Go figure: It was $21, then $31, then $23, and now, at time of writing, it is back to $21. Crazy price swings on this one, but well worth looking at in both price ranges! NOTE: If you need LGA1700 for Intel 12th Gen, they sell a separate bracket for that (not included yet!) Check out our Cooler Review Playlist to see full reviews of these coolers and more: th-cam.com/play/PLsuVSmND84QtyyYcalFch402w3ypcp1TQ.html We have an entire video on our Cooler Testing Methodology here: th-cam.com/video/fmTOJP4KOyk/w-d-xo.html If you missed it, we reviewed the Alienware R13 prebuilt here: th-cam.com/video/UnvxSkqJ8ic/w-d-xo.html
I think I might pick it up, for a mere $21!! Got a Dell pre-built's CPU cooler in my custom build, used to have a Wraith Stealth. Pre-built's was definitely an upgrade, though it gets pretty loud at startup. Ended up ordering the Thermalright Assassin X 120 Plus, for $5 more ($21.00 vs $25.84) you can get a nicer black top of the heatsink as well as another fan. But I still thank GN for bringing these coolers to our attention.
thermalright has done a lot of stuff like that. i have some 150mm thermalright fans in a 140mm housing which are such a stupid gimmick but they're great fans if you can fit them somewhere
"S-FDB" has been used for ages. IIRC the 'S' was for Sony, the manufacturer. Probably to differentiate them from Panasonic's fluid bearings. Pretty sure I have a bunch of old Scythe S-Flex fans that are S-FDB. It's not just some Thermalright thing.
I've yet to come across a sub-30 dollar tower style cooler that I wasn't happy with the performance of. Super appreciate that you're doing these in-depth deep dives and building up a database for their performance numbers. Most work great for the price, but to have the data laid out and see which one slightly leads the pack and edges the others out is awesome, particularly to the low budget builders out there
Bought the one with 2 fans a few years ago when I got Ryzen 3600, when the price was cheaper than Hyper 212 and didn't want RGB. Certainly better than the stock cooler and the fan noise was low. Glad these cheap coolers are good and accessible, especially outside of the US and EU
Great to see Thermalright finally getting good coverage again. Always have been my go-to brand for cheap but decent air coolers, got a few HR-02 Macho's still kickin' in multiple builds of mine. Always worth considering even if it's just for the included (surprisingly high quality!) screwdriver lol
I just tested a Silver Arrow SB-E on a 10850K@5.0GGHz. Still an excellent product. If you can feed it sufficient cool air, it might even cool a 12900K.
"The 'S' doesn't mean anything, we just do it to sound different." I too appreciate the honesty and while I understand the need for companies to stand out from their competitors, I reeeeaaalllyyyy wish they'd stop doing this. It creates unnecessary confusion and frustration when trying to hunt down parts. Especially if you spend an hour looking for a part that's (well, at least you thought) very specific in dimension and possibly proprietary... Only to realize it's in fact the opposite and you have literal bags of them laying around.
Also prone to "they probably used something cheap but tried to upmarket it kinda legally" perception instead. Honestly, if it's a standard quality technology, just sell it as is - your buyers will have fewer suspicions about your product than when you try to "sound different".
Cool animations for the cooler dimensions. Can I suggest that you different colors for the different axes in the future? I think it would provide a bit more clarity, especially when 2 of the axes are parallel to each other from the perspective of the camera.
A 3 colour axis reference set is standard for many cad programs for this reason, and gives relevant reference planes regardless of orientation if used in a reliably standardized manner, which could open up some creative camera angle/motion beauty shots in this case. Traditionally RGB, it could easily be GN colours, or a brand bar in a set of colours, etc. GN blue, black/yellow (hazard stripe?) & red would fit what I saw on GN merch, & can be tweaked by creative ppl for fun twists, just set which colour/s are for which plane/axis & keep it consistent.
I'm excited to FINALLY see a Thermalright cooler on this channel. I know that they're not very well known or popular in the US, but in Europe they've been a mainstay brand that offers near Noctua/Be Quiet! performance at a more budget oriented price. I have a Thermalright Macho Rev. B on my Ryzen 3600 and it's near silent. The fan can run as little as 300rpm. I believe I paid 40~45 euros for it which was 15~35 euros cheaper than competitors.
Nice to see Thermalright coolers being showcased here. Thermalright coolers are quite nice, and my experience with their Macho 90 and Macho 120 SBM were very good. Shame their presence is mostly limited to China and SEA these days, they used to be far more present with coolers like the HR-22, Silver Arrow, and Le Grand Macho.
Same - I bought Thermalright True Spirit 120 back with my first Sandy Bridge. Got it without fan and bought Noctua for it - I was really happy with it (both thermals and acoustics) for very reasonable amount of money.
In fairness, that presence (in North America, at least) mostly correlates to ye olden days when folk would spend hundreds of currencies to plaster heatsinks on video memory, system voltage regulation, system memory, northbridge, southbridge, and probably something else I've forgotten in my old age.
One important thing to mention is that Thermalright is the company that brought heatpipes into PC usecases. It was back in early 2000's. The company was way more recognizable around the world back then and they were manufacturing the best coolers. BTW They still make great coolers. When it comes to quality and finish they are better than Noctua. NH-D15 performance may be comparable to Silver Arrow IB-E, but it's thanks to increase of surface area costing 130g of additional heatsink weight (15% increase of weight comparing to IB-E). Talking about quality and finish - I have two NH-D14's and one NH-D15S - all have rough coldplate finish. You can literally see with a naked eye circular machining marks with nickel plating being very thin and not able to cover those marks to get the surface flat. On the mid and high-end coolers from Thermalright coldplates have mirror finish. Even two old IFX-14's that I own have mirror finish, same with Macho. Build quality and design - Thermalright also comes on top. That is because top-most fins on Noctua D14/D15 do not have contact with heatpipes at all and one heatpipe on D15S is cut 2cm too short (it ends under top fin of the cooler). This is how it was designed :P Mounting mechanism D14/D15 - the springs are very stiff and you have to use a lot of force to mount the cooler (if it was an open die era you would definitely cracked the cpu's die). Also because necessity to use a lot of force the threads on mounting screws are wearing extensively. I know an overclocker who said that his Noctua became useless after he mounted it more than hundred times and it's not a good product for benching. Now about D14 - absolutely the most annoying thing about this cooler is that doing something around it, for example mounting a fan or cleaning, is like sliding your hand on a grater.
@@GewelReal Let me sum up: noctua is good but high price with great brand awareness (not sure why, maybe the color?) Thermalright is good and very affordable but very little info in the West (they are popular in Asia though) Thermalright's FC140 is literally 1/2 the price of D15 🥵
@@minhthiendx Thermalright is so popular in China because of its nice quality and cheap price. What I mean by cheap is the price in mainland China is pretty much half of the price we see on amazon
I’ve been recommending Thermalright CPU coolers for a good bit now. When they go on sale, very hard to beat price to performance wise. Also a ton of variants; black, white and gray versions on single tower or dual tower, single or double fan, and RGB or no-RGB. So a good selection for everyone!
I've been running my 5800x with their ARO M14 cooler. Runs quiet and cool, so I'm happy with my decision to go with thermalright (not that I really had a choice as when i was buying the parts, the dark rock pro 4 and noctuas were out of stock everywhere). Plus it's massive, orange topped, with the RYZEN logo, lol.
The Fuma 2 has been discontinued and replaced with the Fuma 2 Rev B. which has fans that can run at higher RPMs (and are supposedly more efficient). It is supposed to perform better, but it also has a price increase of $6 (so $66 total). Scythe says that's temporary due to shipping problems but who knows. From the early reviews it seems to be worth the increase, but that does take it a little further away from the mid-low price range. But that is something you all might want to keep in mind when doing the price-to-performance considerations and recommendations. Also, hopefully you all can review the new model. Anyway, I really like Thermalright. I don't think they get enough credit/attention sometimes and have made some really great coolers over the years. Glad to see this one do so well and at a nice price. Great to see the competition. Great review as always you all. Thanks!
I'm so happy we're seeing budget components being tested! It's really only possible thanks to the years of validation you've done, and now people don't need to pay extra just for a "premium" brand. The mounting pressure and coldplate smoothness are particularly hard for shoppers to assess. Aside from that fan rpm, heatpipe count, and total mass are the only remaining factors and you can tell those at a glance.
Back in early 2000s the thermalright ultra extreme 120 was the Goto air cooler and probably out sold all other coolers here in aus. Had a e7200 at 4.8ghz and a e8400 at 4.2ghz 27/7.
the 120 was to expensive for me i brought a scythe ninja 2 rev.B back then was abit heavy on the mounting stock mounting system but made it though, maybe ill mount it up again hahah
Glad to see thermalright is still around making new stuff. I remember when the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (TRUE) was one of THE premier coolers on the market. Their top coolers performed alongside stuff like the NH-D14 back in the day, and brought with it a price to match. One of my close friends got a TRUE Copper, which was an absolutely beautiful cooler with 100% copper fins and 6 pipes (i think 8mm?) set up in your typical U configuration, rather than splitting the stack like how Noctua does on the D-14 and D-15. I remember helping him lap the base and his CPU both to such a perfect mirror finish that they vacuum sealed together, and squeezed over 99% of all thermal paste out when mounted together, enabling a basically perfect metal on metal interface. CPUs back then were much less heat dense, so this + a delta 5000RPM fan meant you could break records typically only within the range of liquid cooling, provided you lived far enough north or south that you got cool nights part of the year. Ain't nothing better than going sub zero on air cooling for a few weeks of the year xD. I have another friend whose family had a place up in lake tahoe at the time, so we'd go up there to ski during the day and LAN and overclock at night
Thermalright have been making tower coolers for DECADES, I used to swear by my old TR120UE, one of the very best coolers of its generation (AM2/775). They did some of the very early dual tower designs that Noctua still apes in its D series.
@@nathanking6242 Everything costs. Best price/performance is had by allocating salary to engineer, not western social media cringworthiness consultant.
I got the thermalright peerless assassin, so good for the price, which I believe was 40$ at the time. It has two radiator parts and the white color is so nice, fits in an all white PC real nice. I use it on a R7 3700x
Me too. Got the full black one. I wish they had a black RGB option, because once I replaced the fans with RGB ones, the performance got worse and noise levels went up significantly. Not Thermalright's fault though.
Man, seeing Thermalright after all this time makes me harken back to the days when the Megahalems was the king of the meme cooler roost. You guys should try to find a Rev C Megahalems somewhere and see how it hangs with the NH-D15 and decent AIOs.
Proudly owner of Fuma2, I'm glad to see you are doing more and more "non-mainstream brands" coolers reviews. Awesome performance for a less than 40$ cooler, IMO. Thanks!
Here in South America (and probably over there in the US too) what falls into that range are also the: ID-Cooling SE-214-XT (u$s17 over here), SE-914-XT Basic (u$s19), SE-224-XT Basic (u$s21) and SE-226-XT Black (u$s30). Would love to see those in the comparison!
@@fg56h I was looking at getting a Thermalright from Maximus Gaming to cool a 12600k few weeks ago, but I wasn't able to find the LGA1700 adapter kit and contacting Thermalright was no help. I"ll probably go with one of the ID Cooling options since the adapter kit is available.
I remember back in 2009--2012 Thermalright made huge, very popular tower coolers (Meglahem). They also made big north bridge coolers and gpu coolers. If I am remembering correctly they use to work with DFI (Lan-party) motherboards and had just enormous coolers all over the boards. But, if memory serves they were very very high priced coolers.... I never bought one because I was afraid of the weight... they had a copper one that was 5 lbs I think. Very interesting though ....I thought they just went out of business because I haven't seen anything from them in the USA in 10 yrs or so.
I had the copper one on my system, yeah it was almost 5lbs. It put a bit of a bend in the board but it wasn’t an issue. Performance was crazy good, honestly compared to what you could get back then for water cooling for 120$ it was a no brainer. For air coolers they are my go to, just because of nostalgia and honestly I think they are very good for the price.
Found this on Amazon for a little less than $20 yesterday. Was surprised to find a decent looking cooler this cheap, but wasn't sure about it. This review made me buy it right away! Thank you for doing these deep dives. Side note - It's way overkill for my i3 system, but it's my TV PC that also doubles as a plex server, and the stock cooler is damn loud so I'm hoping this keep things nice and quiet.
It's a small thing but I enjoy you put up a short install guide before your real thoughts and opinions. If I were someone that bought the product, if it's good or not (withstanding house fires) doesn't matter, I'm trying it. Having the install guide before the review makes it much easier for people who will potentially be seeing this video in the future as an educational tool, and that's the most important thing of all.
Right now for $5 more, the Thermalright Assassin X 120 Plus comes with 2 fans and a bit of a thicker heatsink (?). Not sure how better it is with the Assassin Spirit with one fan, but the option is there! Always enjoy these budget cpu cooler reviews
I just got this 2 days ago for an i5 9400f and I am amazed at how well it works. Got it for $25 and it is really good. Did a test with OCCT pushing it to 120W for a few seconds then settled at 65W and it never made a noise, temp stayed around 60C. For the price it's unbeatable. Best comparison I have is from my previous build running a be quiet! dark rock 2, also a 4 heatpipe cooler. That cooler is more than twice the price and doesn't even outperform this cheap thermalright cooler.
It’s great to see a number of great performing budget friendly coolers hitting the market as not everyone is after a $65+USD cooler for their builds. Thanks for a detailed video on these coolers GN 🥰👍
Thermalright line needs to be reviewed. Glad its happening. Been kind of an open secret in the south east asian pc communities. The peerless assassin and the frost commander are bang for buck coolers.
Thank you for the review! Just bought the V2 of the Assassin Spirit 120 for my i3 12100F. The noise of the stock cooler was starting to pierce my ear. For anyone interested it fits on a itx in the smff case CoolerMaster NR200P.
Thermalright was really a good product all the time, never dissapointed me (had at least 4-5 models of coolers and 4 types of fans). Was really surprised why their products didnt catch up on people (apart from XC coolers).
Thermalright has made a lot of memorable heatisnks in the past decade. LE grand machos . the huge silver arrows. their OG SK heatsinks with ear killing delta fans. they needed this anti gravity technology back then when they were making the TRUE copper. almost 2kg beast was sketchy as hell.
Many of these tests are so interesting. Found myself reading your testing methodology. I'm glad you're able to bring this testing to your reviews to bolster your conclusions.
Early enough to tell you to review other thermalright coolers please? A lot of them are very cheap, even high-end double tower ones and still unreviewed.
I own a Thermalright true Spirit 140 from 2015 or so, and it is a beast of a cooler! I've run my old Phenom II 960T in 6 core config (unlocked the 2 "extra" cores) with it and it NEVER went over 80ºC
I do wish ThermalRight get "right"ly recognise more in western market as many owners speak good about it that i made my purchase of Silverarrow T8 for around $55. Huge cooler but height low enough lol. Did need lapping on coldplate cuz it was too convex but with my OCed 3700x at 4.375GHz 1.33V load volt, i can go as high as 160W PPT at near 95C with prime95 small fft, around 75C on cinebench r20 at 115W PPT. I was sold to the Silverarrow series of being rival to noctua d14. Was searching for noctua d15s but too expensive, learnt that thermalright able to rival it close.
Awesome that you're doing Thermalrigth reviews. Yeah, prices for their stuff is nuts and jumps up and down all the time. I have the Frost Commander 140 and I think it outperforms the D15.
Good to see Thermalright being reviewed. I've had a Macho since 2012 for my 3570k which I sold 1.5y ago, and I'm glad to report Thermalright was able to provide an AM4 adapter for pretty much free (only paid shipping from Germany) almost a decade after purchase. They also supplied some extra fan clips for free since mine were going bad. Top support right there and the cooler has now went through a (briefly) 2600x, 3800x, (briefly) a 5950x which barely hit 89C on Geekbench, and it's not full time on my 5900x doing great. The only real issue with the Macho is the complicated center screw, and maybe the fan damper stickers falling off. Other than that, even the 140mm fan is still top notch for a decade.
Thermalright basically took over Chinese cooler market right now. You got Assassin Spirit 120 R SE for like $11 that performs basically the same as noctua nh-u12s.
@@HazewinDog Thermalright is dirt cheap in mainland China. The running joke is that you buy the fans and thermal paste while you get the heatsink for free.
it looks like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 - I've paired it with a 2600, then a 5600X, and it works great (for a 65W CPU) EDIT: around the same price (I paid, anyway) as this Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120
It actually looks pretty good. It falls into the "I want to build a gaming pc as cheap as possible" category. I can see this cooler becoming really popular if they keep it at it's price point and keep up with the demand. Sadly I've seen a lot of coolers in the past only sell for a few months and then disappear forever because they couldn't compete with the Hyper 212 Evo which is the next good cheapest tower cooler.
For me, as a German, it's super nice to hear you talk. You speak quickly but clearly, so that I can understand almost every single word myself. I mean I've been guessing and contextualizing for some time and still understand fast speaking people. But it's so much cooler to understand it word for word. I feel like your content is pretty pumped with knowledge and not stuffed with half-baked opinion, for the quick clicks. Will definitely leave a subscription and browse through the VODs Regards
Oh man, Thermalright. They used to be my go-to company for high end air coolers. They were basically Noctua before Noctua became Noctua. But then they just...stagnated. Didn't release any meaningful new products at all for a very long time. Not exactly sure what happened over there...
Would like to have seen the Hyper 212 EVO numbers in the graphs as it occasionally drops down to the $25- $30 price range (especially on Amazon Prime Day & Black Friday), besides the original Hyper 212 EVO is one of the most readily available CPU coolers on the used market for which you can pick them up all day for under $20 on Craigslist and eBay...this makes it an easy choice for budget builds which is exactly the market this new cooler is targeting ;)
I wonder how the cooling performance of cheap heatsinks like this would vary, when used with different tier fans? I'd be interested in seeing a roundup like that. For eg. replacing the default fan with another cheap fan, then with fans like Arctic P12 & Bionix P120, then higher tier fans like Noctua, Phanteks, Scythe etc.
Thermalright is known to make very good fans, I wouldn't be surprised if there was very little difference. The TY-143, which was one of the fans they put on their 140mm tower coolers, consistently outperformed Noctua's equivalent fans back when they were being sold, and it was substantially cheaper.
Yesssss, the cheaper cooler reviews are coming in! You've been dropping hints, ironing out the test process, added the lower-wattage chart... You tested the Vetroo V5 which firmly established the relevance this part of the market. Did some test run reviews with some essentially non-buyable parts to put your review process through the paces. Working on even better instrumentation and controlled testing environments... Now the real reviews are coming in to look at where the rest of the field is! I have been watching closely for this and it is super exciting, IMO! If you look at the most-bought coolers, sheer volume of sales, this is where the vast majority of shoppers are buying. So this advice will be *hugely* helpful to real buyers, most of whom don't want or need a top-end cooler capable of cooling an overclocked, and/or top-end CPU. Most people are, by and large, buying low-to-mid CPUs and running them stock. Myself included. And we work for living and want to stretch our dollar. The low end cooler parts are so dang good, it hardly makes sense to buy a more absolutely performant one unless you're using it to earn an income somehow, if your CPU part is so hot it won't run right without it (maybe buy a different CPU?), or it's your once-in-a-decade splurge and you want to feel really spoiled. THANKS for looking where the most consumers will buy. A strong tower at ~30-ish is where the most scrappy fighting is among manufacturers, and far and away the value sweet point. It's just they are almost never properly reviewed by a trusted outlet, so most people are going by the star system on Amazon. Not the most reliable source of information when it comes to comparing PC parts! Smaller outlets do review them, but they often compare against fewer other products, and their choice of test, and their ability to carry them out precisely, leaves some degree of trustworthiness left to be earned IMO. I super valued those when buying my cooler, but Gamers Nexus does *such a goo job* reviewing and laying out the results nd being impartial, I really appreciate the time you're taking to wade into this market. Signed: A cheap PC buyer who still wants good stuff... And who admittedly watches more of your videos than I've ever put toward buying any one part... I just want to know the state of the market! Who knows when someone I know will ask me for buying advice next... Thanks folks!
Glad Steve is finally taking a look at the Thermalright product line. As a "tech support" for my friends and family(for better or worse I build 5+ rigs per year consistently over the past), I use this cooler on all my budget builds. My high-end choice used to be Noctua D-15, but now with the crazy hot i9, I had to opt for cheap 360 AIOs.
"Heat rises" is Natural Convection which is completely dependent on the buoyancy effect caused gravity. There is a type of heat pipe that will work in micro G environments and is commonly used on spacecraft, made of Aluminum and filled with Ammonia.
I owned a TR tower cooler long before I ever heard of Noctua, we are talking a very long time ago ( I am old) it was a tremendous cooler and was not the most expensive. Good to see them still kicken it.
Thermlaright had always been my go-to cooler company like a decade ago, until they pretty much disappeared here in the west. I fondly remember the TRUE series. So glad they're back, and in such a competitive way. Got a low profile AXP-90 X47 for a SFF build... works marvelously, although the mounting system on those isn't very accurate, leaving you to decide how much to torque the screws in.
Yes ! A Thermalright review ! Finally ! :D Very curious about their flagship, I think it can compete pretty well with good prices compared to let's say...Noctua or BeQuiet! According to your test, this Spirit 120 is better overall than the Noctua U12S and the redux version, while being wayyyyy less expensive ! I want to see what their top of the line are able to do now :D Thanks GN for this review :)
Thanks Gamers Nexus! Just scored myself a $21 cooler! I had been thinking of the Fuma 2 Rev. b, but this is way better value at a third the price for a 65w chip!
Got a 120mm dual tower from thermal right for $42 last month. Runs my 5600x no problem and it's very quiet under load. People are seriously sleeping on this brand.
My first build sported a Thermalright TRUE Black on a Q6600 / EVGA 780i in 2008. The OCAU / PC PowerPlay forums swore by the TRUE at the time and the nickel plated 'Black' version was a beautiful piece of kit.
Thermalright was the king of cpu coolers back in the 00s with the ultra 120 series and their HR-01 passive focus coolers. Nice to see them get some more recognition again.
@Gamers Nexus Your link is actually for the wrong one. It looks right but it's a 2 fan model, and that's why it's $30. The $21 single fan is sold out now (thanks to your vid 😉)
My first cooler was a Thermalright Venomous X (for a 3570k), about 10 years ago. Then they kinda disappeared from the market and stopped innovating. But I will be happy to see a comeback.
Great review as usual, love the anti gravity test. I know it changes constantly but Amazon actually had the dual fan version of this cooler for only $26 with the single fan coming in at $30. That is a great deal on a dual fan tower cooler.
Happy to see new products that help people save money on PC building. It's expensive to make a good PC, but cheap and effective parts like these help people deal with the expensive parts.
Just got my GN coaster, must say I'm very impressed with its quality and love the design! Keeps the drinks around the pc looking stylish! Was worth waiting for the back order!! Next time getting the shot glasses and the PC in a cube thing!
My Thermalright Macho B is doing a great job so far, but honestly the greatest thing about it is the free extra long philips head screwdriver that came with it. Insanly handy that thing!
Thanks for this excellent review. You mention you hated the mounting system on the Peerless Assassin, like several Amazon Reviews. I think they updated the install kit, because I just installed a Peerless Assassin on a 5600x in an MSI B550 motherboard with no problem whatsoever. I was expecting to have to push down on the screwdriver very hard, as the Amazon reviews said. Instead, my Peerless Assassin was as easy to install as Noctua. Also, my AM4 kit looks different than pictured here: The plastic standoffs in my Peerless Assassin are red, and the bars are curved like Noctua's. I suspect they revised the AM4 kit when they recently added the Intel 1700 install kit. My box had an intel 1700 sticker attached, and the rest of the box was printed, so the change was likely very recent. I actually returned a Scythe Fuma 2, because my Peerless Assassin just seems better built. I can actually see solder at the joints of the cold plate and the heat pipes, and the towers have attractive aluminum caps. My gpu backplate gets pretty hot, so I also prefer the Peerless Assasin's offset to give the gpu more space, similar to Noctua's twin tower cooler.
Good to see Thermalright getting back into the game in the US. They made the best coolers you could get, short of water calling, back in the Athlon X2 days. I remember getting some pretty sizeable OC gains on those chips just by adding the TR copper heatpipe coolers they were making back then.
This video dug up a long lost memory of an old 92mm cooler I had on a Athlon xp build wayyyyy back. Maintained a stable overclock and fit my budget as a high school student so I guess it did pretty well 😂
Currently $30. Even if it was more than the Ventoo, I know Thermalright's mounting hardware is good and actually works, unlike the hit or miss with Ventoo's mounts. I've been using Thermalright coolers since the Socket 775 days, and they've been solid coolers. They were pretty popular back then, and lot of their designs wound up being imitated and improved upon by Noctua. Still have their True Copper, a 4 pound tower cooler that remains kind of ridiculous, but it's beautiful.
Looks like Thermalright is still holding onto their low cost but decently performing stance in the industry since the Socket A days. I used to have their copper block for my Athlon XP system but the fan was swapped out for a hubless 70mm fan (magnetic motors were in the corners) and served me well even with OC'ing my XP 2500+ to 3200+ levels. I think I bought all of it from Frozen PC.
Yay Thermalright! Brings back good memories of scouring tons of websites and reviews (particularly dansdata) for the best heatsink and fan (bought them separately back in the day), then managing to find one at the local computer tradeshows they had monthly at random convention centers.. First ever build was an Athlon Thunderbird 1.2Ghz with a Thermalright (SK6 I think?) solid copper beast that weighed like 10 pounds. Good times.
Good to see Thermalright products finally showing up on GN. They've consistently had the best price/performance heatsink+fan combos in nearly every segment, and some of the best products overall in their respective segments, like the old Thermalright True Spirit Ultra which outperformed the NH-D14 as a single tower. Their newer AIOs are also supposedly very, very good, but it seems like they're currently only still for sale in Asia. I've only ever used Thermalright heatsinks since the early 2000s and I don't think that will change any time soon.
Just picked up the Peerless Assassin for 60 bucks all in CAD. Played Tarkov all night and my max CPU temp was 45~ max as reported by CPU-Z highest reading. I'm actually blown away. Wraith Stealth allowed my CPU to hit temps of approx 60~ give or take. The dual fin stacks, dual fan cooler is an absolute steal for 60 bucks and I can barely hear the thing. My 80mm underneath my GPU for exhaust is louder. Edit: The mount does suck tho like Steve said, couldn't get one side to thread for over 10 mins...
Nothing to flex with, but affordable, honest and pretty quiet. Good product! I still love my Macho Direct, had it on a Phenom II and after I got a AM4 Retention Module shipped for free from Thermalright, it cools a 3600 quietly and will probably cool an AM5 CPU in a couple of years.
I loved the oldschool Thermalright smart fans. Cool orange color, high flow upwards of 75cfm and adjustable. Truely ahead of its time. Only issue was the blades were made very brittle and easly shattered into a million pieces.
Crazy to see air coolers coming back which i like. I recently went back to aircooler since games dont tax cpus much anymore like back in the early 2000s - early 2010s. That and my AiO broke after 8 years breaking my ram stick next to it (idk how it just shot out between the plate and housing hit my ram and puddled on top of my GPU plate only broke the ram stick though luckily). Their nice, cheap, and my AiO was louder than my Be Quiet aircooler.
Go figure: It was $21, then $31, then $23, and now, at time of writing, it is back to $21. Crazy price swings on this one, but well worth looking at in both price ranges! NOTE: If you need LGA1700 for Intel 12th Gen, they sell a separate bracket for that (not included yet!)
Check out our Cooler Review Playlist to see full reviews of these coolers and more:
th-cam.com/play/PLsuVSmND84QtyyYcalFch402w3ypcp1TQ.html
We have an entire video on our Cooler Testing Methodology here: th-cam.com/video/fmTOJP4KOyk/w-d-xo.html
If you missed it, we reviewed the Alienware R13 prebuilt here: th-cam.com/video/UnvxSkqJ8ic/w-d-xo.html
I think I might pick it up, for a mere $21!! Got a Dell pre-built's CPU cooler in my custom build, used to have a Wraith Stealth. Pre-built's was definitely an upgrade, though it gets pretty loud at startup.
Ended up ordering the Thermalright Assassin X 120 Plus, for $5 more ($21.00 vs $25.84) you can get a nicer black top of the heatsink as well as another fan. But I still thank GN for bringing these coolers to our attention.
Need some LGA1700 Cheap coolers that will keep 12600K temps under control
A decent product for a reasonable price? Shhhhhh!!! Don't tell Dell they're allergic to such things
Meanwhile snowman sits at 15
The timing makes me wonder if someone on their team already saw your video. Maybe they added their brand/product name as a Google alert?
"We did it to sound different". 1000 points for honesty.
honesty would be:
We did it to sound different, to jump out from the mass to make more money ;)
@@emmata98 no shit lol
Some companies hits the market with BS n lies some just straight up goes for trolling and humor!
thermalright has done a lot of stuff like that. i have some 150mm thermalright fans in a 140mm housing which are such a stupid gimmick but they're great fans if you can fit them somewhere
@@emmata98 That's implied.
Absolutely love that they just admit the S means nothing.
Its marketing for a cpu cooler, it means nothing! If you want, go ahead and ue us!
"S-FDB" has been used for ages. IIRC the 'S' was for Sony, the manufacturer. Probably to differentiate them from Panasonic's fluid bearings. Pretty sure I have a bunch of old Scythe S-Flex fans that are S-FDB. It's not just some Thermalright thing.
@@hughJ Holy shit, they lied. It does mean something! Dun-dun-duuuuun!
@@tiborklein5349 Not to them. ;)
@@j-bro Please tell me you missed the “s” off “sue” on purpose? Please?
I've yet to come across a sub-30 dollar tower style cooler that I wasn't happy with the performance of. Super appreciate that you're doing these in-depth deep dives and building up a database for their performance numbers. Most work great for the price, but to have the data laid out and see which one slightly leads the pack and edges the others out is awesome, particularly to the low budget builders out there
Yeah. I agree Danny! My cooler (an SE-224-XT) was $27 USD when I bought it and i really like it actually
So yeah even the more budget coolers can be amazing
if you have such low standards, you should find it easy to marry.
@@rstidman It's a funny sounding comment but not really relevant. It's all relative to a case by case build.
If you are happy with all of the coolers at this price point, why is this impressive, if they all are? This making none of them standout
Glad to see coolers at this price point performing at such levels.
ageed, those of us with inferior tastes, which reflect our inferior IQ's, will only win with coolers like this.
Bought the one with 2 fans a few years ago when I got Ryzen 3600, when the price was cheaper than Hyper 212 and didn't want RGB. Certainly better than the stock cooler and the fan noise was low. Glad these cheap coolers are good and accessible, especially outside of the US and EU
Great to see Thermalright finally getting good coverage again. Always have been my go-to brand for cheap but decent air coolers, got a few HR-02 Macho's still kickin' in multiple builds of mine. Always worth considering even if it's just for the included (surprisingly high quality!) screwdriver lol
I just tested a Silver Arrow SB-E on a 10850K@5.0GGHz. Still an excellent product. If you can feed it sufficient cool air, it might even cool a 12900K.
"The 'S' doesn't mean anything, we just do it to sound different." I too appreciate the honesty and while I understand the need for companies to stand out from their competitors, I reeeeaaalllyyyy wish they'd stop doing this. It creates unnecessary confusion and frustration when trying to hunt down parts. Especially if you spend an hour looking for a part that's (well, at least you thought) very specific in dimension and possibly proprietary... Only to realize it's in fact the opposite and you have literal bags of them laying around.
Also prone to "they probably used something cheap but tried to upmarket it kinda legally" perception instead. Honestly, if it's a standard quality technology, just sell it as is - your buyers will have fewer suspicions about your product than when you try to "sound different".
S stands for “super”
Cool animations for the cooler dimensions. Can I suggest that you different colors for the different axes in the future? I think it would provide a bit more clarity, especially when 2 of the axes are parallel to each other from the perspective of the camera.
I'll pass this along to the editors! Thanks for the feedback.
A 3 colour axis reference set is standard for many cad programs for this reason, and gives relevant reference planes regardless of orientation if used in a reliably standardized manner, which could open up some creative camera angle/motion beauty shots in this case.
Traditionally RGB, it could easily be GN colours, or a brand bar in a set of colours, etc. GN blue, black/yellow (hazard stripe?) & red would fit what I saw on GN merch, & can be tweaked by creative ppl for fun twists, just set which colour/s are for which plane/axis & keep it consistent.
@@iainburgess8577 I see what u did here
I'm excited to FINALLY see a Thermalright cooler on this channel. I know that they're not very well known or popular in the US, but in Europe they've been a mainstay brand that offers near Noctua/Be Quiet! performance at a more budget oriented price. I have a Thermalright Macho Rev. B on my Ryzen 3600 and it's near silent. The fan can run as little as 300rpm. I believe I paid 40~45 euros for it which was 15~35 euros cheaper than competitors.
Nice to see Thermalright coolers being showcased here. Thermalright coolers are quite nice, and my experience with their Macho 90 and Macho 120 SBM were very good. Shame their presence is mostly limited to China and SEA these days, they used to be far more present with coolers like the HR-22, Silver Arrow, and Le Grand Macho.
I think Fry's was the last retailer that carried them
Same - I bought Thermalright True Spirit 120 back with my first Sandy Bridge. Got it without fan and bought Noctua for it - I was really happy with it (both thermals and acoustics) for very reasonable amount of money.
In fairness, that presence (in North America, at least) mostly correlates to ye olden days when folk would spend hundreds of currencies to plaster heatsinks on video memory, system voltage regulation, system memory, northbridge, southbridge, and probably something else I've forgotten in my old age.
One important thing to mention is that Thermalright is the company that brought heatpipes into PC usecases. It was back in early 2000's. The company was way more recognizable around the world back then and they were manufacturing the best coolers.
BTW They still make great coolers. When it comes to quality and finish they are better than Noctua. NH-D15 performance may be comparable to Silver Arrow IB-E, but it's thanks to increase of surface area costing 130g of additional heatsink weight (15% increase of weight comparing to IB-E).
Talking about quality and finish - I have two NH-D14's and one NH-D15S - all have rough coldplate finish. You can literally see with a naked eye circular machining marks with nickel plating being very thin and not able to cover those marks to get the surface flat. On the mid and high-end coolers from Thermalright coldplates have mirror finish. Even two old IFX-14's that I own have mirror finish, same with Macho. Build quality and design - Thermalright also comes on top. That is because top-most fins on Noctua D14/D15 do not have contact with heatpipes at all and one heatpipe on D15S is cut 2cm too short (it ends under top fin of the cooler). This is how it was designed :P
Mounting mechanism D14/D15 - the springs are very stiff and you have to use a lot of force to mount the cooler (if it was an open die era you would definitely cracked the cpu's die). Also because necessity to use a lot of force the threads on mounting screws are wearing extensively. I know an overclocker who said that his Noctua became useless after he mounted it more than hundred times and it's not a good product for benching.
Now about D14 - absolutely the most annoying thing about this cooler is that doing something around it, for example mounting a fan or cleaning, is like sliding your hand on a grater.
so... noctua makes good fans, meh coolers?
@@GewelReal Don't get me wrong N14/D15 coolers are very good performance-wise, but there are things to improve.
@@GewelReal Let me sum up:
noctua is good but high price with great brand awareness (not sure why, maybe the color?)
Thermalright is good and very affordable but very little info in the West (they are popular in Asia though)
Thermalright's FC140 is literally 1/2 the price of D15 🥵
interesting...I have the Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT in my 3700X system and it performs really really well. An unsung hero that cooler is!!
@@minhthiendx Thermalright is so popular in China because of its nice quality and cheap price. What I mean by cheap is the price in mainland China is pretty much half of the price we see on amazon
I’ve been recommending Thermalright CPU coolers for a good bit now. When they go on sale, very hard to beat price to performance wise. Also a ton of variants; black, white and gray versions on single tower or dual tower, single or double fan, and RGB or no-RGB. So a good selection for everyone!
I've been running my 5800x with their ARO M14 cooler. Runs quiet and cool, so I'm happy with my decision to go with thermalright (not that I really had a choice as when i was buying the parts, the dark rock pro 4 and noctuas were out of stock everywhere). Plus it's massive, orange topped, with the RYZEN logo, lol.
do you recommend going this for a ryzen 7 5700g? i hate stock cpu cooler because sounds and it´s not effective at hot temps.
@@t1luso609 yeah it should be a solid choice
The Fuma 2 has been discontinued and replaced with the Fuma 2 Rev B. which has fans that can run at higher RPMs (and are supposedly more efficient). It is supposed to perform better, but it also has a price increase of $6 (so $66 total). Scythe says that's temporary due to shipping problems but who knows. From the early reviews it seems to be worth the increase, but that does take it a little further away from the mid-low price range. But that is something you all might want to keep in mind when doing the price-to-performance considerations and recommendations. Also, hopefully you all can review the new model.
Anyway, I really like Thermalright. I don't think they get enough credit/attention sometimes and have made some really great coolers over the years. Glad to see this one do so well and at a nice price. Great to see the competition. Great review as always you all. Thanks!
Just boosting this because I'd also love to see GN take a look at the changes of the Fuma 2 Rev B.
i am happy with mine on 11700, silent run. i root for scythe to live long and prosper with good products for good price. Unlike overpriced noctua.
I'm so happy we're seeing budget components being tested! It's really only possible thanks to the years of validation you've done, and now people don't need to pay extra just for a "premium" brand. The mounting pressure and coldplate smoothness are particularly hard for shoppers to assess.
Aside from that fan rpm, heatpipe count, and total mass are the only remaining factors and you can tell those at a glance.
Back in early 2000s the thermalright ultra extreme 120 was the Goto air cooler and probably out sold all other coolers here in aus. Had a e7200 at 4.8ghz and a e8400 at 4.2ghz 27/7.
Long live Atomic MPC and OCAU! Haha
@@Girvo747 yes sir very atomic!
exactly i cooled an e6600, q6600, 2600k and 3770k and it did the job perfectly even in overclocking!
the 120 was to expensive for me i brought a scythe ninja 2 rev.B back then was abit heavy on the mounting stock mounting system but made it though, maybe ill mount it up again hahah
Glad to see thermalright is still around making new stuff. I remember when the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (TRUE) was one of THE premier coolers on the market. Their top coolers performed alongside stuff like the NH-D14 back in the day, and brought with it a price to match. One of my close friends got a TRUE Copper, which was an absolutely beautiful cooler with 100% copper fins and 6 pipes (i think 8mm?) set up in your typical U configuration, rather than splitting the stack like how Noctua does on the D-14 and D-15. I remember helping him lap the base and his CPU both to such a perfect mirror finish that they vacuum sealed together, and squeezed over 99% of all thermal paste out when mounted together, enabling a basically perfect metal on metal interface. CPUs back then were much less heat dense, so this + a delta 5000RPM fan meant you could break records typically only within the range of liquid cooling, provided you lived far enough north or south that you got cool nights part of the year. Ain't nothing better than going sub zero on air cooling for a few weeks of the year xD. I have another friend whose family had a place up in lake tahoe at the time, so we'd go up there to ski during the day and LAN and overclock at night
Thermalright have been making tower coolers for DECADES, I used to swear by my old TR120UE, one of the very best coolers of its generation (AM2/775). They did some of the very early dual tower designs that Noctua still apes in its D series.
Man, that was the cooler back in the day!
Holy shit, never thought Steve would review this cooler.
Between this and the Hyte, I must conclude that the weirder the marketing, the better the product is.
Bizarre, isn’t it? I would’ve expected the opposite.
@@nathanking6242 Everything costs. Best price/performance is had by allocating salary to engineer, not western social media cringworthiness consultant.
I got the thermalright peerless assassin, so good for the price, which I believe was 40$ at the time. It has two radiator parts and the white color is so nice, fits in an all white PC real nice. I use it on a R7 3700x
Me too. Got the full black one. I wish they had a black RGB option, because once I replaced the fans with RGB ones, the performance got worse and noise levels went up significantly. Not Thermalright's fault though.
Man, seeing Thermalright after all this time makes me harken back to the days when the Megahalems was the king of the meme cooler roost. You guys should try to find a Rev C Megahalems somewhere and see how it hangs with the NH-D15 and decent AIOs.
Or even a true copper 120
When Zalman was a thing XD
I have a Megahalem still on my i7 980X. Don't know what rev it is.
King of cooler was the Thermalright IFX-14 .
@@ionstorm66 The old motherboard warper, I'm pretty sure those things weigh more than even some of the giant passive sinks with aluminum fins.
Proudly owner of Fuma2, I'm glad to see you are doing more and more "non-mainstream brands" coolers reviews.
Awesome performance for a less than 40$ cooler, IMO.
Thanks!
i've been using this one for a while for my 12600kf build, so far it's been awesome, when I opened the box I knew this cooler is a solid one.
What temps do you get for a full load? I'm asking for a 11600kf which won't be OC'd.
@@invisisense5464 P4.6 E3.7 128w is around 77 celcius. P4.9, E4.0 155w is around 86 degrees for my 12600KF.
@@milkymike122 nice temps
Was looking for something like this for a build. Perfect recommendation at $21 on Amazon. Thanks so much.
Here in South America (and probably over there in the US too) what falls into that range are also the: ID-Cooling SE-214-XT (u$s17 over here), SE-914-XT Basic (u$s19), SE-224-XT Basic (u$s21) and SE-226-XT Black (u$s30). Would love to see those in the comparison!
Argentina much?
@@fg56h I was looking at getting a Thermalright from Maximus Gaming to cool a 12600k few weeks ago, but I wasn't able to find the LGA1700 adapter kit and contacting Thermalright was no help. I"ll probably go with one of the ID Cooling options since the adapter kit is available.
I remember back in 2009--2012 Thermalright made huge, very popular tower coolers (Meglahem). They also made big north bridge coolers and gpu coolers.
If I am remembering correctly they use to work with DFI (Lan-party) motherboards and had just enormous coolers all over the boards.
But, if memory serves they were very very high priced coolers.... I never bought one because I was afraid of the weight... they had a copper one that was 5 lbs I think.
Very interesting though ....I thought they just went out of business because I haven't seen anything from them in the USA in 10 yrs or so.
I had the copper one on my system, yeah it was almost 5lbs. It put a bit of a bend in the board but it wasn’t an issue. Performance was crazy good, honestly compared to what you could get back then for water cooling for 120$ it was a no brainer. For air coolers they are my go to, just because of nostalgia and honestly I think they are very good for the price.
Thermalright: Anti-Gravity Heat Pipe!
Steve: They’re a little confused, but they’ve got the Spirit.
that was subtle lol
Found this on Amazon for a little less than $20 yesterday. Was surprised to find a decent looking cooler this cheap, but wasn't sure about it. This review made me buy it right away! Thank you for doing these deep dives. Side note - It's way overkill for my i3 system, but it's my TV PC that also doubles as a plex server, and the stock cooler is damn loud so I'm hoping this keep things nice and quiet.
Did it?
@@FPVwineUK Yup! The fan is basically silent with how big the cooler is. My PSU fan is louder
@@lukini101 nice, I'll be installing mine soon. The AMD fan is so whiny.
@@lukini101 turns out it's both my HDD making all the noise :') No AMD stock cooler whine though and impressive cooling!
I installed this cooler and my computer smashed into the ceiling
Wow! They DO work!
@@GamersNexus We should call NASA and inform them of this groundbreaking discovery
@@NemusDark ceilingbreaking you mean?
It's a small thing but I enjoy you put up a short install guide before your real thoughts and opinions. If I were someone that bought the product, if it's good or not (withstanding house fires) doesn't matter, I'm trying it. Having the install guide before the review makes it much easier for people who will potentially be seeing this video in the future as an educational tool, and that's the most important thing of all.
Right now for $5 more, the Thermalright Assassin X 120 Plus comes with 2 fans and a bit of a thicker heatsink (?). Not sure how better it is with the Assassin Spirit with one fan, but the option is there! Always enjoy these budget cpu cooler reviews
AX 120 has a copper plate at the bottom of heat pipes while AS 120 has a direct contact between heat pipes and cpus.
@@bygonedream7877 that's what i thought, plus the AS 120 is a newer version so it's probably the same if not better compared to that AX 120
Your deep dives on budget hardware are the best.
This is groundbreaking technology! The world's first anti-gravity heat pipes! Wow!
Perfect for LAN-party rigs, you don't have to lift them, just tie them carefully like an helium baloon.
There is a type of heat pipe that will work in micro G environments and is commonly used on spacecraft, made of Aluminum and filled with Ammonia.
@@YOEL_44
Since it's floating, it produces more FLOPS (Floating Points OPeration Shits)
I just got this 2 days ago for an i5 9400f and I am amazed at how well it works. Got it for $25 and it is really good. Did a test with OCCT pushing it to 120W for a few seconds then settled at 65W and it never made a noise, temp stayed around 60C. For the price it's unbeatable. Best comparison I have is from my previous build running a be quiet! dark rock 2, also a 4 heatpipe cooler. That cooler is more than twice the price and doesn't even outperform this cheap thermalright cooler.
If companies can make decent coolers at low price points, why can't other companies make decent coolers at higher ones?
It’s great to see a number of great performing budget friendly coolers hitting the market as not everyone is after a $65+USD cooler for their builds. Thanks for a detailed video on these coolers GN 🥰👍
Thermalright line needs to be reviewed. Glad its happening. Been kind of an open secret in the south east asian pc communities. The peerless assassin and the frost commander are bang for buck coolers.
Thank you for the review! Just bought the V2 of the Assassin Spirit 120 for my i3 12100F. The noise of the stock cooler was starting to pierce my ear. For anyone interested it fits on a itx in the smff case CoolerMaster NR200P.
Me : Antigravity heat pipes , are they legit?
Thermalright : You can literally see it!
Thermalright was really a good product all the time, never dissapointed me (had at least 4-5 models of coolers and 4 types of fans). Was really surprised why their products didnt catch up on people (apart from XC coolers).
Thermalright has made a lot of memorable heatisnks in the past decade. LE grand machos . the huge silver arrows. their OG SK heatsinks with ear killing delta fans.
they needed this anti gravity technology back then when they were making the TRUE copper. almost 2kg beast was sketchy as hell.
My old PC has a Silver Arrow in it. That thing is a goliath. Gives the PC tons of extra weight.
I still use a silver arrow with 2 fans, beast has almost 10 years and still holds a 9700k at 60° gaming.
The true is an iconic heat sink. I’ll never get rid of my true black
Many of these tests are so interesting. Found myself reading your testing methodology. I'm glad you're able to bring this testing to your reviews to bolster your conclusions.
Early enough to tell you to review other thermalright coolers please? A lot of them are very cheap, even high-end double tower ones and still unreviewed.
Working on it!
@@GamersNexus Wow glad to hear it. Back to you Steve.
I own a Thermalright true Spirit 140 from 2015 or so, and it is a beast of a cooler! I've run my old Phenom II 960T in 6 core config (unlocked the 2 "extra" cores) with it and it NEVER went over 80ºC
I do wish ThermalRight get "right"ly recognise more in western market as many owners speak good about it that i made my purchase of Silverarrow T8 for around $55. Huge cooler but height low enough lol. Did need lapping on coldplate cuz it was too convex but with my OCed 3700x at 4.375GHz 1.33V load volt, i can go as high as 160W PPT at near 95C with prime95 small fft, around 75C on cinebench r20 at 115W PPT.
I was sold to the Silverarrow series of being rival to noctua d14.
Was searching for noctua d15s but too expensive, learnt that thermalright able to rival it close.
Awesome that you're doing Thermalrigth reviews. Yeah, prices for their stuff is nuts and jumps up and down all the time. I have the Frost Commander 140 and I think it outperforms the D15.
Would love to see a review of the new rising underdog for the sub $50 coolers, the ID-COOLING SE-226-XT. It seems to compete with Scythe Fuma 2
Good to see Thermalright being reviewed. I've had a Macho since 2012 for my 3570k which I sold 1.5y ago, and I'm glad to report Thermalright was able to provide an AM4 adapter for pretty much free (only paid shipping from Germany) almost a decade after purchase. They also supplied some extra fan clips for free since mine were going bad. Top support right there and the cooler has now went through a (briefly) 2600x, 3800x, (briefly) a 5950x which barely hit 89C on Geekbench, and it's not full time on my 5900x doing great. The only real issue with the Macho is the complicated center screw, and maybe the fan damper stickers falling off. Other than that, even the 140mm fan is still top notch for a decade.
Thermalright basically took over Chinese cooler market right now. You got Assassin Spirit 120 R SE for like $11 that performs basically the same as noctua nh-u12s.
lol the entire Spirit 120 line is over €50/$55 here...
@@HazewinDog Thermalright is dirt cheap in mainland China. The running joke is that you buy the fans and thermal paste while you get the heatsink for free.
@@ailluinthethyra6139 Heh, so they're doing a classic Xiaomi move xD The PA 120 has been $41 for more than half a year now on Amazon.
Love this cooler already, just popped in my computer on my R5 5600 after dealing with stock temps for quite some time and temps dropped 30C.
it looks like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 - I've paired it with a 2600, then a 5600X, and it works great (for a 65W CPU)
EDIT: around the same price (I paid, anyway) as this Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120
ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme was the go-to back in the day. And this cooler looks just like it
It actually looks pretty good. It falls into the "I want to build a gaming pc as cheap as possible" category. I can see this cooler becoming really popular if they keep it at it's price point and keep up with the demand. Sadly I've seen a lot of coolers in the past only sell for a few months and then disappear forever because they couldn't compete with the Hyper 212 Evo which is the next good cheapest tower cooler.
For me, as a German, it's super nice to hear you talk. You speak quickly but clearly, so that I can understand almost every single word myself. I mean I've been guessing and contextualizing for some time and still understand fast speaking people. But it's so much cooler to understand it word for word. I feel like your content is pretty pumped with knowledge and not stuffed with half-baked opinion, for the quick clicks.
Will definitely leave a subscription and browse through the VODs
Regards
Oh man, Thermalright. They used to be my go-to company for high end air coolers. They were basically Noctua before Noctua became Noctua. But then they just...stagnated. Didn't release any meaningful new products at all for a very long time. Not exactly sure what happened over there...
They always had great products. Just focused on the Asian markets for some reason. They're big in Japan, no pun intended.
they seem to make good sff coolers
I adore the ultra-budget coverage videos. Making videos in this space is great. I wonder if Thermalright does LGA-2011 mounting kits.
Would like to have seen the Hyper 212 EVO numbers in the graphs as it occasionally drops down to the $25- $30 price range (especially on Amazon Prime Day & Black Friday), besides the original Hyper 212 EVO is one of the most readily available CPU coolers on the used market for which you can pick them up all day for under $20 on Craigslist and eBay...this makes it an easy choice for budget builds which is exactly the market this new cooler is targeting ;)
I am using the Thermalright Macho B right now, quite happy with it
I wonder how the cooling performance of cheap heatsinks like this would vary, when used with different tier fans? I'd be interested in seeing a roundup like that. For eg. replacing the default fan with another cheap fan, then with fans like Arctic P12 & Bionix P120, then higher tier fans like Noctua, Phanteks, Scythe etc.
Thermalright is known to make very good fans, I wouldn't be surprised if there was very little difference. The TY-143, which was one of the fans they put on their 140mm tower coolers, consistently outperformed Noctua's equivalent fans back when they were being sold, and it was substantially cheaper.
Yesssss, the cheaper cooler reviews are coming in! You've been dropping hints, ironing out the test process, added the lower-wattage chart... You tested the Vetroo V5 which firmly established the relevance this part of the market. Did some test run reviews with some essentially non-buyable parts to put your review process through the paces. Working on even better instrumentation and controlled testing environments... Now the real reviews are coming in to look at where the rest of the field is! I have been watching closely for this and it is super exciting, IMO!
If you look at the most-bought coolers, sheer volume of sales, this is where the vast majority of shoppers are buying. So this advice will be *hugely* helpful to real buyers, most of whom don't want or need a top-end cooler capable of cooling an overclocked, and/or top-end CPU. Most people are, by and large, buying low-to-mid CPUs and running them stock. Myself included. And we work for living and want to stretch our dollar. The low end cooler parts are so dang good, it hardly makes sense to buy a more absolutely performant one unless you're using it to earn an income somehow, if your CPU part is so hot it won't run right without it (maybe buy a different CPU?), or it's your once-in-a-decade splurge and you want to feel really spoiled.
THANKS for looking where the most consumers will buy. A strong tower at ~30-ish is where the most scrappy fighting is among manufacturers, and far and away the value sweet point. It's just they are almost never properly reviewed by a trusted outlet, so most people are going by the star system on Amazon. Not the most reliable source of information when it comes to comparing PC parts! Smaller outlets do review them, but they often compare against fewer other products, and their choice of test, and their ability to carry them out precisely, leaves some degree of trustworthiness left to be earned IMO. I super valued those when buying my cooler, but Gamers Nexus does *such a goo job* reviewing and laying out the results nd being impartial, I really appreciate the time you're taking to wade into this market.
Signed: A cheap PC buyer who still wants good stuff... And who admittedly watches more of your videos than I've ever put toward buying any one part... I just want to know the state of the market! Who knows when someone I know will ask me for buying advice next... Thanks folks!
I expected ThermAlright to be middle of the pack
Clever!
Glad Steve is finally taking a look at the Thermalright product line. As a "tech support" for my friends and family(for better or worse I build 5+ rigs per year consistently over the past), I use this cooler on all my budget builds. My high-end choice used to be Noctua D-15, but now with the crazy hot i9, I had to opt for cheap 360 AIOs.
What's the difference between this and assassin king 120 se?
Late, but I think the King has an extra heat pipe.
I was NOT expecting that in the opener.... props to the edit team... took me a few minutes to realize that.
About that anti-gravity, seems to me that a vertical heat dissipator would be "anti-gravity", since heat rises.
"Heat rises" is Natural Convection which is completely dependent on the buoyancy effect caused gravity. There is a type of heat pipe that will work in micro G environments and is commonly used on spacecraft, made of Aluminum and filled with Ammonia.
Just bought some coasters. Thanks for all y'alls hard work!
I owned a TR tower cooler long before I ever heard of Noctua, we are talking a very long time ago ( I am old) it was a tremendous cooler and was not the most expensive. Good to see them still kicken it.
Thermlaright had always been my go-to cooler company like a decade ago, until they pretty much disappeared here in the west. I fondly remember the TRUE series. So glad they're back, and in such a competitive way.
Got a low profile AXP-90 X47 for a SFF build... works marvelously, although the mounting system on those isn't very accurate, leaving you to decide how much to torque the screws in.
I appreciate the honesty in the answer for the S-FDB question. They could have said something ridiculous like “S for Super” or “S for Steve”
S = spirit
I had a Thermalright XP90C back in the socket 939 days and it was awesome! Im glad to see Thermalright coming back to the US Market
Yes ! A Thermalright review ! Finally ! :D Very curious about their flagship, I think it can compete pretty well with good prices compared to let's say...Noctua or BeQuiet!
According to your test, this Spirit 120 is better overall than the Noctua U12S and the redux version, while being wayyyyy less expensive ! I want to see what their top of the line are able to do now :D
Thanks GN for this review :)
Love the in-depth technical analysis guys. I also love the 4-coaster set from your website.
Had an old thermalright sk-7 back in the day. Love to see them.
Thanks Gamers Nexus! Just scored myself a $21 cooler! I had been thinking of the Fuma 2 Rev. b, but this is way better value at a third the price for a 65w chip!
Got a 120mm dual tower from thermal right for $42 last month. Runs my 5600x no problem and it's very quiet under load.
People are seriously sleeping on this brand.
My first build sported a Thermalright TRUE Black on a Q6600 / EVGA 780i in 2008. The OCAU / PC PowerPlay forums swore by the TRUE at the time and the nickel plated 'Black' version was a beautiful piece of kit.
Thermalright was the king of cpu coolers back in the 00s with the ultra 120 series and their HR-01 passive focus coolers. Nice to see them get some more recognition again.
nice, we don't see enough thermalright review, they've been there for many years with top notch quality air cooler, with always balanced performance.
@Gamers Nexus Your link is actually for the wrong one. It looks right but it's a 2 fan model, and that's why it's $30. The $21 single fan is sold out now (thanks to your vid 😉)
My first cooler was a Thermalright Venomous X (for a 3570k), about 10 years ago.
Then they kinda disappeared from the market and stopped innovating.
But I will be happy to see a comeback.
Great review as usual, love the anti gravity test. I know it changes constantly but Amazon actually had the dual fan version of this cooler for only $26 with the single fan coming in at $30. That is a great deal on a dual fan tower cooler.
Still glad I got my fuma 2, a week before it was reviewed here.... Only because it was only $35 when got it
Happy to see new products that help people save money on PC building. It's expensive to make a good PC, but cheap and effective parts like these help people deal with the expensive parts.
Kudos to Thermalright for defining the S-FDB. Appreciate the honesty and humour!
Just got my GN coaster, must say I'm very impressed with its quality and love the design! Keeps the drinks around the pc looking stylish! Was worth waiting for the back order!! Next time getting the shot glasses and the PC in a cube thing!
When you have time for testing the new version of the Fuma 2 with 1500rpm fans, it will be much appreciated. Thank you for another fine review !
My Thermalright Macho B is doing a great job so far, but honestly the greatest thing about it is the free extra long philips head screwdriver that came with it. Insanly handy that thing!
Thanks for this excellent review. You mention you hated the mounting system on the Peerless Assassin, like several Amazon Reviews. I think they updated the install kit, because I just installed a Peerless Assassin on a 5600x in an MSI B550 motherboard with no problem whatsoever. I was expecting to have to push down on the screwdriver very hard, as the Amazon reviews said. Instead, my Peerless Assassin was as easy to install as Noctua. Also, my AM4 kit looks different than pictured here: The plastic standoffs in my Peerless Assassin are red, and the bars are curved like Noctua's. I suspect they revised the AM4 kit when they recently added the Intel 1700 install kit. My box had an intel 1700 sticker attached, and the rest of the box was printed, so the change was likely very recent.
I actually returned a Scythe Fuma 2, because my Peerless Assassin just seems better built. I can actually see solder at the joints of the cold plate and the heat pipes, and the towers have attractive aluminum caps. My gpu backplate gets pretty hot, so I also prefer the Peerless Assasin's offset to give the gpu more space, similar to Noctua's twin tower cooler.
Good to see Thermalright getting back into the game in the US. They made the best coolers you could get, short of water calling, back in the Athlon X2 days. I remember getting some pretty sizeable OC gains on those chips just by adding the TR copper heatpipe coolers they were making back then.
This video dug up a long lost memory of an old 92mm cooler I had on a Athlon xp build wayyyyy back. Maintained a stable overclock and fit my budget as a high school student so I guess it did pretty well 😂
Currently $30. Even if it was more than the Ventoo, I know Thermalright's mounting hardware is good and actually works, unlike the hit or miss with Ventoo's mounts.
I've been using Thermalright coolers since the Socket 775 days, and they've been solid coolers. They were pretty popular back then, and lot of their designs wound up being imitated and improved upon by Noctua.
Still have their True Copper, a 4 pound tower cooler that remains kind of ridiculous, but it's beautiful.
Looks like Thermalright is still holding onto their low cost but decently performing stance in the industry since the Socket A days. I used to have their copper block for my Athlon XP system but the fan was swapped out for a hubless 70mm fan (magnetic motors were in the corners) and served me well even with OC'ing my XP 2500+ to 3200+ levels. I think I bought all of it from Frozen PC.
Yay Thermalright! Brings back good memories of scouring tons of websites and reviews (particularly dansdata) for the best heatsink and fan (bought them separately back in the day), then managing to find one at the local computer tradeshows they had monthly at random convention centers.. First ever build was an Athlon Thunderbird 1.2Ghz with a Thermalright (SK6 I think?) solid copper beast that weighed like 10 pounds. Good times.
Good to see Thermalright products finally showing up on GN. They've consistently had the best price/performance heatsink+fan combos in nearly every segment, and some of the best products overall in their respective segments, like the old Thermalright True Spirit Ultra which outperformed the NH-D14 as a single tower. Their newer AIOs are also supposedly very, very good, but it seems like they're currently only still for sale in Asia. I've only ever used Thermalright heatsinks since the early 2000s and I don't think that will change any time soon.
Just picked up the Peerless Assassin for 60 bucks all in CAD. Played Tarkov all night and my max CPU temp was 45~ max as reported by CPU-Z highest reading. I'm actually blown away. Wraith Stealth allowed my CPU to hit temps of approx 60~ give or take. The dual fin stacks, dual fan cooler is an absolute steal for 60 bucks and I can barely hear the thing. My 80mm underneath my GPU for exhaust is louder.
Edit: The mount does suck tho like Steve said, couldn't get one side to thread for over 10 mins...
The Thermalright assassin x120 plus dual fan is $25 on Amazon right now. That cooler has completely surprised me. It's awesome
Nothing to flex with, but affordable, honest and pretty quiet. Good product!
I still love my Macho Direct, had it on a Phenom II and after I got a AM4 Retention Module shipped for free from Thermalright,
it cools a 3600 quietly and will probably cool an AM5 CPU in a couple of years.
I loved the oldschool Thermalright smart fans. Cool orange color, high flow upwards of 75cfm and adjustable. Truely ahead of its time. Only issue was the blades were made very brittle and easly shattered into a million pieces.
I still have my True 120 black on the shelf, actually used it to cool my 1700x when ryzen first came out
Crazy to see air coolers coming back which i like. I recently went back to aircooler since games dont tax cpus much anymore like back in the early 2000s - early 2010s. That and my AiO broke after 8 years breaking my ram stick next to it (idk how it just shot out between the plate and housing hit my ram and puddled on top of my GPU plate only broke the ram stick though luckily). Their nice, cheap, and my AiO was louder than my Be Quiet aircooler.