but they are still not overly noisy.

If I was going to air cool now I would forget the Peerless Assassin as it's crown was taken by the Phantom Spirit and then the Royal Praetor (review here) which is what I would be buying for high end air cooling.

Jasonst888 · 14 Oct 2025 at 01:36

Thanks, that an interesting review. Might just grab one and try it.

doyll · 14 Oct 2025 at 12:31

Jasonst888 said:
Has anyone had any experience running one of the big tower coolers (nh15, peerless assassin, a720 etc) with low rpm fans 800rpm ish region

Thinking in a torrent or havn 360 etc with fans set low sub 800rpm as well.

I'm running a 9800x3d undervolted and just game so not too concerned about blazing speeds or temps so long as the performance is good etc. just looking to see if this works or if a 360aio is just more sensible. I am conscious of pump noise at low speeds as I am a bit obsessive about a quiet pc and pump noise has been an issue for me in the past.

What jigger said.
GPU exhaust heats up airflow going to CPU cooler and every degree warmer air entering cooler is results in same degree increase in CPU temperature. Most AIOs are mounted using intake airflow so are cooling with coolest air. But with modern GPUs exhausting heated air up, down and thru PCB over RAM it's become much hard to to get room temperature airflow to CPU cooler.