Which air cooler?

Yaayuh! said:
It's not that, just the U12A seems to punch well above it's weight for it's size, cramming in 7 heatpipes, despite fin surface area. Considering options is all.
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Price is just crazy for single tower and there's one variable for Ryzen:
Intel optimized convex base.

Just like in NH-U12A class Mugen 5 and other Scythes, NH-U12A's base has some convexity.
That fits well for Intel's centered heat output and often toward concavish heatspreader.
But AMD has flattish or even tiny smidge convex from center heatspreader.
And two such surfaces results good contact only in small area.
Also Zen2 and probably coming Ryzens have off center heat output with chiplets away from center of package.
That can results far less than optimal cooling performance.
"Lapping"/grinding base flat helps to that, but that's some hours of work along with needing sand paper and piece of glass or something certainly flat.
(on top of already super expensive cooler)

Here's some testing of heatspreader shapes, including 3900X:
https://www.igorslab.de/en/intel-vs...er-really-what-is-better-ryzen-9-or-core-9/2/

And here's before and after lapping testing.
https://www.igorslab.de/en/kuehlerb...amd-and-conkav-reader-test-and-picture-story/
 
Whilst I’m fully aware of the layout of dies, I wasn’t fully aware of heatsinks still being convex, I always thought this practice had been and gone, but clearly not.

I shall take this into consideration.
 
No idea if it would fit (would be tight I imagine, judging from how close mine is), but thermalright aro-m14 is made for ryzen, so may not have that issue.
 
i think it would be good to have a stickied thread for good current air coolers as many people will be upgrading soon especially with amd products and a good air cooler is coming back into trend again as often they are quieter than AIO. the problem is its hard to see which products are good and the top end air coolers are quite expensive.

would be nice to see performance on amd cpus from low range air coolers upto the top end.
 
~>Dg<~ said:
i think it would be good to have a stickied thread for good current air coolers as many people will be upgrading soon especially with amd products and a good air cooler is coming back into trend again as often they are quieter than AIO. the problem is its hard to see which products are good and the top end air coolers are quite expensive.

would be nice to see performance on amd cpus from low range air coolers upto the top end.
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Quite hard to do. Honestly, most of the better / best air coolers are several years old with only a few new ones. AIOs that are not CLC (have threaded fittings & fill-port) have always been quieter or as quiet as air cooling. Some of the new CLCs are now as quiet, some claiming to be quieter. Problem is most of the testing making these claims is with sound measurements being made with a ambient noise level of about 30Db (very quiet room) so they kinda cheat and place meter 30cm from noise source instead of standard 1 meter. With 1 meter distance room ambient is asl loud or louder than CLC. Measuring Db at 30cm means meter is closer to fans than pump (or pump than fans), and usually they are only monitoring fan noise levels so we don't know how loud the pumps are.

Actually there are lots of good and extremely good cooler in the £40-70 range. Many of us have cooler with much higher cooling ability than we need because we would rather have more than needed than ever need more. Kinda like owning h-performance cars and bikes.:D
 
I don't think there is much point in spending more than £50 on a cooler, do it for silence fine but for performance you'll never notice the difference of what a massive expensive air cooler brings other than that they are a pain to install, make maintenance more difficult and generally take up all of the space in your case

Personally my next air cooler will more than likely be an eSports duo or scythe Fuma if I really want to push the boat out, I'm using the stock cooler at the moment and it's absolutely fine with a fan curve set, the performance of the CPU is exactly the same as the DRPro4 I returned recently and the D15S before that
 
~>Dg<~ said:
i think it would be good to have a stickied thread for good current air coolers as many people will be upgrading soon especially with amd products and a good air cooler is coming back into trend again as often they are quieter than AIO. the problem is its hard to see which products are good and the top end air coolers are quite expensive.

would be nice to see performance on amd cpus from low range air coolers upto the top end.
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They are not often quieter or if they are its because they don't cool as good (same goes for louder air coolers). There is obviously nothing wrong with air coolers but stop posting inaccurate facts.

There are plenty of cheaper air coolers that work better than the box coolers that don't cost much. There are however lots of variables, so one cooler in one system might not give the same performance in another.

harrisck said:
Can highly recommend the Scythe Fuma 2 for Ryzen. Swapped from AIO to it and not looked back.
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how bad was your AIO?
 
Ross Thomson said:
They are not often quieter or if they are its because they don't cool as good (same goes for louder air coolers). There is obviously nothing wrong with air coolers but stop posting inaccurate facts.

There are plenty of cheaper air coolers that work better than the box coolers that don't cost much. There are however lots of variables, so one cooler in one system might not give the same performance in another.



how bad was your AIO?
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sorry but you often still even with good AIO get pump noise even if low also you have the risk of leaks.. big quality air coolers often have less risk and often less audible. the problem though is they often have 2 main draw backs. expensive and the size and weight of them.
 
EsaT said:
Mugen 5 Black RGB and Mugen 5 TUF are in stock for £50.
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I assumed Yaayuh! didn't want anything RGB as none of the coolers in open post are RGB.
Mugen 5 Black RGB is 120mm fanned as well, but still a good cooler for only 7 quid extra for RGB that I don't think needs to be plugged in.

I prefer the bigger coolers with 140mm fans. Most of us build an rarely if ever need to access RAM or anything that air coolers cause a problem with, so big is not a problem for most of us.
 
doyll said:
I assumed Yaayuh! didn't want anything RGB as none of the coolers in open post are RGB.
Mugen 5 Black RGB is 120mm fanned as well, but still a good cooler for only 7 quid extra for RGB that I don't think needs to be plugged in.

I prefer the bigger coolers with 140mm fans. Most of us build an rarely if ever need to access RAM or anything that air coolers cause a problem with, so big is not a problem for most of us.
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Indeed, no RGB for me. Though I've got spare fans to swap out any if needs be, both PH-F120MP and PH-F140MP, which are my fan of choice in the past couple of years.

You make a good point about the RAM access. I was put my off the Dark Rock Pro 4 which should fit but covers the RAM. Realistically that's not really much of a problem, so I'm putting it as an option back on the table.
 
Yaayuh! said:
Indeed, no RGB for me. Though I've got spare fans to swap out any if needs be, both PH-F120MP and PH-F140MP, which are my fan of choice in the past couple of years.

You make a good point about the RAM access. I was put my off the Dark Rock Pro 4 which should fit but covers the RAM. Realistically that's not really much of a problem, so I'm putting it as an option back on the table.
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I've only needed access to RAM twice in as long as I can remember. Both times was years after building to increase memory. One I was able to change without moving anything, other I had to remove/replace fan. But even if cooler needs to be removed it's normally only 2 screws (in crossbar, then wipe clean and apply new TIM before install. Not a lot of skill needed and takes maybe an extra 5 minutes.
 
~>Dg<~ said:
sorry but you often still even with good AIO get pump noise even if low also you have the risk of leaks.. big quality air coolers often have less risk and often less audible. the problem though is they often have 2 main draw backs. expensive and the size and weight of them.
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you've not heard the modern ones.
 
Ross Thomson said:
you've not heard the modern ones.
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some make noise some are more silent. as you can see in here many people are still interested in air coolers often because of the stock ones are **** so its good to try and find out which air coolers to use if you choosing air cooling.
 
Yaayuh! said:
Indeed, no RGB for me. Though I've got spare fans to swap out any if needs be, both PH-F120MP and PH-F140MP, which are my fan of choice in the past couple of years.

You make a good point about the RAM access. I was put my off the Dark Rock Pro 4 which should fit but covers the RAM. Realistically that's not really much of a problem, so I'm putting it as an option back on the table.
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Love my Dark Rock Pro 4, RAM access is fine. Good build quality, easy to fit, and absolutely silent. Cheaper than my second choice of the Noctua.
 
For those wandering if it is better to spend more on a higher performance cooler with a Ryzen CPU - https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3492-ryzen-cpu-thermals-matter-coolers-and-cases

TLDR: Yes - the cooler you can get your Ryzen CPU the higher it will boost and the longer it will be able to sustain higher boost speeds.

Edit/ Following on from the above purely in terms of gaming performance on a Ryzen a AIO cooler may be better than an air cooler as they take ~3 times longer to reach maximum temperature under constant load (~270 seconds vs ~90 seconds). Gaming is more burst load than constant load so an AIO is much less likely to reach max temperatures during a gaming session than an air cooler, potentially resulting in better sustained performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VzXHUTqE7E from 3:22
 
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We need to keep in mind that GamerNexus is taking sound level readings at 20" because ambient noise level of a very quiet room is about 30dBA. Sound level needs to be 60dBA at 20" to be just bearly loud enough to hear in very quiet room in our homes. So basically all of GamerNexus sound readings below 60dBA are quieter than quietest room/s in our homes.

All cooler noise levels in GamerNexus testing less than 60dBA are quieter than quiestest room in our homes.

As much as I like GamerNexus testing, the noise levels in results give a very unreal representation of what the systems tested will sound like in a normal enviroment.

Below link is to sengpieaudio audio sound intensity to distance calculator so if you want to do the calculations yourself you can.
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-SoundAndDistance.htm
 
Just going to jump in here and ask... (Apologies!)

Ryzen 3600 user here, any reason to upgrade the original Ben Nevis cooler at all?

Idle i can be around 30/35.
Browsing 35/45

I've read through but still a bit unsure?
 
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