- I'm about to save you 60 to a hundred dollars.
You don't need to buy that CPU cooler.
I know, it sounds crazy coming from the guy
who's made more than 120 videos about cooling your computer
and recently did this and this,
but if you're a gamer like me,
you don't really need any of that.
If you're a numbers guy like me,
you probably want evidence to back up that claim.
So, I went and got the evidence, lots of it.
We tested eight CPU coolers on six different CPUs
in some of the most CPU intensive games out there
and we are about to take a big steaming
no thank you on the marketing nonsense once and for all
to answer how much cooling do you actually need?
It's probably gonna surprise you,
like the segue to our sponsor.
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While we couldn't include every cooler on the market,
we did manage to cover every major form
of consumer CPU cooler across a wide range of price points.
We then divided our contestants
into three weight classes based on expected performance
and strapped them to a variety of CPUs
that were chosen based on
which ones could be easily extrapolated
to nearby SKUs in the lineup.
For example, if your cooler can handle a 13900K,
then you shouldn't have any worries about a 13700K,
but then it could be overkill
for a 13600K and so on and so forth.
On the team red side of things, it's a bit more complex,
because AMD's designs can have single
or multiple compute dies and different thermal ratings
even for identical core counts.
So we settled on the 16 core 7950X
as our worst case scenario.
Then we picked the 7700X for our next tier,
which you're probably wondering why 7700X.
Well, it comes down to density.
All eight of its cores are tightly packed onto the same die
and this concentration of heat can make it
a very challenging chip to cool.
Finally, we chose the top chip
in AMD's lineup of super efficient 65 watt CPUs,
the 7900 non X.
For our GPU we chose the powerful and hot 3090TI.
This was for two reasons.
One, to ensure that our CPUs were actually running full tilt
rather than just being bottle-necked
and second to dump heat into our case
while we're gaming or running stress tests.
This is to ensure that our results will be representative
of your experience at home rather than
only representative of running on an open test bench.
Oh, speaking of cases, we chose the Lian Li Landco.
Its layout reflects what most PC builders
are using these days
and for the sake of fairness we needed a chassis
that could handle a 360 millimeter rad in the top.
This knocked out some pretty popular contenders,
but it looked good
and it's competitively priced at just a hundred dollars.
Now I know this has been a lot of background info so far,
but it'll be worth it
because it's gonna help you interpret the results,
which I promise are coming very soon.
The last thing is that for all of our testing
we used the default fan curve on our motherboard.
We debated normalizing our results based on decibels,
but we're still working on our sound chamber
and it's also not super representative
of how most people use their PCs.
That isn't to say that that's a bad way to test.
It's actually an excellent way to test
and one that we will be doing in the future.
But today's video is more about the big picture.
Are you shopping for something like this
or something like this?
Let's begin with our stock coolers,
since the first question we need to answer is
do you need to buy a cooler at all?
AMD's Rath Prism is only included with their 65 watt chips.
So we conducted all of our tests on the Ryzen 7900 non X,
which shrugged off even our heaviest loads
with 40 degrees of thermal headroom.
That means that unless you're overclocking
or pursuing an aesthetic or acoustic benefit, any cooler
but the one in the box is pretty much throwing away money.
Intel, on the other hand,
their included stock cooler couldn't even
adequately cool the 13400.
In consecutive game benchmarks
the stock cooler ran on average around 30 degrees warmer
than our single tower Vetroo V5
and nearly 38 degrees warmer than our top performers.
For reference, that's the difference between frozen water
and the average high temperature in Dallas in July.
And while it technically gets a pass,
we didn't observe any performance dips
or thermal throttling,
if you're in a case that lacks airflow
or maybe you live in Dallas and it's summer,
you could easily hit a thermal wall.
As for Cinebench, yeah, not even close.
The 13400 hits its thermal limits in under 30 seconds
before dialing the clocks back to compensate.
It's a small performance hit
and it won't affect your FPS in games,
but we also weren't impressed
by its whiny acoustic properties.
(fan whining)
So in summary, if "free" is your only positive attribute,
that's not really positive
and the aluminum might have been better used
creating something that can actually stay cool,
like the 64 ounce insulated water bottle
from lttstore.com or one of these.
The Vetroo V5 managed to handle AMD's entire lineup in games
with average temps 15 to 20 degrees clear
of AMD's rated maximum
and the same goes for Intel, is what I would say
if it wasn't for the 13900K, which isn't a surprise,
but it is an interesting conclusion.
If all you do is game, an inexpensive
single 120 millimeter tower cooler is more than enough.
However, we can't say the same
if you occasionally use your PC
for heavily multi-threaded tasks,
where our poor Vetroo V5 struggled on everything
but the core i3-13400 and the Ryzen 7900.
It's not like we saw any catastrophic performance drops,
thanks to the intelligent clock speed management
of modern processors, but it's clear that the V5
was not designed for heavier loads
and with higher temperatures comes more noise.
So if you want more headroom
or just quieter overall operation
I'd recommend looking at our middle weight contenders.
This one from DeepCool looks absolutely sick
and it's water cooled,
but 120 millimeter all in one water cooling kits
carry a heavy cost burden for their size
and the LS320 comes in at double the price of its rival,
The Thermalright Peerless Assassin.
This dual tower cooler is such a good deal that it
makes many of the other options look kind of irrelevant.
The Peerless Assassin managed to handle
every gaming load we threw at it with ease.
But unlike the Vetroo V5,
this powerhouse even handles all core loads on the 13600K,
only failing to tame the 13900K,
which it fails to tame pretty spectacularly,
which seemed a bit weird.
Why did this thing handle the 13600K so well,
but then suddenly it's neck and neck with the Vetroo
when we put it on the 13900K?
I mean we'd expect there to be some difference
for having two fans.
You might think, well it must have just been
a fluke result from a poor mount.
But nope, we reseeded our coolers
for every run in our testing.
So, what's going on?
Well, the Thermalright Peerless Assassin's
towers are offset.
So when we mount the cooler south paw
there's precious little clearance with the GPU.
Then in the normal configuration,
we call it normal despite the fact
that there is no designated mounting direction,
it results in thermal improvements
that vastly exceed our expectations.
We're talking more than a 10 degree difference
in max and average temps while gaming on the 13900K.
It seems like the 13900K
combined with the heat dumped directly in
from the flow through cooler of the 3090
was just enough to push this cooler over the edge.
The good news is that no matter the configuration,
the Peerless Assassin looks great on the AMD side,
managing marginally higher clock speeds on the 7950X
thanks to the extra thermal headroom over the Vetroo,
making it a great choice for Team Red machines.
Despite the impressive performance
for our $40 cooler though,
not everyone has a case that can accommodate a tower,
nor does everyone enjoy the look
of big stacks of metal fins.
I mean, personally, I love it,
but taste is subjective, especially your bad taste, Jacob.
So let's taste some liquid.
In gaming DeepCool put up a much better fight
than I expected, especially on the AM5 platform,
but it still gets overwhelmed by the 13900K,
causing a dip in gaming clock speed
that while too small to affect
real world performance, was present.
At this point then it feels like we have
at least part of our answer.
If you're only gaming, you don't need anything more
than a competent single tower cooler.
And if you mostly game
but also run the occasional overnight video encode,
a basic dual tower cooler like the Peerless Assassin
or if you're tight on space and flush with cash,
a 120 millimeter AIO is totally a valid choice.
We also know that none of the things I just said are true
if you bought a 13900K
or if you like to squeeze every last drop
of performance out of your system.
I'm gonna have to spoil something that happens later here,
but it's important, so it's worth it.
A Noctua NH-D15 is gonna cost you
a whopping $60 more than a Peerless Assassin
and it only manages to offer a small performance benefit,
even on our more challenging chips.
So on the surface it sounds crazy.
Why would you spend over twice as much
for a 1% clock speed advantage?
But hold on a second.
When we zoom out and we look at our overall build cost,
that price difference becomes much smaller.
Take this 13900K build that we whipped up.
The extra cost of the NH-D15
is about 2.3% of the total price.
Meaning that the investment in better performance,
quieter operation
and lower temp seems maybe not that stupid after all.
So, if the overkill camp isn't actually overkill,
at least for high performance chips,
let's talk about the big boys then, shall we?
Corsair's flagship Elite Capellix series is available
in both 240 and 360 millimeter configs
and they're gonna be going up
against the Kraken X63 RGB from NZXT.
It's a water cooler showdown here, guys.
The 240 millimeter H 100 then performs very well
in all gaming scenarios, including on the 13900K
and even in all core workloads it manages to nearly take
Intel's furnace disguised as a gaming accessory
to its max boost speeds.
Stepping up to the 280 millimeter Kraken,
I'm very disappointed.
Despite still being a two fan cooler,
this thing boasts substantially more surface area
than the 240 millimeter rad.
So we should see our temps improve, except they don't.
In fact, the Kraken is slumming it down here
with our stock cooler on the Ryzen 7900.
What is happening right now?
As it turns out,
you need to install NZXT's companion software.
Why would a cooler need companion software,
you might ask?
Good question.
Many motherboards these days come with a header
for both a CPU fan and for a pump.
Not to mention that even if they didn't
you could still run a pump off of a PWM header
or even just directly off the power supply, no problem.
But in the name of RGB purdiness
many AIOs do connect to the system via a USB header.
That's not inherently bad,
except that NZXT configures their coolers
to run in silent mode by default,
meaning that if you neglect to use their CAM software
you could be getting shockingly poor performance
without realizing it.
If you do install CAM however, it handles games
as well as you'd expect, with no performance hits.
Even if all core loads on the 13900K can overwhelm it,
which ended up being true
for Corsair's 360 millimeter flagship as well.
It is truly remarkable
that Intel saw fit to not only release this monster,
but create an even hungrier follow up.
Like what space age carbon nano tube coolers
are they using on them in the labs?
Moving on to our air cooling heavyweight.
The Noctua NH-D15 continues to prove
that it is an absolute monster, even after all these years.
This is the cooler that we use
in our internal hardware testing and for good reason.
It keeps up.
Not only is it routinely sharing the lowest temps
in gaming across our entire suite,
but even in extended all core workloads,
this dual tower behemoth
takes pretty much anything you can throw at it.
It just doesn't lose
and it's cheaper than many AIO heavyweight water coolers.
I mean, we'd go as far as to say, if your case fits it
it is a better buy than any all-in-one water cooler.
Why?
Well, first, no special software required
to make it run its best.
And second and perhaps more importantly, no pump.
If the pump in your AIO bites the dust
after your warranty period is expired,
you are completely SOL
and you will need to replace the entire cooler.
If you're fan dies though, that's a fast, cheap replacement.
So a rule of thumb, we recommend air whenever possible.
But what if you're in a small form factor system?
Sadly, due to the widely varying shapes and configurations
of small form factor cases, testing cooling performance
in a generalized way isn't really practical.
But we still wanted to check out
how the super low profile L9A/L9I from Noctua fares,
just to kind of see what we could get away with.
On the 7950X then, our hottest AMD chip,
The L9A manages to barely make it under the line
in gaming loads, though it has precious little headroom,
which we'll talk about in a moment.
On all core workloads the L9A struggles,
with clocks dropping well below spec on the 7950,
though it does put up a pretty impressive fight
on the 7700X.
Even if you can see clock speeds
trending downward over time.
On the Intel side, things are not so great.
It's just not even relevant on the 13900K.
And even gaming loads on the 13600K
are proving to be a bit too much for this cooler.
On top of that, you need to take these results
with a giant grain of salt,
because your poor low profile cooler
is also likely to be operating
in suboptimal conditions with high ambient temperatures
in an airflow restricted small form factor case.
So then, what do we recommend?
Well, if we flip our data and go by CPU
we can see that if you're on AMD
a single tower cooler is gonna cover you for gaming.
And if you want to also use your PC for work
or if you can afford the top end 7950X,
the Assassin is pretty much your entry level.
Everything else is an extravagant gift then for your ears.
As for the Intel side of things, stock cooler on the 13400
or a small tower cooler
and on the 13600K, it's tower cooler or Assassin.
13900K we'd recommend installing prayers
or a 240 millimeter plus rad or a premium tower cooler.
Now in time our intention is
to refine our testing methodologies
and build a database of results just like this
on the LTT Labs website.
But for now, hopefully this video has narrowed your search.
Now, get on outta here you scamp
and spend that money you saved
on something that will keep you cool,
like ice cream for your friends.
Must be nice to have friends.
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If you enjoyed this video, why don't you check out
our video on another category
where people tend to overspend, dash cams.