Best air cooler AM4?

Twinz said:
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 $35 cooler does the job well and that's why it's in the build.
Click to expand...
Well of course almost any 35$ cooler can get the job done. The question was whether or not noctua is more expensive just cause of the brand name.

If nothing else convinces you, send a complicated cooler related question to noctua and trs support, and see how long does it take for each of them to reply and what the reply is. I got a 3 paragraph long reply when I asked whether or not I should put an air cooler on a 12900k. The best part is noctua themselves are begging you to not buy a new cooler but use their free mounting upgrades to upgrade the one you already have, for environmental reasons. That's what you are paying for
 
Bencher said:
Well of course almost any 35$ cooler can get the job done. The question was whether or not noctua is more expensive just cause of the brand name.

If nothing else convinces you, send a complicated cooler related question to noctua and trs support, and see how long does it take for each of them to reply and what the reply is. I got a 3 paragraph long reply when I asked whether or not I should put an air cooler on a 12900k. The best part is noctua themselves are begging you to not buy a new cooler but use their free mounting upgrades to upgrade the one you already have, for environmental reasons. That's what you are paying for
Click to expand...
Did you actually email them to find out or is this just an assumption? Luckily I've never needed support on an air cooler in 15+ years anyway and probably never will, especially not for a 200% price increase so I'd be good with the $35 cooler for better performance.
 
Eddie99 said:
Did you actually email them to find out or is this just an assumption? Luckily I've never needed support on an air cooler in 15+ years anyway and probably never will, especially not for a 200% price increase so I'd be good with the $35 cooler for better performance.
Click to expand...
You mean Noctua? Yes I did. Tr? No, you can try and share the results. I mean the fact that you can't even buy their products in most of Europe, and only very recently they started selling them on Amazon doesn't give me hope.

What better performance? The 9 year old d15 demolishes it, 6c @ 260w is a huge difference
 
Bencher said:
What better performance? The 9 year old d15 demolishes it, 6c @ 260w is a huge difference
Click to expand...
:cry:

120w
NH-D15: 49c
PA120: 46c

165w
NH-D15: 56c
PA120: 54c

260w
NH-D15: 81c
PA120: 82c

Overall the PA120 wins in 2/3 of the tests, and the one it loses in is the 260w unrealistic workload. You even said yourself neither Intel or AMD scale past 150w and there's no reason to do so besides benchmarking. The main reason the NH-D15 wins at 260w is because it has a greater thermal mass being a substantially bigger 140mm cooler, but making it absolutely massive like that comes with a lot of downsides like compatibility, weight, and generally making it more difficult to work with. I remember when I wanted to switch out a GPU and couldn't access the retention clip because the NH-D15 was so massive so I had to take it off first.
 
Eddie99 said:
:cry:

120w
NH-D15: 49c
PA120: 46c

165w
NH-D15: 56c
PA120: 54c

260w
NH-D15: 81c
PA120: 82c

Overall the PA120 wins in 2/3 of the tests, and the one it loses in is the 260w unrealistic workload. You even said yourself neither Intel or AMD scale past 150w and there's no reason to do so besides benchmarking. The main reason the NH-D15 wins at 260w is because it has a greater thermal mass being a substantially bigger 140mm cooler, but making it absolutely massive like that comes with a lot of downsides like compatibility, weight, and generally making it more difficult to work with. I remember when I wanted to switch out a GPU and couldn't access the retention clip because the NH-D15 was so massive so I had to take it off first.
Click to expand...
I'm talking about the video posted from hwcanucks with the 10980xe. The difference was 6c.
 
Bencher said:
I'm talking about the video posted from hwcanucks with the 10980xe. The difference was 6c.
Click to expand...
Yes so was I, those are the outright performance results not noise normalized. They are more or less equal in noise normalized tests, the PA120 wins by 1c at 120w and the NH-D15 wins by 1c at 165w. However, the PA120 is superior in outright performance when the fans are full speed so I think it's fair to say that overall the PA120 is better.
 
Eddie99 said:
Yes so was I, those are the outright performance results not noise normalized. They are more or less equal in noise normalized tests, the PA120 wins by 1c at 120w and the NH-D15 wins by 1c at 165w. However, the PA120 is superior in outright performance when the fans are full speed so I think it's fair to say that overall the PA120 is better.
Click to expand...
This is becoming embarrassing. We get it, you like your cooler, but it's worse than the d15. It's cheap and that's what you get, but let's stop lying. At 9:53 of the video there is a very clear graph with the d15 rofl stomping the pa120. The hell is wrong with you man?
 
Bencher said:
This is becoming embarrassing. We get it, you like your cooler, but it's worse than the d15. It's cheap and that's what you get, but let's stop lying. At 9:53 of the video there is a very clear graph with the d15 rofl stomping the pa120. The hell is wrong with you man?
Click to expand...
With a low effort reply like that clutching at the irrelevant 260w noise normalized test I think it just confirms you're trolling at this point. Either that or you're on Noctua's payroll now as well as Intel's. Either way, you get the honour of being the first person on my ignore list.
 
Last edited:
Let's hear what the reviewer has to say , and im quoting "The peerless assassin 120 is nowhere near the big boys"

And now let's see those graphs. The only thing it's beating is your ear drums by those decibel levels, lol

graph.png


graph2.jpg




Clearly, the one that's lying through the teeth is the one being on a payroll. You don't need to be on a payroll to use facts.
 
Last edited:
Matty8787 said:
Looking for one that will give me enough clearance for my RAM slots, all 4 of them are Corsair vengeance RGB pro and are to the right hand side of the CPU slot, on my current setup I have a Kraken AIO but because of the pipes I had to have the cooler off centred to be able to fit.

I don't overclock my CPU as I find the boost more than adequate.
Click to expand...
Fuma 2 has decent ram clearance
 
Eddie99 said:
In their 198w 100% fan speed test it beats the NH-D15 in both temperature and noise, I wonder why the Hardware Canucks review has it much louder.

198w-100.png
Click to expand...
DB reading distance is 24"from sound source instead 20" used by Gamer Nexux.
 
Last edited:
doyll said:
DB reading distance is 24"from sound source instead 20" used by Gamer Nexux.
Click to expand...
Gamers Nexus measures it 42.3 dBA at 20 inches, Hardware Canucks measures it 46 dBA at 24 inches, both at 100% fan speed. Doesn't make any sense, it should be quieter if it was measured further away not louder.

I have an AK120 which uses the same fan as the PA120 and it doesn't seem any louder than my NH-D15 at 100% fan speed. I suspect Hardware Canucks either got a bad unit or there was some sort of error with their noise testing.
 
Thermalright Assassin X is single 120mm fanned tower w/ 4x 6mm heatpipes. We need "Peerless" inbetween "Thermalright" and "Assassin" to have right cooler. :D

But it does show how well a simple 4x 6mm heatpipe 120mm single tower cooler can do when it's getting cool air. ;)
 
Bencher said:
The U12A beating all dual tower coolers though. Noctua quality.
Click to expand...
While competitive with most twin towers it doesn't beat them.
NH-U12A prices of £109.99 and £124.99 are among the highest cooler prices out there.
As for quality, there are many other coolers just as well made.
Again, only thing Noctua has others don't is free mount updates, but I'm not paying half again to twice as much for a cooler just to be able to get mount update in 3-5 years. I'll save £55.00-80.00 for other things and in 3-5 years buy a new cooler for £40-60. Then sell old system as complete working unit to offset some of expense. ;)
 
doyll said:
While competitive with most twin towers it doesn't beat them.
NH-U12A prices of £109.99 and £124.99 are among the highest cooler prices out there.
As for quality, there are many other coolers just as well made.
Again, only thing Noctua has others don't is free mount updates, but I'm not paying half again to twice as much for a cooler just to be able to get mount update in 3-5 years. I'll save £55.00-80.00 for other things and in 3-5 years buy a new cooler for £40-60. Then sell old system as complete working unit to offset some of expense. ;)
Click to expand...
£36 PA120 wipes the floor with £110 Noctua U12A in several real world workload tests.
U12A beats it by 0.33% (within margin of error) in one irrelevant 285w workload only suitable for an AIO.
U12A declared the winner!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom