The real optimal cool method was the friends we made along the way

Thermalright’s price to performance is insane.

I love how a decade old noctua stil here in a cooler debate lol. Waiting for the 2nd gen

air coolers have a huge advantage when we talk about maintenance and simplicity

I bought the D15 almost 10 years ago now, and I'll still be sticking with it

You guys always have amazing thumbnails for cooler reviews

I feel most people do not realize just how nice a quiet pc is. I replaced all the fans, inclduing my aio fans, in my case even adding some with just dirt cheap arctic p12 fans. Not hearing a mini turbine while enjoying content is crucial and highly underrated.

Easy decision for me. Bought TR Peerless Assassin ARGB and used the money I saved to buy a better GPU. It was $42 Canadian. Used Arctic MX-6. Ryzen 5600X. Shout out for Spring weather being here! So tired of the cold.

I've been using D15 for about 8 years. It has been used in many different builds, possibly the best investment I've ever made for my PC. All I had to do was to buy an AMD kit for the new Ryzen. If you can afford one, it wont disappoint, and it has zero percent chance to leak.

I am glad you touched on CPU variation. Like there is an overclock silicon lottery, the same happens with temps on some of these CPU within the same generation and model number.

My Arctic Liquid Freezer 240 has been running for 8 years at 2500K@5GHz/8700K@5GHz and still OK. This is a matter of longevity. 😎

I bought my Noctua D15 10 years ago and still use the same one. Don't think a single AIO-cooler could do that, hence why I will probably be getting the D16 when I'm upgrading next time.

Fantastic video with great data and analysis, definitely looking at Thermalright air cooling for future builds. PS the timer on the sponsor spot is an incredible touch

I've recently upgraded from an air cooler to a 420mm Liquid freezer 3 which is absolutely overkill for my 6-core cpu but this way I can play without headphones and not get blasted by the noise.

I've built atleast 12 Pc's for myself, friends, and family since 2014. I have OCD and have been through so many rabbit holes in this journey, learned so much, and also learned what not to worry about when building. I have always used air cooling as having water in the case and more parts are variables I preffered not to risk, as small as they are, because when I set my pcs up for other people I know they WILL not know if something is wrong. All my builds have 0 failure and have been 100% excluding my first 6700k when I was tinkering with overclocking ( damn thing did not like pushing ram speeds). The only parts I've had fail were stock case fans or crappy ones and a few psu's (pretty sure I didn't leave enough head room or they were given to me from someone else, so since I use a 20% psu headroom rule no failures). I've updated bios and that can cause some issues and weird ones at that. I don't talk in forums but I sure do observe, and I don't leave reviews. But recently I've been considering throwing an EK nucleus aio in mine just as an experiment but alas I think it's not time. Here's my experience. I run a 13600k on lite load #5, Mobo MSI MAG z790 Tomahawk WIFI, GSKILL trident running at 6400 DDr5, and MSI 3080 3 fan, and a Lian Li 216 I believe (it has the 2 big 160mm infront and a 140 in rear), and 1tb western digital sn850x OS drive with a second 2tb one for gaming. The phantom spirit from thermalright just came out when I built it so I rolled the dice. On hell Divers 2 with ultra settings 1080p I average between 140 and 160 fps. My gpu never breaks 68c, I do run msi afterburner withi a modified custom fan curve that Ive used for years on 6 different gpus with the same temps, never will break 70c. I also run dual monitor (2 sceptre 165 ips 27" panels). The 13600k never breaks 70c, except for 1 core that sometimes gets to 71c. On average it sits in 50c - 65c. I've not ran into any bottlenecking, but if theres any its probably more on my gpu side which i intend on throwing a 4070 super ti in soon. I built an identical system for my nephew but with a 4070 on ddr4 at 3600 (budget issue for him) and mine outperforms that one slightly on the cpu/ram side. The mobo for that one was an asus z790 and the undervolt is not as good, I would 100% recommend the MSI mobo as the lite load settings are a dream and work perfectly. After almost a year on this setup its had 0 issues and has run like a dream. This processor is incredible and I'm still very happy with the 3080s ability to perform well (it was a refurbished one from amazon i got for $640 2 years ago). If anyone wants and fan curve or setting info I will provide it gladly. Most of this stuff is very fresh in my mind as I've build 4 builds this year. 2 13600ks, a 5700x3d for the old lady, and I slapped together a 6700k build for my niece that was lying around. Oh also, on the 13600k's I use the thermalright replacement contact metal frame. Its like $15 and make a difference. Looks neat too. TLDR: Thermalright is the real deal. The temps are incredible as I sit under 70c 98% of the time. My cine-bench 20,23, and 24 temps stay under 75c. DO NOT QUESTION THERMALRIGHT JUST DO IT. The one issue I have with it is that its chunky. It will sit over your ram, my work around was to slightly raise the fans so they would clear the ram. Be precise, take your time, minimize variables, and make the results reproducible. Sure it might take 3x longer than the youtube tutorial you watched, but if you never have to crack the case again, job well done. PS: Oh and that word future proof, in most senses will delude you into spending to much money and more than likely your shit will be obsolete when everyone else's is. These developers will target the largest average of people and if you make an outlier choice with the guise of "future proofing" (unless you have a circumstance where you have unique needs from your pc) your shit will be obsolete faster than everyone elses and get less attention. That's my tree-fiddy on the topic, use it or loose it but hopefully it helps someone. Love you all.

The problem with this is it is not air coolers vs AIOs, it is air coolers vs 240mm AIOs. The biggest advantage of AIO over air coolers is in the temp soak. They can keep a lower temp for much longer than an air cooler does. I'd love to see you compare the Arctic Freezer III 360mm and other 360 or even 420mm AIOs along with this. I'd wager to guess they would be a good amount better at the full load situations. That said for general use on the vast majority of systems I don't think you can beat the price performance of the TR Phantom Spirit and Peerless Assassin. And while I currently have a 420mm I might move back to air on the next build, we will see.

AIOs, my Corsair H100i has seen an intel 4790k, an AMD 2700x and now an AMD 5950x, and its still going! I'm sure I'm lucky in some ways but the fact all those CPUs stay between 60 and 65°c while rendering and summer gaming, inside my Corsair 750D Airflow, for the past 7 years... AIO all the way for me, and I'd recommend it

this takes a LOT of work to do. Appreciate you guys

Curious to see how the next gen Noctua D15 will hold up given it'll have 8 heatpipes instead of 6. Plus it'll be coming with their new 140mm fans

Air will always be better. Less moving parts, no pumps to burn out or leak.

Hey there.. I love these videos that you all do, which clearly show the reality of things. It's so easy to chase a needle to your detriment and waste time and money on something that doesn't matter. I wish I had known more before jumping into 12th gen with a 12900K. I've spent more trying to cool it (unnecessarily so) than the darn chip itself. I finally landed on a 420mm artic liquid freezer II in a massive Thermaltake case. I could have just tossed on a good air cooler and then stopped running r23 chasing "higher" performance that was just a waste of time as I never run that kind of workload. I just thought that I "had" to get the bigger number better going. Anyway, my dad always said that education costs money, and he was certainly right. Thank you for putting in the effort and delivering a dose of "real world" reality for us all. Cheers Rick

The second chart says intel am5, just found it funny so pointed it out. 1:20

Great report! Your episodes are most often the ones most relevant to me, thanks!

Answer to that question, Saison 69 Episode 420 : IT DEPENDS ! Wow.

Will you guys be able to test at lower noise levels soon? I primarily value lower noise levels as I play with open-back headphones so lower noise levels are what I shop for

I wish more videos focused on testing in different ambient temperatures. I wonder in a scenario where its 34C outside on a summer day if the results are different

With the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 280mm AIO costing only $86 and the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360mm AIO $90 US from Amazon I don't know why you didn't include 280mm and 360mm AIOs in this. They are price competitive, especially when you consider the NH-D15 is $109.95-$119.95.

Great presentation! Phantom Spirit Evo review soon?

I'm the third owner of a 12 years old NH-C14. The builds of the first two owners are e-waste but the Noctua cooler is still going strong and silent. And when I built my lga1700 PC Noctua sent me a mounting kit free of charge.

AIOs are more about the coolness factor in terms of the aesthetics. It's not for a bang for buck. I have a number of air coolers, but still considering an AIO, possibly thermalright or Arctic in the future.

Good summary. I loved liquid AIO coolers -- until the tube in one of mine leaked and fried my B350 motherboard. We all know that's a risk, but we never really think it will happen to any of us until it does.This mishap converted me into a permanent air cooler enthusiast. But honestly to each their own. The sight of a large ungangly heatsink through your tempered glass panel may not appeal to you visually. AIOs definitely have more aesthetic appeal, and when there are no mishaps they work beautifully and look even better. Prior to the mishap, my AIO flawlessly and silently cooled my CPU to below 60 degrees Celsius. Do what's right for you, you can't go wrong with either.

Great video! It helped me. I'm about to do my first build but I think I'm going crazy just by thinking about what cooler to get for my i5 14600k,I already ordered a thermalright frozen magic 360 scenic v2 that I got for about $55 usd but can't stop thinking ln the what if's due to the lack of info, what if it leaks and destroy my pc and things like that... By the other hand I do want and AIO for the looks (that probably no one will see unless I upload some photos to internet), should I stop stressing and go for something like a phantom spirit? Or a different more reviewed AIO?... What should I do? I think I'm going bald just of overthinking hahaha this is the 4th day in a row researching for cooling alternatives non-stop and everything has their pros and cons, their bad experiences and good ones

Great and explanatory video (as always), but why don't you also test with the 7800x3d?

cooling solutions are so good across the board (for the most part) that my choice these days is purely an aesthetic one - does the thing look good in my case. simples.

Lost a (then) 4000 USD system to a hose fitting that leaked in my system around 2010. The only thing that was not fried in that system was two harddrives. I will never water cool anything ever again.

Well done! What about noise differences?

Helpful thanks. I have always been air cooler and after saving for a year to build my dream I am in a huge pickle over the debate as I want to have only the best for my buck!

My Corsair H100i is 10 years old and still working. 🤷‍♂

Personal rig, I'm using a 14900K for gaming only and a BeQuiet Elite and when pre-loading shaders it caps out at 85C. When in the lobby I'm getting around 60C and when I'm in a map it fluctuates between 65c to 75C. When I ran 3D Mark Time Spy free all P-Cores stayed at 5.7GHz with a max temp of 80C. When running Cinebench R23 it does go right to 100C for a few seconds and then drops down to 92C with a clock speed of 5.3GHz all P-Cores. I know I should be using liquid but I'm gaming on it and I don't want to have to maintain a liquid cooler. With air it pretty much set it and forget it and only maintenance is blowing out the fins and if a fan dies or even both fans the heatsink will keep the CPU in check at idle while I'm not home. I do keep my PC's running 24/7 and for context I'm still using my 4790K on air and it's been on 98% of that time for 10 years. Power outages and upgrades/downgrades is the only reason it was ever turned off.

thanks for sharing!

Great Video. Thank you for all your work. i believe you might have a typo at 1:15 minutes. The header says "Best Intel AM5 Coolers" tho it should be "Best AMD AM5 Coolers", right? :D

Air all day every day. Liquid looks neat, but it's not as reliable as an air cooling solution

I’ve been an AIO fan boy for years because I exclusively build mini ITX systems but I build all of my friends PC’s as well. I’ve always selected their components but they usually want mid tower cases. I went with AIO’s for them but I will definitely be trying out some air coolers now. I hadn’t done much side by side comparison research so this definitely helped me!

I've had a Corsair H60 120mm AIO go bad with the coolant becoming contaminated and clogging the pump block. Fortunately, they sent me a new one, but it's still sitting brand new in the box, because I replaced it with Cooler Master's 120mm AIO. I have had zero issues with Cooler Master AIOs (120mm and 240mm) in all of my PC builds.

I picked up a Scythe Fuma 3 on release for a 7800x3D. I kinda wish I would have waited a bit, but I'm still happy.

That's a lot of wild numbers there, as well as an insane amount of testing to get them. Many thanks for this vital info!

No one ever seems to factor in the fact that the AIO coolers basically take care of having 2-3 case exhaust fans for your case and of course are removing the cpu heat from the case so your GPU doesn’t have to deal with the added case heat. Since everything about Air cooling is price to performance no one mentions this side of it

My biggest gripe with AiO (or full custom watercooling) is the - - constant - - noise. It doesn't matter when you're gaming, but when you use your PC for anything else like just browsing the web or simply working in silcence, there's - always- the pump. With air cooling you won't be hearing anything in those situations.

Bro what about the TR Frost Spirit and DC Assassin III? I thought those outperformed the Noctua and other Thermalright coolers before in your previous videos?

12:12 I've been looking for appropriate phrasing for exactly this argument, thanks I'm stealing it :D

Now same test but with a cpu contact frame. See if theres any significant moves everywhere

Air cooler is more than enough if you are not obsessed with temps

One question, if this test is done in 1 hour instead of 30 minutes, how different will the result be?

Have you tried attaching those T30 fans to air coolers? Could be a huge improvement.

The main attraction of AIO's is being able to exhaust the hot air out of your case when running higher core count higher wattage processors. I was on Air and still am on 2 of my systems but my 7950x since it can run quite hot I had to install a 360mm AIO due to the heat being recirculated around my case which made my GPU run at above 84*c which caused it to thermal throttle down to 1750mhz. The Air cooler was doing the same job keeping my temps under the TJMax I set 85*c but it was recirculating the heat around my case, since swapping to an AIO my GPU sits at 80*c and runs at above 1900mhz. If you are running a 7600x, 7700x, 7800x3D etc then you don't need an AIO since the heat they give off wont effect your GPU temp but running a 14900k or 7950x you need an AIO to exhaust all the heat out of the case unless you are happy with your GPU running at 84*c and thermal throttling. As I said the DRP4 was doing the same job as the 360mm AIO its just the heat was being recirculated around my case. If I put my hand on top of my case I can feel the heat coming off the rad but when I touch the side panel glass its only just warm but with the Air cooler the side panel glass was really hot to the touch. Its the only reason moved to an AIO, that and not having to run my case fans at 80% to exhaust the hot air being recirculated around my case.

The NH-D16 is going to own.

With the recent issues with EK, would you be recommending any of their products?

Question on the set up, since I've seen some tests where a front mount intake had 4-6 degrees better temperature over a top mount exhaust. From the pics they all look like exhaust setups, so wondering if front mount would make it slightly more compeitive in terms of temperature.

Could you take a look at how GPU temps compare with Air vs AIO on the CPU? You'd only really need to look at the most popular two top tier options - PS120SE and Arctic Liquid Freezer III? For me the primary benefit of using an AIO is the ability to optimize for CPU *or* GPU temps by leveraging intake / exhaust flexibility. Installing my AIO in the case top and exhausting CPU heat directly out of my case has significantly dropped my GPU temps and improved my GPU frequency while gaming. On the other hand if I wanted to optimize my setup for CPU temps I could move my AIO to the front of the case to ensure it reliably gets the coolest intake air possible (ie. prevent the CPU from eating GPU exhaust while under combined CPU / GPU loads like an air cooler does).

I wish you also recorded the acoustic performance of each cooler. Would’ve put things much more in perspective.

Great video and a lot of great info, thanks!

Great video, I just got introduced to TR 360 mm AIO, and I have to admit, its good for both value and temps. Thanks again for the video.

Did you use the contact frame on Intel LGA1700 CPUs ? This alone dropped my temps by 3-5C. And the artic freezer iii forces you to use it.

I prefer Air cooler for silent build, no humming buzzing pump sound.

I got dual AIOs for no fan noise. It also happened to drop my 3080 temps by 15c but that's just a bonus for me.

Have you done a video that shows how to disable the enhanced multicore performance bios settings that let the cpus run max turbo? If not, can you address it? Love the channel.

what was the ambient Temperature during those tests ?? try something like 75 to 80F ambient and lets see who's better AIO or Air !

This was already settled years ago

Air: quieter, smaller, more convenient, easier to clean, less potential for catestrophic failure. AIO: better potential cooling? Eh. Feels like LARPing at the cutting edge. For most people this is putting a spoiler on their Honda Civic.

These comparison videos are ridiculously good

My only issue with this video, is that its largely limited to 240 with the AIO. Having a few 360 thrown in there for contrast would have helped quite a bit in seeing what an AIO can bring to the table once you go above a 240.

I think Noctua's next gen NH-D15 will change things up a little.

Even when AIOs are better, air coolers are still better. (As in cheaper to buy and cheaper to maintain, along with lasting forever and absolutely being enough for any end user)

It would be nice to have a video that covers some of the most popular Thermalright market coolers. As right now, Thermalright is kinda in a league of their own with their price-performance rate. I'm saying this as in a previous video you've had Frost Spirit 140 doing wonders on the intel platform, but I have no idea where to place it when I compare it to Phantom Spirit (from the current video). And as prices being so close to each other sometimes, it would be great to have a HW Canucks Thermalright coolers tier list. So we'd know for sure where to place our moneys. PS: Amazing work on the coolers reviews. Really appreciate the effort put in for all these numbers.

Very nice video but I do miss extremely popular coolers like the nzxt x73, a 360 cooler.

Aios are not as quiet as people think, only offer a clean look if you into that

360mm or 280mm AIO. Why waste time with a 240mm?

Great video and thanks for all the work you have done on coolers :) I cannot stand pump whine so I've been on air cooling for a while now. I'm running a 7900x and even with a chip as hot as that, I am completely silent at idle with temps in the high 30s. Would be happy to switch to AIO because I actually do prefer them for cooling, but until pump technology reaches a point where they are silent, or at least not operating at a very annoying frequency, I'm sticking with air.

Question: what about power usage? Is there enough of a difference between the power usage of AIO's versus air cooling solutions for it to be a factor when considering the TCO of a system?

This is so wrong.... 240mm AIO's .. RGB... Fish Tank cases with screens... i getting old 😔

I'd love to see a comparison like this for SFFPCs. Many modern ones these days have limited height for the CPU cooler but will have space for a 240 rad. Would be interesting to see how lower profile coolers stack against the AIOs. I can figure it's probably worse than the tower coolers in this video but I'd be interested in knowing how comparable the performance will be.

wow - just bought both the phantom spirit and liquid freezer 3 and can't choose. Thanks for addressing the topic!

I did not see if the AIO's were actually running long enough to reach their saturated water temp. Maybe I missed it, but if not I would be interested in the testing of longer workloads temps. As in will AIO's when the water reach max temp. be the same as an Aircooler? or will they still be able to dissipate the heat faster?

Your previous reviews on coolers helped me choose the TR Phantom Spirit for my AMD build. The PS is so consistent on all your tests. Biggest bang for my buck from my experience so far!

Water cooling all the way. It just looks better and does not eat into the space of your case. If your using a nice air tower cooler than you might as well not even have a clear glass panel because you can't see anything else. Not only that but getting to components in your case is immeasurably easier. Even if there were no performance benefits I would still go with liquid cooling. Not to mention the noise benefits and the ramping up and down of fans on an air cooler which you have to create custom fan curves for just to be bearable. You don't have to contend with that at all with an AIO. I have been using the same AIO for over five years now and it was under 80 dollars when I got it.

I have a 'Phanteks EVOLV Shift XT' Mini-ITX case where I only have space for a CPU cooler up to 72mm in height. Because of that limitation, I can only get some OK air coolers with that. So, I went from a 'Noctua NH-L9x65' air cooler (65mm high) and over to the 'EK Waterblocks EK-Nucleus AIO CR240 Lux D-RGB'. My clock speed on my 'AMD Ryzen 7 7700' CPU (CPU Core Ratio: 'AI Enhanced' & OC: 'Curve Optimizer' @ -40 & 'PBO2' @ +200 MHz) went up by like 300 MHz under a Cinebench R23 benchmark by going over to this AIO. So, there is basically no point to go for another new air cooler in my case. My plan was originally to get the 'Phanteks Glacier One T30 V2' AIO (the new one), but that one is barely available now, so didn't want to wait for it to arrive in stores that might take forever.

I used the D14 (D15 previous gen) for 8 years, but for my new rig I wanted to challenge myself and a rig I could feel proud looking at. So I went a D14 to custom hardline WC. Sure it’s more silent and perform a bit better. But man the convenience of the air cooling is sure missed. Not sure I’ll stick with WC for my next rig

For 14700K should I use AIO or Air Cooling? everyone is telling me to use AIO and I am going for Ryujin 3 AIO from Asus!! what do you recommend, Thanks for the video!

tnxx for this video

Requesting a series of videos where all the coolers/fans from any one of the top brand are put against each other, allowing us to choose the best product from that brand. Best of thermalright, deepcool etc. :)

Just bought the Peerless Assassin for a new Ryzen build. I also considered the Deepcool AK650/500/400, but that was mostly based on looks and not worth almost 2x the price for similar performance.

which the best nocta D15 or deepcool AK620

I'm thinking of building my first PC and I'm not sure what to get... I live in the middle east and even in the spring it can get to 30-35 C easily, so my thoughts are to get an AIO just to be on the safe side...

Thanks for this great video

Since you guys already did a low profile cooler video, I was wondering if you could do a single tower cooler unit? Not everyone wants to have a huge dual tower cooler inside their PC

Can you please be more specific than Thermalright Phantom Spirit or Peerless Assassin? There are multiple coolers on the website.

5:05 so the deepcool LT520 did best at this point as far as cooling 7950x?

Would love comparison to the best 360mm AIOs

Is there a reason the IceGiant ProSiphon Elite is not tested in these cooler comparisons? Or really any cooling comparisons? Is the cost too high to justify based on other cheaper options?

What a good video, thank you for clearing up many doubts, now what I didn't understand is this part because the problem is with AMD's IHS, if the temperatures of the air coolers are very good...