Generally speaking, the more powerful your CPU is, the bigger and better cooler you'll need. This will vary across architectures depending on how efficient they are, how many cores, and at what frequencies your CPU runs. If your desktop PC needs a lot of power and you travel with it, you're likely to feel safer with a radiator that's attached to your case via 8 or 12 screws than with a huge chunk of metal hanging off your motherboard. The problem is making the CPU cooler fit can be hard. I was sweating if I even would be able to get the glass on my computer case when I got this. This turned out to be not an issue, I ended up with a center meter to spare.

The case was closed, also at the top (The Define C has an option to open the top plate but it was closed) I'm also a tad concerned about their choice to have it mount to two screw holes instead of four. This gives it a lot more give to actually tilt a bit either way and it may even shake around if there is sufficient vibration. While it's unlikely there would be enough to be dangerous in normal operation, if you carry your case while traveling or, worse, ship it, I don't know that it would be good for the HSF at all. To test the limits of a cooler's thermal dissipation capabilities, I run two primary stress tests: Cinebench and OCCT, each for 10 minutes. While this may be a short amount of time, it is sufficient to push most coolers–air and liquid–to their limits. Modern CPUs, whether Intel or AMD, are difficult to cool in intensive workloads. In the past reaching 95C+ on a desktop CPU might have been a cause for concern – but with today’s high-end CPUs, this is considered normal operation. Similar behavior has been present in laptops for years due to cooling limitations in tight spaces.

Compatible Parts

If you’re not sure if you want to go the air cooling route (a big metal heatsink with fans) or opt for a liquid-cooled AIO (a pump attached to a radiator and fans), there are a few things to consider. Large air coolers tend to take up more internal space in your PC case, or at the very least they need more vertical clearance off your best motherboard, which can limit your case options. Air coolers can also be louder and less efficient than liquid coolers at moving heat away from your CPUand out of the chassis. These days, though, that’s not cut and dry. If you can go the extreme route, there are fanless air cooling options like Noctua's Colossal NH-P1 as well for the ultimate truly silent cooling option, although you'll still need case fans to move the warmed air out of your case. Phantom Spirit 120 SE (PS120SE, English, Chinese): 7x6mm AGHP gen4, 280 W DTPC, TL-C12B v2, 125 x 135 x 154 mm, fins 10+40, November 2022 All testing is performed with a 23C ambient room temperature. Multiple thermal tests are run on each CPU to test the cooler in a variety of conditions, and acoustic measurements are taken with each result. These tests include:

It doesn't come with a screwdriver like some other coolers, but you don't need it because it has access to the mounting screws, unlike some coolers where you need to insert a long screw driver to a tiny hole Jun 3rd 2023 Endorfy Brings Arx 700/500 Cases, Spartan 5 CPU Cooler, and Wireless Keyboards to Computex 2023 (0) a. This means no power limits on Intel’s i7-13700K, and AMD’s default power limits on AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X.

With OCCT, Thermalright’s Peerless Assassin SE continued to deliver outstanding results. While it wasn’t able to pass 200W with reduced fan speeds in this scenario, at the default fan curve it averaged 64 degrees C over ambient – once again degrees C cooler than DeepCool’s AK500! While it’s nice to see how Intel’s flagship responds to different levels of cooling, those results don’t always correlate with lower-tier CPUs. Today’s review features two lower-end (though still powerful) CPUs – AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X and Intel’s i7-13700K. Testing Methodology Apr 27th 2023 ASUS ROG Announces Ryujin III All-in-One CPU Coolers with Simplified Fan Connection and Advanced Pump (3) I would also recommend installing cpu temperature monitoring software as well to make sure that everything is working correctly.