Loads of good coolers out there (both air and AIO). But for air coolers, you can't beat Noctua in my opinion. As long as you are OK with their colour scheme. Price a bit steep, but you have to pay for quality in my opinion.
I have the Noctua U14S (push/pull) and even though it's been out for a while, it beats or comes very close to even the biggest air coolers. Also puts a number of the AIO's to shame.
Within 2 degrees of the HUGE Noctua D15 cooler!
https://www.overclockers.com/noctua-nh-u14s-heatsink-review-2/
I have to admit that when it comes to CPU coolers I not only look at the performance of the cooler (cooling vs. noise), but also the weight.
Can't quite remember when and where I read it, but I believe the maximum recommended weight is 450 g, since in most cases the cooler will hang off the motherboard at a 90 degree angle and might damage other components, if the worst came to happen and it would get loose and fall off.
Most of the best coolers exceed that recommendation by a large margin, which is why I rarely give them a second look. The best compromise for me has been the Cooler Master Hyper212 Evo. It's served me well for the last 5 years or so and I would happily buy it again.
Noctua and Thermalright are the names most often mentioned with regard to great coolers. I have no experience with the latter, but I've owned case fans from Noctua which had sub par performance and really weren't worth the money. Then again, that's my singular experience with Noctua.
Christmas on a bike I miss Zalman…
Again,I tend to look at reviews first. Like with motherboards you cannot just trust one company to always make an item which will fit what you need.
Be Quiet! and Noctua for air-cooling.
Don't see the appeal of AIOs and never managed to justify the cost of a custom loop myself - had one planned for my current build but picked up a 2nd 1080 Ti on offer instead. Even on air and in this heat I've never seen them top ~78C. Hotter than I'd like but not hot enough to justify another £600 on cooling IMO.
Noctua all the way…I used black spray paint to cover the top silver so it looks nice in the case. And use 2 red fans to match the color of the build. Keeps my overclock nice and cool….I never have pump problems or water issues
Noctua seems to be the better one these days. Cooler Master is still holding on with the 212 EVO.
Now I have never used Bequiet. I have read goods things about bequiet's heatsink products. I would still give Noctua my business.
Thermalright used to be the daddy…
My current and previous system uses Noctua heatsinks. It's hard to beat them on silent and efficient coolers. Even the accessories are quite comprehensive and can be very handy, and you feel like you're getting your money's worth.
Korrorra
Now I have never used Bequiet. I have read goods things about bequiet's heatsink products. I would still give Noqtua my business.
I'd recommend them highly. I've never used them before my most recent build but I'm using their Dark Base Pro 900 case (comes with a few of their silent wings fans) which is absolutely fantastic, pleasure to build with, great cooling and runs pretty much silent. Also running their Dark Rock 3 CPU cooler, which admittedly was a pain to install but I hear they've improved on that with the newer version.
Noctua are great too, I use their fans & coolers for the systems at work where performance & noise are the sole criteria.
There's been a few “top of the industry” manufacturers through the years, but I think we all have to agree that it's Noctua at the moment. BeQuiet! are a close second on the air coolers front, though.
Corsair make some good AIO kits, mind you.
Best one I have had is an old Corsair H50i in this work computer. Almost 24/7 for last 4 years never missed a beat
No love for Scythe? Gosh darn, I've carried my Mugen III from a previous AMD system to a reasonably recent Intel, no compatibility issues or anything!
For my HTPC had to get a quiet low-profile cooler and went with BeQuiet - I was very impressed with the attention to detail and quality, afterwards picked up their PSU as well; I would also trust them completely with any purchase.
Scythe and the newer Arctic Cooling coolers are great.
But, nothing beats my mamooth Xigmatek Thor's hammer.
In general Noctua, though the Scythe Big Shuriken for low profile is good too
Used Noctua, would use again if going for an air cooler due to good temps / noise. Currently using a Corsair H70 AIO in push / pull config, which has been going strong since I built my PC in … 2011? Never had issues with it, nor pump noise. Survived a move during that, which a happy by-product of choosing to go with an aio, is the lack of weight on the motherboard means less concern when hitting those bumps on the road.
OilSheikh
Scythe and the newer Arctic Cooling coolers are great.
But, nothing beats my mamooth Xigmatek Thor's hammer.
Actually, quite a few coolers beat it. :p
Even though I've heard only amazing things about Noctua's coolers, I've never needed to change my CoolerMaster 212 EVO. It's pretty good, it does the job quietly and looks good doing it. What more could you want?
Thermalright (the makers of the first now all that common heat-pipe CPU cooler) has always been the one that has my heart. Being a proud owner of an IFX-14 (Infernal Fire eXtinguisher, that's a proper cooler's name!), a Venomous X, and a TRUE Spirit 140 that never have let me down. Sadly, the laptop CPUs with unlocked multipliers (Core i) and high thermal density killed the need for huge dual tower 6+ heat-pipe monsters and now everyone uses an (ugly) AIO. Honourable mentions are, of course, Noctua (the modern king of the air in terms of efficiency and performance), CoolerMaster (makers of the most popular and best price/performance cooler for the past 6.5 years and probably for the next 6.5 years), the forgotten heavyweights Thermaltake (Sonic Tower - first tower cooler) and Scythe (from exotic Japan, creating 1+kg mammoths for years Infinity), and Zalman (manufacturer of coolers that were performing badly compared to the new breed of towers but you wanted to buy them anyway because they were sooo pretty CNPS 9700 NT). It is absolutely astonishing how much variety there was in coolers - in size, shape, form, colour, and weight - back when overclocking was a more engaging thing and people were achieving 100%+ OC on air for 24/7. Most of those companies have probably gone bust by now. The new breed of coolers is much more boring due to the relatively known and understood best designs, no more experimentation and cutting-edge innovation, just RGB.
P.S. I'm so sorry I forgot Prolimatech with their totally revolutionary (in terms of overall performance) Megahalems that showed the big boys that you can be clever and without much resources still get amazing efficiency.
I used an Arctic Freezer 7 as my last air cooler - maybe not the best but certainly amazing bang for buck. Now I'm on some AIO thing which works damned well at keeping temps at bay. At the moment my CPU just isn't bottlenecking anything but the minute it does I have the hardware in place to overclock it. I did wonder though, so many of the AIOs appear to be so, so similar - are they made by the same OEM company (with some different casings and slightly different cooling blocks) and then branded and sent out?
AIO at a perice/performance that in my opinion is fantastic, with a surprise 4 quiet fans for push/pull .. ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 240, Ryzen 5 2600 idle at 26c and whisper quiet.
I'm still rocking a Prolimatech Megahalems on my older i7 860 - that's been rock solid for many years now with a hefty overclock.
The Noctua NH-14D on my i5 4670K (o/c to 4.3 all cores) sits vertically on a horizontal microATX board in a xigmatek mATX case and has been brilliant.
Both VERY quiet coolers and easily handle the overclocked CPUs. Saving for a new system as I changed career and now use my machine for content creation rather than only gaming, and I'm hoping to stick with air cooling if possible. Mates have had no end of trouble with noisy AIO water cooling - I reckon if you go water it's worth going for a proper custom loop, they AIO coolers just don't seem to offer anything over a good air cooler (and are noisier too).
Haven't had a huge amount of experience swapping in/out coolers but I do prefer Cooler Master for small machines, they have some great bang for buck. My current PC runs an Alpenfohn Brocken 3 and it blew the old 212 EVO out of the water. A few well placed Thermaltake Riing 140mm fans keep the air moving where I want it.
Frankly, between the Brocken and my R9, the heat transfer out of the machine and into the room has been TOO good and I'm practically turning the room into an oven with GTA V.
Personally I've never had a problem with the cooler that comes with the CPU, on the basis that it is the one the designed for the device.
I've been using Cryorig recently and am amazed at the price & quality. Definitely will be my “go to” cooler in the future if Noctura doesn't venture in AIO anytime soon.
peterb
Personally I've never had a problem with the cooler that comes with the CPU, on the basis that it is the one designed for bare minimum cooling of the device.
There. Fixed that for you. ;)
azrael-
There. Fixed that for you. ;)
Thank you - and that is sufficient to keep the device well within the design parameters! :)
And the latest Intel K series CPU's don't even come with a cooler! So think in this case, it would be running rather hot if you used the cooler that it came with (IE. none) :eek:
still rocking a domino alc- on an fx9590 would you believe
HDPlex - best passive coolers.
Noctua - best tower coolers.
AMD - best stock coolers.