5600 stock cooler to NH-D15S, Tiny cooler to Huge

Holst1981

Holst1981

Holst1981

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I've been running my 5600 on the stock cooler for ages as I was planning on watercooling but never got around to it.
I've now decided to give up on water and as the fan on my stock cooler was starting to make an annoying noise I decided to buy a new cooler.

Went for the NH-D15 as it will fill up some space in my unnecessarily large 011DXL case that I bought for watercooling. I also wont need to buy another cooler for this socket and will eventually upgrade to a CPU with more cores at some point. The black version has one less fan but I don't really need two fans with the 3600 and I can always add another if I need it in the future.

Performance is pretty impressive compared to the stock cooler, although my cinebench results were a little random. I ran cinebench 4 times on the stock cooler and another 4 times with the NH-D15S.

Scores with the stock cooler were 8378, 8324,8694 and 8719 with a max CPU temp of 85 degrees on the last run as the case temp increased a little and the heatsink warmed up.
I'm not sure why I got a higher score on the last run with the highest temperatures, clock speed varied but mostly stabilised at around 3873mhz.

With the NH-D15 scores were 8941,8963,8955 and 8947 with a max CPU temp of 64 degrees.
So substantially better temperatures with a 20 degree drop.
Scores are better but nothing dramatic.
Clock speed was higher with it mostly maintaining around 4ghz

So probably not a great value for money upgrade, but my PC is now quieter and my case looks slightly less like an empty box.
 
The main gain, unless thermal throttling before, will be noise and potential boost, as you've noticed.
Before owned an O11 XL, triple rad and all, my 3900x was running hotter than now with the Dark Rock Pro 4, mainly because the CPU was sharing the loop with a RTX 3090.
As you're using a top performance cooler now, enabling PBO and any other overclock boost will be possible, without adding any noise, let alone thermal issues.
Mine, as it's a 3000 series CPU runs better using an offset negative voltage of -0.1.
Yours should be a curve, but no idea how it works, as I'm yet to use a 5000 series CPU.
Before the last Intel release, Air and AIO was more than enough for 99.9% of the users.
I would only go for watercooling for two reason: looks or high-end GPU.
You would be very disappointed if you decided to go down watercooling for CPU performance alone. Any decent cooler is good enough. Some AIO like the Arctic Freezer can do even better if compared to a loop which the CPU shares with a GPU.
But for GPU, another ball game. Much lower temperatures, long boost, much less noise, your overclock would be limited by the card, not the temperature most of the time, and the possibility to exhaust most of the heat straight out the case without affecting CPU and other components, like RAM, MOSFET, NVME and chipset.
 
Depending on the case you're using, is more down to taste. Performance wise, they're fantastic.
Also, many people neglect airflow, and expect miracles. The AIO often seems like much better in performance, but is more to do with the way it is installed. If using on the top of the case, as exhaust, 2 or 3 fans will pull air from everywhere. If used as intake, at the front, it will work with cooler ambient air. But if you use a case, like the Fractal Design Torrent, which bathes the CPU with cool air, the Dark Rock Pro 4 or the Noctua would perform at optimum performance. My 3900x runs cooler than when on a triple 360 rad setup I used before. Particularities, sure, as it was sharing the loop with a 3090, but even the fantastic Arctic Freezer II 360 won't give more performance than a top air-cooler would, as long it have cool air to work with.
 
Drumroll said:
Depending on the case you're using, is more down to taste. Performance wise, they're fantastic.
Also, many people neglect airflow, and expect miracles. The AIO often seems like much better in performance, but is more to do with the way it is installed. .
Click to expand...

only issue with that conclusion is that when they get tested on open air test benches AIO are still better.
 
Ross Thomson said:
only issue with that conclusion is that when they get tested on open air test benches AIO are still better.
Click to expand...
But I would be tempted to find an AIO which is as quiet as the Dark Rock Pro 4, apart from the Arctic Freezer, as most will have high pitch pump.
Unless going with the new Intel or crazy overclock, for CPU alone, air is enough and can be achieved almost noise-free. GPU is the real issue. Only hope other solutions like the Asus/Noctua on the 3070 card develop to another cards and the possibility of other manufactures doing the same. I wouldn't mind a really thick GPU, as long it is virtually silent under load.
 
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