Which coolers should we get lined up for testing next? There are seemingly infinite coolers these days! We added the Phantom Spirit Evo and some others to our charts in this one (and are working on updating Mega Charts in the next day or so!). We'll try to put together a big list of coolers to run in the next few months! Code expires soon: Use code 'PUCKGAMERSNEXUS' for 10% off the store for another few days. store.gamersnexus.net/ Watch our Best Cases of 2024 video! th-cam.com/video/2RytD3xII-0/w-d-xo.html And our Best CPUs of 2024 video! th-cam.com/video/Zue30tcu0mY/w-d-xo.html Check out our Intel B580 review here! th-cam.com/video/JjdCkSsLYLk/w-d-xo.html
360mm aio shootout , aio coasir h150i vs lian li vs nzxt deep cool etc all top coolers im torn between what to get lcd display amust giff are cherry on top but i would like your in depth review
This is something I would love to see as well. I am seeing more and more sff builds then ever, so I think adding this to the testing and end of year recap would be appreciated!!
I agree with the request! We'll see what we can do. I think we could probably run them all through our 200W tester without too much modification... may need to drop the heat load though. Will play around with it as soon as time arises!
Great video, as always! I chose air cooling (D15 G2) for the first time in over 10 years for my newest build (7800X3D/4080S). I know it wasn’t strong in the value category, but I had the $$ to spare and figured I’d splurge a little. Everything works great, so me happy. This was the 3rd PC I’ve built using your big blue GN Flux mat. It was a great investment. Just bought another for my younger brother’s Christmas gift.
It'd be nice to finally see what low profile cpu cooler is best. Though I hope it wouldn't ignore that sff cases also have access to small watercoolers.
It's a little difficult to do it broadly like that because there's a range of cooler clearances supported by SFF, but probably ~60-120mm height would cover what many larger SFF cases can fit, and then ~35-59mm would cover most of the rest of the SFF cases that are a little more constricted in cooler height (small volume cases and sandwich cases that prioritize AIO and GPU compatibility).
I was about to make a comment along those lines. Maybe instead of a "best SFF cooler" video, a "best SFF components" would be better? And since it's hard to quantify what constitutes "small", maybe the criteria could be "ability to fit in the smallest SFF case" or "ability to fit in Case X, Y, and Z"? Two years ago I got so exasperated trying to fit a single component in the Louqe Ghost I bought that I just went and bought the Louqe Raw.
the same way we have noise normalized testing, why not do "size-normalized" testing? over time we should get better cooling in smaller form factors but when I brought this up with GPU sizes the reply I got from GN was "GPUs are fat because they're easier to cool that way and quieter." with same logic we should also be using oversized CPU coolers
Got the 36 ARGB at launch too, and it was cheaper than the price of two P12 ARGB. Should have bought more at kept the fans lol. It just barely fits in my NR200P with TG, but 3D printed clips solved it.
The Arctic Freezer 36 is 26 euros in Bulgaria (maybe across the whole EU?). Just made my new build with r7 7700 with it a couple of days ago. It's very quiet.
@@thedonvon4507 it's 19.13€ after taxes here in Germany. So 20.10USD at the current rate of 1€ = 1.05USD. Arctic is generally quite cheap here in Germany. Same goes for their AIOS (Liquid Freezer III 360 for ~70 Bucks after taxes)
As someone who normally builds in ITX or SFF, would be nice to see a list of low profile coolers as others mentioned. As always, thanks for the wealth of information!
Thermalright royal pretor, frost commander, peerless assassin 140, frost spirit. Basically all the dual tower ones would be nice to get in before next years roundup.
I can vouch, I personally own the frost spirit and it’s not nearly talked about enough. I remember I decided to buy it after a reviewer showed some graphs of it performing better than an NH-D15 in both temps and noise while only costing $35
GN is the only channel on here where I'll willingly sit through and watch the sponsorship reels. They are actually relevant, in terms of products being pushed, and not annoying to me. Thanks Steve.
As someone who bought and installed a Deepcool AIO 2 months before they got pulled, I will continue making my weekly sacrifice to tech jesus to ensure it remains in great working order.
It would be nice to have more info on pump noise as it is the main problem with AIO. Also a fan review, I think the fan market is in the same place as the cooler one with the best performing cost a massive premium over the value one, but how wide is the margin is harder to find and also it seems like their is quite a few unknow / under rated brand that could be highlighted and some that price thing way to much for the performance they offer
I usually end up scouring through places like reddit with "model name pump noise". If you're lucky, you will have feedback from people who upgraded or sidegraded and could, say, compare the noisier Liquid Freezer III to the quiter II. But then again... different setups, subjective opinions, even bad batches. Would be nicer to have a proper database of comparable noise recordings from a controlled environment, yeah.
It gets my vote as well. I build a lot of systems with a 7600x or 7700x cpu for people on a budget and this is a great cooler that does the job for about £15.
I flip computers as a hobbyist side-gig and I've used the ID-Cooling 214 in numerous builds. Such a great value and offers decent cooling (for low to mid-range CPUs) and a decent look. Must have used it in at least a dozen builds.
Could Could a category for "Best all out" cooler be added? some of us don't mind the noise the cooler makes as long as it's the best in it's category. Thanks Steve!
I feel like noise normalizing is a good enough method for determining best all out cooler. If a cooler can behave like the best of the pack while being quiet, It'll perform even better while being loud (in most cases).
Thanks for making an updated version for 2024! Very neat seeing some of these other coolers, I enjoyed seeing some of the hyper cheap options as well. However I will say I am disappointed that the EVO was picked over the (assumed better performing) Special Edition versions of the Phantom Spirit. I would love to see that cooler be reviewed and or included in the larger charts (ARGB or not).
Great video! Own a bunch of TR PA, PS, FS, FC air coolers, we're still rocking them on the computer fleet. Am curious to try AIO in the future, Prism looks nice. I like how well the air coolers are with setting and not having to maintenance them much unless it's thermal paste changing time every couple years/so.
This video couldn't have come at a better time. Yesterday I noticed that I was losing too much performance with my current undervolt on my 5800X3D. Funny thing, the same undervolt had better performance on B350 vs my current B550 board. Decreasing the undervolt got me full boost (briefly), but also thermal throttling. Oh well, ordered the ID Cooling Frozn A720 on sale. Thanks, Steve!
I feel like a major cooler that missed its chances on the list was the ID-Cooling A620E, its slightly more performant and quieter than the PA120SE while only costing 30 dollars, def could've been a best value. Great video tho, i enjoyed last year's roundup a lot, and this year was as good as expected!
Where I live the ID-Cooling FROZN A620 PRO SE costs about $26 while the ID-Cooling FROZN A720 BLACK is $54 and yet the performance difference in the benchmarks I've seen are pretty small. So yea the A620 PRO SE looks like a very good alternative.
If possible, I would like to see an ‘innovation’ award next year for brands that are trying new things in the cooling space. Even if it’s just for the LCD like the Tryx or the placement of the tubes like the Hydroshift.
I bought the NH-D15 G2 LBC and I am quite happy with it. Everyone is very keen to point out to me what bad value it is, but here's the thing: I don't care. When I'm building a high end system that's pretty expensive in general, the difference in price between the D15 G2 and its competitors doesn't bother me that much. If they've managed to crawl back to the top of the performance charts (for air) as they did this year, I don't see why I personally should consider anything else. The fact is, I don't want an AIO (for reasons I don't care to enumerate), and I trust Noctua to make good products that will last a long time and continue to be supported. Call me a fanboy if it makes you happy, but I think it's a reputation that Noctua has earned, and I've personally never had bad experiences using their coolers or fans.
I cant call you a fanboy, you just want the best and money is no issue, Noctua is the way to go, because i cant spend that kind of money i went for a peerless assassin 120 instead and i am very happy with it, also i prefer air to AIO because has a life expectancy of 5 years ( i had a cooler master AIO that had it written in the manual " and then its a time bomb and air if a fan dies you can easy swap for a new one and there you go
My first gaming PC back in 2015 had a normal generic Air Cooler and now I just built a new PC since then and now I have a Cooler Master AIO and I'm enjoying it a lot.
I for one could never go back to coolers that aren't AIOs. With so many cases going glass, they're the ugliest around. I suppose if you don't care about looks, they're amazing though for the price.
I appreciate getting people up to speed, recently got back into building computers as mine is reaching the end of being a competent gaming system without large amounts of overclocking, and your videos have proven to be amazingly useful. thank you!
I snagged a Deepcool AK620 off eBay for $30 a couple weeks ago, so this review is a little late alas. Was looking at thermalright but didn't find anything I liked visually for similarly cheap, and didn't want to spend a lot since I'm planning to build a custom loop later.
I got my LT720 AIO before the ban but I also live in East Europe, I'm upset that I can't see my cooler in the charts anymore. It's a pretty good cooler with such cool aesthetics.
Agreed. I’m on my 4th gaming system with my current one, and I have a few more in their 3rd or 4th server, running fine and with mounting kits swapped over the years. I’m really glad that there are great low-cost air coolers, though, as it should be great for making sure every budget has good options.
I love my d15s. I bought a LF3 420mm but its rev1, so sending it back. Still using the d15s for a while to come. It does alright with this 7600x3d but still goes up to thermal limit (85C) during shader precaching. The temps were a surprise for me coming from a 10600k (that never went over 50 with this cooler).
This is implying others won't last as long, which isn't true. I know you have to justify your purchase somehow but let's keep the information accurate for other folks reading.
So noise normalized thermals is important but I think a third variable should be added to the equation, noise normalized with pricing comparative. Using your own air charts as a great example of this. The Noctua NH-D15 is 3C cooler than the A720 at the same noise levels but also costs about $40 more. So that means your paying a roughly 57% cost premium for only a 5% cooling difference that makes ZERO difference in performance since both are well below throttle temp.
In addition the same way we have noise normalized testing, why not do "size-normalized" testing? over time we should get better cooling in smaller form factors it would be useful for both SFF and simply seeing how good the cooler is but when I brought this up with GPU sizes the reply GN gave me was "GPUs are fat because they're easier to cool that way and quieter." with same logic we should also be using oversized CPU coolers
It's not exactly zero difference since the automatic overclocking of CPUs is based on the temperature. However, a few degrees won't result in a noticeable performance difference
It makes me smile to know that Noctua models 5+ years are consistently competitive with newer designs. The trust and robustness of the product just gives me a good feeling. Also the fact that spending the extra money means that you have a cooler that you can probably put on any builds for a decade or more. I'd love to see an ongoing reliability chart for cooler models.
For a future video, I’d love to see a focus on SFF builds. Not just low profile coolers but the best CPU + Cooler for low profile cases. It’s something I’ve come up against and am always worried if I’m skimping on power or the cooler isn’t enough. thank you for your work!
I'm personally rocking the ID Cooling FROZN A410, and it's handling my AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D chip like a champ. It keeps it cool whether I'm gaming or doing encodes in FFmpeg on the CPU. I was worried it wasn't going to handle it because my previous CPU was a 3600. But man it genuinely surprised me.
Oh surrrrrrre, you release this literally one week after upgrading my decade old pc. Granted, I love my be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5, and it's gorgeous, but a legit water cooler for the same price that won best overall? Damn!
Absolutely recommend the SE-214-XT for budget builds. I bought it for my 5600x, based on GN's review, and it hasn't disappointed. Even under heavy loads, it has never cracked 60c.
@@solominded yes, it works well. In my case, I had to install it at an angle on my Lian-Li A3 MATX case because the motherboard didn’t allow it to fully seat (something my t hat was my fault) but otherwise it works well and has good mounting hardware for AMD
SilentiumPC Fortis 3 HE1425 is what I have cooling my R5 3600 :D Found this brand years ago when I sidegraded from 6700K to R5 3600 and my old hunk Thermalright HR-02 Macho SE didn't have AM4 brackets. Very budget oriented and was very cheap at the time, like 30€ max. Have set PBO+AutoOC (MSI Enhanced 3) in bios and it does a very good job keeping it around 70c while playing BF2042 for example (90-100% load).
16:58 - absolutely agreed. I bought a liquid freezer II based on your reviews and recommendations and I'm not disappointed. Very good AIO on all fronts
Managed to pick up an ID-COOLING FROZN A620 for 52$ in eu last year (including taxes!). For that pice it provides incredible performance. I literally only let it go 50% for max speed, and even in very CPU intensive games my 5700X3D have never gone above 65C. I genuinely love how Thermalright and ID-COOLING blew the CPU cooler market up and great performance is now available for such cheap prices!
I have one and while truly amazing performance for the price, I've never cursed so much installing a part in a PC before. I had to walk away at one point. The screws just wouldn't bite. SUCH awful design with that leafspring, and the riser bars are just cheap slivers of metal resting on plastic rings which were fiddly to hold in place just to get the screws in to screw down the riser bars. Considering the low intro-price was Arctic's stunt to appeal and get market share, when the proper price kicks in there's no way they can justify it with such cheap tat of an installation method vs the usual 4-corner screws for a faceplate.
Was able to snag a Peerless Assassin 120 for 40 bucks and it's been keeping my 5800X3D cool. A year and a half later and I am still impressed with it's performance.
ID cooling is the goat, like amazing products, got their 47mm low profile cooler and it works incredibly well. Also ordered 2 10x80mm fans for an a24 v5 build
Thank you for the video, much appreciated as always. Might I suggest adding a low profile category, as well as a downdraft category? Where with the downdrafts you add a secondary parameter of its effects (and relations) on surrounding components, where cooling effect on the VRMs of the motherboard would be a key value. Especially interesting for users with lower end boards / low-budget (iGPU) builds. This could also be a separate video: a how-to/recommendations on how to setup your system with push/pull or downdraft or low profile CPU coolers: CPU only; CPU + GPU; etc. Not that you should become thát type of channel, but you have the means to set up and validate these type of experiments nowadays, which is fantastic. Kind regards and best wishes.
They didn't have an easy way to get product in the States. I'm fairly positive GN working with Deepcool to get their products could get them in legal trouble
Here in India, we don't have brands like thermalright and Noctua, ARCTIC Coolers however are easily available in the market at competitive prices. I ended up buying Freezer 36 White colour argb for my Ryzen 5 7600X build for a price of $35 which is totally worth it considering both it's silent performance under heavy load like rendering & aesthetics.
I have the CO version of the artic cooler. It works really well on monolithic AMD chips, like 2200G, 5700G and so on. It allows for overclocking without reaching high temperatures or high noise level. I use it in a cheap case with a bunch of dust filters, even internal ones on the exhaust and psu and cpu fan. I think it's where the static pressure optimisation of the arctic fans shines. My main PC uses a chiplet design cpu (5950X) so I went with a 120mm Noctua, which becomes audible under high loads. With my 3600 at 1.1V and 4.2GHz all core, it stayed silent under all loads.
17:30 I have the Arctic Liquid Freezer 3, and while, yes, it has incredible PERFORMANCE, and is genuinely extremely quiet...man oh man does it have one of the cheapest, nastiest, worst installation of an AIO I think I've ever seen for AMD. Cheap, round plastic risers for the brackets that you have to hold down while screwing in, just cheap tatty methods there, and then the leafspring on the plate which is just 2 screws but one side bites down on the bracket while screwing in, the other side then won't bite down as it's not flat so you have to alternate sides screwing down hoping it's flat. Just a ball-ache, moronic design that is really unintuitive, cheap and nasty. Wish the faceplate fan spun but it's an OK LED system. Genuinely amazing cooling performance, but I've never felt so frustrated installing a CPU block before.
Steve: My personal favorite series we do every year, because we get to focus on the things that are good. Not the things that suck or are disappointing. Manufacturers: Challenge accepted Steve. We will focus on making all products next year suck and disappointing.
✅RTX 5090 ✅9800x3D, ✅Arctic III 360 AiO ✅Fractal North/AntecFlux/Lian207 Case. Finish our builds before February Steve! Need Motherboards, RAM, M.2's and PSU's!!!
Btw. Corsair released an AIO in 2024 called RX TITAN with a proprietary pump that is super quiet and efficient. No more of the previous bee-like humming! Biggest surprise for me this year and recommended to anyone who's already been locked into the Corsair ecosystem. 😅
The Thermalright Aqua elite is top notch too. You can snag it for $55 as of right now. Crazy good AIO. My cpu temps hardly go over 65c playing games. Its kind of loud for my liking but does that thing perform well.
I've been Using my Arctic LF2 for ~6yr give or take, through three intel cpu's and two full builds. it cools my 14700K amazingly. Arctic was also super awesome about the VRM fan fault mine had. Would Strongly recommend. always love these videos! This LF2 is outliving my love for intel well into my next build for sure.
I got the Freezer 36 for €25 when it got released (includes €6 shipping home, the cooler itself was 19€ i think). It's crazy that they can even sell it for that price, but you can get it delivered from another country to your door it's absolutely insane.
Great work as always GN team. Thanks for all your incredible efforts this year. Would love to see another category added for "notable Customer Service Award" For past example, how Arctic dealt with issues on the Freezer 2..... Or how Noctua regularly goes above & beyond to support prior customers when new sockets/platforms are changed.
So I just built my PC and I was gonna get a thermalright peerless assassin/phantom spirit 120 double tower but they are sold out everywhere. Didn’t want to wait so the only one I found in stock was the Cooler Master 620S ARGB double tower cooler. I didn’t expect much, but honestly it’s been amazing. Super quiet, idle on my 7600x3d I’m running at 21C. Can’t recommend it enough. For it being a big company, I rarely see people talk about this cooler. It’s all about Thermalright or ID cooling
Arctic's LF3 is a great cooler but what you don't see in any of these tests is the radiator is very deep making it dificult to fit in a case and with very little RAM clearance if used in a top radiator configuration. I needed to take a hacksaw to the heatsinks on my G.Skill Trident RAM to make it fit!
i just got the Arctic iii - AIO - 420mm RGB and i absolutely love it, i upgraded from the Noctua NH-15 Chromax for the 7800X3D, i wish i got an AIO earlier, my pc looks great and its cooler by an average 16 degrees! if you're on the fence of going from Air to water, go for it!! I love my Air cooler but this AIO is amazing!
i use ID Cooling SE-224-XT since 4 years ago, still going strong 😆 from ryzen 5 2600 to 5 3600x to 7 5700x using arctic mx-4 paste for the first two and mx-6 for the latest cpu, average at 65C under g aming load (genshin + wuwa + nikke + HSR + opera browser 20+ tabs)
Thermalright FTW, baby!! I use their coolers, M.2 heat sinks, fans, contact frames, and thermal paste (TF9) in my builds, and it all performs amazingly well. 👍🏼
Picked up yet another Cooler Master Hyper 212 this year for something like $10. Still available for $20 new at places like Microcenter. For something 65W it's my easy "I don't want to research" go-to.
Great video! I'm still using my 2011 build using a Noctua NH-D14 on an i7 3960k. It's nice to see how the new versions do and get a nice market overview as I contemplate a new build in 2025.
Great video. I got the Arctic Freezer 36 white argb variant myself but for AMD because it worked with the aesthetic I was going for. With an optimized PBO curve on a 7700x it runs at a decent DB and it keeps it around 80C. I know I probably could've gotten a better cooler, but for the money and on white, it was the best deal in my country. And I'm happy to see it recommended.
I would like to suggest taking a look at the Thermalright Frozen Prism 360 at some point in the future. Ideally when it fits the same timeline of teardown from time purchased as with your other liquid cooler failure investigation for the Enermax Liquitech Threadripper coolers. Understandably its a 1-2 year outlook on a purchase and you aren't inspecting ones that may have be thermal cycled and stressed. Nonetheless, great content as always!
Bought the Freezer 36 couple of weeks ago. Not because I needed it, just out of curiosity. I couldn´t believe how good it seemed to be for the price. Got the black one for 22€ (23$ with tax). If you just care about value, theres no real competition. I´m currently helping friends building their first gaming pc and they´ll get one. They just care about the value so it´s the perfect choice.
Which coolers should we get lined up for testing next? There are seemingly infinite coolers these days! We added the Phantom Spirit Evo and some others to our charts in this one (and are working on updating Mega Charts in the next day or so!). We'll try to put together a big list of coolers to run in the next few months!
Code expires soon: Use code 'PUCKGAMERSNEXUS' for 10% off the store for another few days. store.gamersnexus.net/
Watch our Best Cases of 2024 video! th-cam.com/video/2RytD3xII-0/w-d-xo.html
And our Best CPUs of 2024 video! th-cam.com/video/Zue30tcu0mY/w-d-xo.html
Check out our Intel B580 review here! th-cam.com/video/JjdCkSsLYLk/w-d-xo.html
It would be nice to see some low profile air coolers for small form factor cases, like the Thermalright AXP 90
360mm aio shootout , aio coasir h150i vs lian li vs nzxt deep cool etc all top coolers im torn between what to get lcd display amust giff are cherry on top but i would like your in depth review
Roll the dice at wish, temu, and Ali 😂😂😂😂
The new gamersnexus air cooler
Corsair water coolers. I just bought a h170i elite xt. I want to see how it stacks against other AIOs
As I commented last year; it would be nice to have a "low profile" category for best performance within a certain clearance.
This is something I would love to see as well. I am seeing more and more sff builds then ever, so I think adding this to the testing and end of year recap would be appreciated!!
I agree with the request! We'll see what we can do. I think we could probably run them all through our 200W tester without too much modification... may need to drop the heat load though. Will play around with it as soon as time arises!
@@GamersNexus damn man thanks
@@GamersNexus thanks steves
That's what I want too
Going to guess NZXT's overpriced $340 240 aio didn't make the cut.
Far too expensive for what it is!
neither does corsair with it's expensive rgb fan that leds start dying after a year ;)
Two words, Puck NZXT lol
@@GamersNexus and thats just the first months payment..
@@GamersNexus Do you get to keep what you purchase for that price? or is that the Annual Rental Contract?
Great video, as always! I chose air cooling (D15 G2) for the first time in over 10 years for my newest build (7800X3D/4080S). I know it wasn’t strong in the value category, but I had the $$ to spare and figured I’d splurge a little. Everything works great, so me happy. This was the 3rd PC I’ve built using your big blue GN Flux mat. It was a great investment. Just bought another for my younger brother’s Christmas gift.
I think there should be a category for "Best cooler for SFF PCs"
It'd be nice to finally see what low profile cpu cooler is best. Though I hope it wouldn't ignore that sff cases also have access to small watercoolers.
It's a little difficult to do it broadly like that because there's a range of cooler clearances supported by SFF, but probably ~60-120mm height would cover what many larger SFF cases can fit, and then ~35-59mm would cover most of the rest of the SFF cases that are a little more constricted in cooler height (small volume cases and sandwich cases that prioritize AIO and GPU compatibility).
I was about to make a comment along those lines. Maybe instead of a "best SFF cooler" video, a "best SFF components" would be better? And since it's hard to quantify what constitutes "small", maybe the criteria could be "ability to fit in the smallest SFF case" or "ability to fit in Case X, Y, and Z"? Two years ago I got so exasperated trying to fit a single component in the Louqe Ghost I bought that I just went and bought the Louqe Raw.
I've built so many ITX systems and always have this problem, finding something low profile which can cool high end cpus is quite the challenge
the same way we have noise normalized testing, why not do "size-normalized" testing? over time we should get better cooling in smaller form factors
but when I brought this up with GPU sizes the reply I got from GN was
"GPUs are fat because they're easier to cool that way and quieter."
with same logic we should also be using oversized CPU coolers
i got myself the arctic 36 for 18 euros when it launched for my 7 5700x3D. Great deal
Wild!
Got the 36 ARGB at launch too, and it was cheaper than the price of two P12 ARGB. Should have bought more at kept the fans lol. It just barely fits in my NR200P with TG, but 3D printed clips solved it.
The Arctic Freezer 36 is 26 euros in Bulgaria (maybe across the whole EU?). Just made my new build with r7 7700 with it a couple of days ago. It's very quiet.
HOW? LOL not even possible
@@spidersvetli no wayyy so like 38$ usd?
It's crazy that in Germany you can still buy the unpainted Freezer 36 directly from arctic for under 20€ (+free delivery)
so wut like 30$ usd? with the rad?
@thedonvon4507 the freezer 36 is the air cooler
@@thedonvon4507$22 maybe. I do not know where you got this conversion rate from.
@masterkamen371ye about 22$, including all taxes.
@@thedonvon4507 it's 19.13€ after taxes here in Germany. So 20.10USD at the current rate of 1€ = 1.05USD.
Arctic is generally quite cheap here in Germany. Same goes for their AIOS (Liquid Freezer III 360 for ~70 Bucks after taxes)
As someone who normally builds in ITX or SFF, would be nice to see a list of low profile coolers as others mentioned. As always, thanks for the wealth of information!
Machines & More is for us SFF builders. He cover the best low profile coolers for 9800x3d.
Love the zoom + trimming of the chart, to show where in the market the specific items being are positioned.
nice to see this come out. Really getting a chance to try aircoolers after the long time of needing a 360 for intels.
I have to keep an eye on what to get in case the EK AIO goes bad.
Benchmarking each and every cooler is a F'ing nightmare. You guys are crazy awesome, keep up!
I know when it is the end of the year when we get these round ups. Thanks Steve!
And I'm eagerly waiting for Steve's presentation on 2024 most disppointing PC build.
Thermalright royal pretor, frost commander, peerless assassin 140, frost spirit. Basically all the dual tower ones would be nice to get in before next years roundup.
Also Thermalright Royal Knight 120 SE.
I can vouch, I personally own the frost spirit and it’s not nearly talked about enough.
I remember I decided to buy it after a reviewer showed some graphs of it performing better than an NH-D15 in both temps and noise while only costing $35
GN is the only channel on here where I'll willingly sit through and watch the sponsorship reels. They are actually relevant, in terms of products being pushed, and not annoying to me. Thanks Steve.
imagine willingly sitting through any advertisements like a sheep
The Frozen Prism probably costs *less* that what it actually costs to manufacture, ship and whatever else.
As Steve said, a total enigma of a product.
As someone who bought and installed a Deepcool AIO 2 months before they got pulled, I will continue making my weekly sacrifice to tech jesus to ensure it remains in great working order.
It would be nice to have more info on pump noise as it is the main problem with AIO.
Also a fan review, I think the fan market is in the same place as the cooler one with the best performing cost a massive premium over the value one, but how wide is the margin is harder to find and also it seems like their is quite a few unknow / under rated brand that could be highlighted and some that price thing way to much for the performance they offer
We publish pump specifics when warranted in the reviews of them.
I usually end up scouring through places like reddit with "model name pump noise". If you're lucky, you will have feedback from people who upgraded or sidegraded and could, say, compare the noisier Liquid Freezer III to the quiter II. But then again... different setups, subjective opinions, even bad batches. Would be nicer to have a proper database of comparable noise recordings from a controlled environment, yeah.
Bought a thermalright FP for my first build this year and I can say that theres zero noise coming from it running at 3k+ RPM
@@GamersNexus is the GN website hosted locally on the server Wendell helped put together or in a Co-Lo facility?
might upgrade soon this video come at the right time
running a Corsair Hydro Series H100i since 2013/4, every day it still works its a blessing
Phantom spirit 120 SE FTW
It gets my vote as well. I build a lot of systems with a 7600x or 7700x cpu for people on a budget and this is a great cooler that does the job for about £15.
Have that too, Great cooler. Woo!
@@mightychevwhere for £15?
@@Zeddicus65 sorry my bad, I'm thinking of the assassin king 120 SE
phantom spirit is pretty awesome.
I really appreciate this Steve, happy holidays.
I flip computers as a hobbyist side-gig and I've used the ID-Cooling 214 in numerous builds. Such a great value and offers decent cooling (for low to mid-range CPUs) and a decent look. Must have used it in at least a dozen builds.
16:35 Ouch, yeah I did skip to this section.
Could Could a category for "Best all out" cooler be added? some of us don't mind the noise the cooler makes as long as it's the best in it's category. Thanks Steve!
I feel like noise normalizing is a good enough method for determining best all out cooler. If a cooler can behave like the best of the pack while being quiet, It'll perform even better while being loud (in most cases).
Thanks for making an updated version for 2024! Very neat seeing some of these other coolers, I enjoyed seeing some of the hyper cheap options as well. However I will say I am disappointed that the EVO was picked over the (assumed better performing) Special Edition versions of the Phantom Spirit. I would love to see that cooler be reviewed and or included in the larger charts (ARGB or not).
Yep quite surprised the Phantom Spirit EVO underperformed even the older Peerless Asssasin :(
Thanks Steve.
This never gets old. Lol
Great video! Own a bunch of TR PA, PS, FS, FC air coolers, we're still rocking them on the computer fleet. Am curious to try AIO in the future, Prism looks nice. I like how well the air coolers are with setting and not having to maintenance them much unless it's thermal paste changing time every couple years/so.
This video couldn't have come at a better time. Yesterday I noticed that I was losing too much performance with my current undervolt on my 5800X3D. Funny thing, the same undervolt had better performance on B350 vs my current B550 board. Decreasing the undervolt got me full boost (briefly), but also thermal throttling.
Oh well, ordered the ID Cooling Frozn A720 on sale.
Thanks, Steve!
be ready to look for better fans
I feel like a major cooler that missed its chances on the list was the ID-Cooling A620E, its slightly more performant and quieter than the PA120SE while only costing 30 dollars, def could've been a best value. Great video tho, i enjoyed last year's roundup a lot, and this year was as good as expected!
Where I live the ID-Cooling FROZN A620 PRO SE costs about $26 while the ID-Cooling FROZN A720 BLACK is $54 and yet the performance difference in the benchmarks I've seen are pretty small. So yea the A620 PRO SE looks like a very good alternative.
Always love watching your best of the year round ups, keep up the great work GN!
Thanks, Steve!
What a contrast from the CPU roundups - shows how awesome lots of competition is
To be fair, manufacturing CPU coolers is a lot less complicated and technically involved than manufacturing CPUs.
^hurrrrr u think?
@@anonymist-n8z shutup
If possible, I would like to see an ‘innovation’ award next year for brands that are trying new things in the cooling space. Even if it’s just for the LCD like the Tryx or the placement of the tubes like the Hydroshift.
I bought the NH-D15 G2 LBC and I am quite happy with it. Everyone is very keen to point out to me what bad value it is, but here's the thing: I don't care. When I'm building a high end system that's pretty expensive in general, the difference in price between the D15 G2 and its competitors doesn't bother me that much. If they've managed to crawl back to the top of the performance charts (for air) as they did this year, I don't see why I personally should consider anything else.
The fact is, I don't want an AIO (for reasons I don't care to enumerate), and I trust Noctua to make good products that will last a long time and continue to be supported. Call me a fanboy if it makes you happy, but I think it's a reputation that Noctua has earned, and I've personally never had bad experiences using their coolers or fans.
I cant call you a fanboy, you just want the best and money is no issue, Noctua is the way to go, because i cant spend that kind of money i went for a peerless assassin 120 instead and i am very happy with it, also i prefer air to AIO because has a life expectancy of 5 years ( i had a cooler master AIO that had it written in the manual " and then its a time bomb and air if a fan dies you can easy swap for a new one and there you go
I bought the Noctua DH15 when it was just $70 in 2017. It was the cheapest air cooler at the time and it continues to provide immense value.
Question. What RAM did you decide to go with? Trying to find something that'll fit under the G2, but not really succeeding.
My first gaming PC back in 2015 had a normal generic Air Cooler and now I just built a new PC since then and now I have a Cooler Master AIO and I'm enjoying it a lot.
There a lot of really good products. The peerless assassin 120 for me has been truly peerless. I love everything about it.
I for one could never go back to coolers that aren't AIOs. With so many cases going glass, they're the ugliest around. I suppose if you don't care about looks, they're amazing though for the price.
I appreciate getting people up to speed, recently got back into building computers as mine is reaching the end of being a competent gaming system without large amounts of overclocking, and your videos have proven to be amazingly useful.
thank you!
wow and i was just going to buy a CPU cooler talk about perfect timing
Same, lol. My cooler can't stop the heat from my new processor
Same!
You guys are buying coolers? In December? It's already cold!
I snagged a Deepcool AK620 off eBay for $30 a couple weeks ago, so this review is a little late alas.
Was looking at thermalright but didn't find anything I liked visually for similarly cheap, and didn't want to spend a lot since I'm planning to build a custom loop later.
Same here about to max out my am4 board with a 5700XT3D and needed a cooler.
Was a big Deepcool fan so I was pretty upset to see them get banned
Same but luckily I was able to pick mine up a few months before the band
Yeah I'm mad pissed still wanna buy more of there products still don't care about it.
I got my LT720 AIO before the ban but I also live in East Europe, I'm upset that I can't see my cooler in the charts anymore. It's a pretty good cooler with such cool aesthetics.
I’m just amazed that DeepCool completely pivoted from its original company Logisys, which was known for cheap garbage and firecracker PSUs.
I really appreciate your emphasis on cheap-but-impressive tech.
That thermalright 360 price is still crazy.
And I was thinking the Arctic Liquid series coolers are low priced. If the Thermalright has the longevity of the Arctic it´s crazy
Perfectly sane price
Mine gurgles a lot but the performance is great
@@tuono.thierry Don't forget though Arctic did a "are they kidding? what a steal" low-price on release to grab some of the market.
Noctua may be 3x pricier, but my NH-D15 cooled my 3770k, 8700k, is cooling 5950x, and will be cooling 9800x3D in a few days (and maybe beyond)
Agreed. I’m on my 4th gaming system with my current one, and I have a few more in their 3rd or 4th server, running fine and with mounting kits swapped over the years. I’m really glad that there are great low-cost air coolers, though, as it should be great for making sure every budget has good options.
I love my d15s. I bought a LF3 420mm but its rev1, so sending it back. Still using the d15s for a while to come. It does alright with this 7600x3d but still goes up to thermal limit (85C) during shader precaching. The temps were a surprise for me coming from a 10600k (that never went over 50 with this cooler).
Any cooler could do that too.
I wish I could find my receipt, so I can get a free AM5 adapter.
This is implying others won't last as long, which isn't true. I know you have to justify your purchase somehow but let's keep the information accurate for other folks reading.
Impressive work ! With the increase of the popularity of SFF I there should be a category for low profile.
So noise normalized thermals is important but I think a third variable should be added to the equation, noise normalized with pricing comparative. Using your own air charts as a great example of this. The Noctua NH-D15 is 3C cooler than the A720 at the same noise levels but also costs about $40 more. So that means your paying a roughly 57% cost premium for only a 5% cooling difference that makes ZERO difference in performance since both are well below throttle temp.
In addition the same way we have noise normalized testing, why not do "size-normalized" testing? over time we should get better cooling in smaller form factors
it would be useful for both SFF and simply seeing how good the cooler is
but when I brought this up with GPU sizes the reply GN gave me was
"GPUs are fat because they're easier to cool that way and quieter."
with same logic we should also be using oversized CPU coolers
It's not exactly zero difference since the automatic overclocking of CPUs is based on the temperature. However, a few degrees won't result in a noticeable performance difference
We, as Noctua fanboy, will say it worth it😂
@@chrisblack6258 So then show it, show the clock speeds under each cooler, I am betting at the temps shown there is no difference.
@@Frigobar_Ranamelonico 🤣
It makes me smile to know that Noctua models 5+ years are consistently competitive with newer designs. The trust and robustness of the product just gives me a good feeling. Also the fact that spending the extra money means that you have a cooler that you can probably put on any builds for a decade or more. I'd love to see an ongoing reliability chart for cooler models.
For a future video, I’d love to see a focus on SFF builds. Not just low profile coolers but the best CPU + Cooler for low profile cases. It’s something I’ve come up against and am always worried if I’m skimping on power or the cooler isn’t enough.
thank you for your work!
I'm personally rocking the ID Cooling FROZN A410, and it's handling my AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D chip like a champ. It keeps it cool whether I'm gaming or doing encodes in FFmpeg on the CPU. I was worried it wasn't going to handle it because my previous CPU was a 3600. But man it genuinely surprised me.
Thanks Steve!
I needed this video, Thanks.
Oh surrrrrrre, you release this literally one week after upgrading my decade old pc. Granted, I love my be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5, and it's gorgeous, but a legit water cooler for the same price that won best overall? Damn!
air coolers are generally more performant than AIOs
@@nodrance Are you ok ?
Absolutely recommend the SE-214-XT for budget builds. I bought it for my 5600x, based on GN's review, and it hasn't disappointed. Even under heavy loads, it has never cracked 60c.
Just grabbed a Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360mm for $90 for my 9800x3D build.
Same I just installed mine on my 9800x3D I’m assuming you got your AIO off Amazon since they’re the only ones that sell it at the price.
Does it work well/ fit properly? Good mounting hardware for amd?
@@solominded yes, it works well. In my case, I had to install it at an angle on my Lian-Li A3 MATX case because the motherboard didn’t allow it to fully seat (something my t hat was my fault) but otherwise it works well and has good mounting hardware for AMD
@Tytyshippy thanks now I just need to actually be able to buy a 9800x3d.............
I got a 420 but its revision 1 so I sent it back. Will try again in a month or two. I have a noctua d15s that still works fine.
SilentiumPC Fortis 3 HE1425 is what I have cooling my R5 3600 :D Found this brand years ago when I sidegraded from 6700K to R5 3600 and my old hunk Thermalright HR-02 Macho SE didn't have AM4 brackets. Very budget oriented and was very cheap at the time, like 30€ max.
Have set PBO+AutoOC (MSI Enhanced 3) in bios and it does a very good job keeping it around 70c while playing BF2042 for example (90-100% load).
16:58 - absolutely agreed. I bought a liquid freezer II based on your reviews and recommendations and I'm not disappointed. Very good AIO on all fronts
I'm using the cheap IDCooling one on a Ryzen 5800X3D without any issue.
Great cooler if you don't have a powerhungry CPU.
Managed to pick up an ID-COOLING FROZN A620 for 52$ in eu last year (including taxes!). For that pice it provides incredible performance. I literally only let it go 50% for max speed, and even in very CPU intensive games my 5700X3D have never gone above 65C.
I genuinely love how Thermalright and ID-COOLING blew the CPU cooler market up and great performance is now available for such cheap prices!
Happy i bought the Arctic liquid freezer 3 :)
I have one and while truly amazing performance for the price, I've never cursed so much installing a part in a PC before. I had to walk away at one point. The screws just wouldn't bite. SUCH awful design with that leafspring, and the riser bars are just cheap slivers of metal resting on plastic rings which were fiddly to hold in place just to get the screws in to screw down the riser bars. Considering the low intro-price was Arctic's stunt to appeal and get market share, when the proper price kicks in there's no way they can justify it with such cheap tat of an installation method vs the usual 4-corner screws for a faceplate.
Video start: Thermalright/Thermaltake.
End of the video.
(Crazy how the company is goated)
Was able to snag a Peerless Assassin 120 for 40 bucks and it's been keeping my 5800X3D cool. A year and a half later and I am still impressed with it's performance.
ID cooling is the goat, like amazing products, got their 47mm low profile cooler and it works incredibly well. Also ordered 2 10x80mm fans for an a24 v5 build
@0:50 you gotta fight......for your thermalright...... to partyyyyy?
Thank you for the video, much appreciated as always. Might I suggest adding a low profile category, as well as a downdraft category? Where with the downdrafts you add a secondary parameter of its effects (and relations) on surrounding components, where cooling effect on the VRMs of the motherboard would be a key value. Especially interesting for users with lower end boards / low-budget (iGPU) builds.
This could also be a separate video: a how-to/recommendations on how to setup your system with push/pull or downdraft or low profile CPU coolers: CPU only; CPU + GPU; etc. Not that you should become thát type of channel, but you have the means to set up and validate these type of experiments nowadays, which is fantastic.
Kind regards and best wishes.
i hope you guys dont stop covering Deep Cool completly, they are still in my market would love to see your guys takes on them
They didn't have an easy way to get product in the States. I'm fairly positive GN working with Deepcool to get their products could get them in legal trouble
@@Collin_J Don't you just love interference in a supposed free market?
no one cares about collaborators with the criminal chinese communist party
I'm a huge FAN of these COOL vids.
Here in India, we don't have brands like thermalright and Noctua, ARCTIC Coolers however are easily available in the market at competitive prices.
I ended up buying Freezer 36 White colour argb for my Ryzen 5 7600X build for a price of $35 which is totally worth it considering both it's silent performance under heavy load like rendering & aesthetics.
I have the CO version of the artic cooler.
It works really well on monolithic AMD chips, like 2200G, 5700G and so on.
It allows for overclocking without reaching high temperatures or high noise level.
I use it in a cheap case with a bunch of dust filters, even internal ones on the exhaust and psu and cpu fan.
I think it's where the static pressure optimisation of the arctic fans shines.
My main PC uses a chiplet design cpu (5950X) so I went with a 120mm Noctua, which becomes audible under high loads.
With my 3600 at 1.1V and 4.2GHz all core, it stayed silent under all loads.
17:30 I have the Arctic Liquid Freezer 3, and while, yes, it has incredible PERFORMANCE, and is genuinely extremely quiet...man oh man does it have one of the cheapest, nastiest, worst installation of an AIO I think I've ever seen for AMD. Cheap, round plastic risers for the brackets that you have to hold down while screwing in, just cheap tatty methods there, and then the leafspring on the plate which is just 2 screws but one side bites down on the bracket while screwing in, the other side then won't bite down as it's not flat so you have to alternate sides screwing down hoping it's flat. Just a ball-ache, moronic design that is really unintuitive, cheap and nasty. Wish the faceplate fan spun but it's an OK LED system. Genuinely amazing cooling performance, but I've never felt so frustrated installing a CPU block before.
Agreed, the new third series of Artic is a true pain to install
I bought a peerless assassin and put Noctua fans on it, because standards make it possible.
I've got one using arctic p12 slim fans
Steve: My personal favorite series we do every year, because we get to focus on the things that are good. Not the things that suck or are disappointing.
Manufacturers: Challenge accepted Steve. We will focus on making all products next year suck and disappointing.
What do you think about Lian Li Galahad Triinity performance 360? It's a potentially good choice? Congrats for the video 👏🏻
✅RTX 5090 ✅9800x3D, ✅Arctic III 360 AiO ✅Fractal North/AntecFlux/Lian207 Case.
Finish our builds before February Steve! Need Motherboards, RAM, M.2's and PSU's!!!
At 15:32 I thought you would say "thanks guys" and we would respond appropriately.
i think the cooler market is a great example of how competition benefits consumers.
Btw. Corsair released an AIO in 2024 called RX TITAN with a proprietary pump that is super quiet and efficient. No more of the previous bee-like humming! Biggest surprise for me this year and recommended to anyone who's already been locked into the Corsair ecosystem. 😅
Yes it's great
Thermalright really do be the goat.
Surprised to not see phantom spirit dominate though
The Thermalright Aqua elite is top notch too. You can snag it for $55 as of right now. Crazy good AIO. My cpu temps hardly go over 65c playing games. Its kind of loud for my liking but does that thing perform well.
i'm still surprised that Phantom Spirit isn't being reviewed yet, which is like the even better version of Peerless Assassin.
The Phantom Spirit is in several of these charts. It is not better in our testing. See 6:16.
I'm pretty sure that the evo version is actually worse than the regular 120. @@GamersNexus
I've been Using my Arctic LF2 for ~6yr give or take, through three intel cpu's and two full builds. it cools my 14700K amazingly. Arctic was also super awesome about the VRM fan fault mine had. Would Strongly recommend.
always love these videos! This LF2 is outliving my love for intel well into my next build for sure.
still happy with my TR Frost Vortex w/ 2 arctic p14s. crazy how good the value has got in the cooling world over the past few years
Damn, you caught me. I skipped to that category. I watched the rest too though.
I got the Freezer 36 for €25 when it got released (includes €6 shipping home, the cooler itself was 19€ i think). It's crazy that they can even sell it for that price, but you can get it delivered from another country to your door it's absolutely insane.
Great work as always GN team. Thanks for all your incredible efforts this year.
Would love to see another category added for "notable Customer Service Award"
For past example, how Arctic dealt with issues on the Freezer 2..... Or how Noctua regularly goes above & beyond to support prior customers when new sockets/platforms are changed.
good stuff GN fascinating to see how well some of these companies do with cheap little air coolers
I've been using a white Frozen Prism for over a year with zero problems! Keeps my 7800x3d under 80c at full load too!!! Can't beat the price!
Great cooler review Steve! I always look forward to these 'Best of Roundups' every year! I can't wait for the best GPU roundup!
So I just built my PC and I was gonna get a thermalright peerless assassin/phantom spirit 120 double tower but they are sold out everywhere. Didn’t want to wait so the only one I found in stock was the Cooler Master 620S ARGB double tower cooler. I didn’t expect much, but honestly it’s been amazing. Super quiet, idle on my 7600x3d I’m running at 21C. Can’t recommend it enough. For it being a big company, I rarely see people talk about this cooler. It’s all about Thermalright or ID cooling
Arctic's LF3 is a great cooler but what you don't see in any of these tests is the radiator is very deep making it dificult to fit in a case and with very little RAM clearance if used in a top radiator configuration. I needed to take a hacksaw to the heatsinks on my G.Skill Trident RAM to make it fit!
This video is cool. Thanks Steve.
i just got the Arctic iii - AIO - 420mm RGB and i absolutely love it, i upgraded from the Noctua NH-15 Chromax for the 7800X3D, i wish i got an AIO earlier, my pc looks great and its cooler by an average 16 degrees! if you're on the fence of going from Air to water, go for it!! I love my Air cooler but this AIO is amazing!
Was just about to build my first PC with AF36, and this just affirms my choice. Thanks GN
i use ID Cooling SE-224-XT since 4 years ago, still going strong 😆 from ryzen 5 2600 to 5 3600x to 7 5700x using arctic mx-4 paste for the first two and mx-6 for the latest cpu, average at 65C under g aming load (genshin + wuwa + nikke + HSR + opera browser 20+ tabs)
Thank you for this!! I'd love to see a best SFF choice, or low profile cooler!
This is one of the videos i always look forward!
I needed this review so much - thanks!
Thermalright FTW, baby!! I use their coolers, M.2 heat sinks, fans, contact frames, and thermal paste (TF9) in my builds, and it all performs amazingly well. 👍🏼
Skipped to noise normalized, immedately got called out. Thanks Steve!
I really waited a long time for this video to get a cooler for my recent 14700k, thank you gamers nexus !
Picked up yet another Cooler Master Hyper 212 this year for something like $10. Still available for $20 new at places like Microcenter. For something 65W it's my easy "I don't want to research" go-to.
Great video! I'm still using my 2011 build using a Noctua NH-D14 on an i7 3960k. It's nice to see how the new versions do and get a nice market overview as I contemplate a new build in 2025.
Great video. I got the Arctic Freezer 36 white argb variant myself but for AMD because it worked with the aesthetic I was going for. With an optimized PBO curve on a 7700x it runs at a decent DB and it keeps it around 80C. I know I probably could've gotten a better cooler, but for the money and on white, it was the best deal in my country. And I'm happy to see it recommended.
I would like to suggest taking a look at the Thermalright Frozen Prism 360 at some point in the future. Ideally when it fits the same timeline of teardown from time purchased as with your other liquid cooler failure investigation for the Enermax Liquitech Threadripper coolers. Understandably its a 1-2 year outlook on a purchase and you aren't inspecting ones that may have be thermal cycled and stressed. Nonetheless, great content as always!
Bought the Freezer 36 couple of weeks ago. Not because I needed it, just out of curiosity. I couldn´t believe how good it seemed to be for the price. Got the black one for 22€ (23$ with tax). If you just care about value, theres no real competition. I´m currently helping friends building their first gaming pc and they´ll get one. They just care about the value so it´s the perfect choice.