20 Best Budget Cpu Cooler For Ryzen 5 3600 (2023 Updated)

Computer gaming at low budget – best gaming value I’ve seen in 30 years. This 1st generation Ryzen has been reduced. I built my system with the 1600 for gaming, steaming and browsing on my 1080p 1920×1080 TV Best budget value ($$ wise) OF ALL CURRENT CPUS for gaming if you are configuring a cpu AND a graphics card If you are building a budget gaming system and you want to do it without $$ graphics card get the Ryzen 2200g or the 2400g – pretty good gaming with the cpu having integrated graphics – descrete graphics card not needed This first generation Ryzen 1600 is 6 cores and at clearance prices.

The comparable speed 2nd generation (Ryzen 5 2600) is about 10 per cent faster but more expensive Yes, various Intel i5 cpu’s are faster at single core gaming (and more $$ ) but the Ryzen 5 and 7 lines are 30, 40, 50% faster with multi-core applications (streaming, photo and video editing and doing multiple things at the same time).

I pare my Ryzen 1600 gaming machine with a Radeon RX 580 – budget mix gets me great gaming at 1080p; EVERY ONE of my 75 Steam games run at the highest settings. Performance is 50 min fps for the most demanding games and up to 260 fps on some.

Note: Ryzen seems to really take advantage of faster ram. My new system with this Ryzen 5 1600 at 3200 ddr4 sometimes seems snappier in games than my Ryzen 2700x system with its 2400 ddr4. Haven’t benched mark this perception yet.

Also note that almost all games are single core, and advantage for the 1600. FYI, not to give the wrong info – my 2700x system is always much faster in multicore like video editing etc. A mention abut Microcenter.

Marvelous service! I have bought from Microcenter for many years in Queens New York and Brooklyn New York during my career years! Now in my retirement I shop in the St Louis Park, Minnesota store (Minneapolis) even though I live over 100 miles away.

I bought all the component parts including an M. 2 SSD for my new Ryzen 1600 system in St Louis Park. I chose the wrong interface format but Microcenter worked with me so I did not have to drive for 3 hours to exchange to the right format.

Thank you, its great store, and a company with great people!.

While the Ryzen 7 family brought AMD back to being competitive in the high-end CPU market with their hugely impressive multi-threaded performance and value compared to Intel’s X99 platform, most people won’t ever use 8 cores or 16 threads.

Enter the Ryzen 5 family made up of the 6 core and 12 thread 1600 and 1600X, and 4 core and 8 thread 1400 and 1500X. The 1600 is arguably the best value of all the Ryzen 5 CPUs, as of this writing it’s only $30 more than the 1500X and $30 less than the 1600X, plus adding extra value with the great Wraith Spire cooler that is missing from the 1600X.

At this point Intel might have a slight advantage in IPC with their Kaby Lake CPUs, but it’s very slight, and negated by Ryzen’s better multi-threaded performance and unlocked multiplier for overclocking on all Ryzen CPUs.

It’s hard not to be impressed by getting 50% more cores (4 vs 6) and 200% more threads (4 vs 12) compared to Kaby Lake i5 CPUs at a similar price. For my build I went with the R5 1600 and Asus Prime X370-Pro.

Micro Center’s $50 off combo deal, at the time of my purchase, made this an unbeatable value. You can save even more by going with a B350 motherboard, with the difference mostly being fewer USB 3. 1 ports/PCIe lanes and no multi GPU support (although I have heard it works but you get only x8+x4 lanes instead of x8+x8 lanes).

I went for the Asus because it was the cheapest X370 motherboard Micro Center carried at the time and I wanted the better VRM cooling for overclocking. Overall the system I built around the R5 1600 is a powerhouse.

Windows 10 installed in a couple minutes on my Samsung 960 Evo M. 2 PCIe NVMe SSD. I updated to the latest Asus 0604 BIOS and have had no issues at all with stability. My Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x16GB 2133MHz kit works flawlessly and overclocked nicely to 2666MHz on close to stock timing with 1.

275v. Waiting to get an aftermarket CPU cooler before overclocking the CPU but I have benched a little at 3. 8GHz. I had issues with crashing on the Asus Aura RGP software when opening it but resolved that by installing the 1.

3GB AMD chipset drivers. I love this system and the R5 1600 works very nicely in games with my EVGA GTX 1060 6GB SC. I have been a fan of AMD since the Athlon Thunderbird days and was so excited for Ryzen to bring AMD back into being competitive with Intel at the mid to high-end CPU market.

AMD delivered and then some with Ryzen. AMD says the AM4 platform will be supported through around 2020 and support future iterations of Zen. I highly recommend the R5 1600, especially if you don’t need the extra cores/threads of the R7 1700, 1700X, and 1800X.

While I absolutely love the value you get with the R7 1700 and its amazing power efficiency for an 8 core CPU, it just didn’t make sense to pay the extra $100 for me over the R5 1600. AMD is back on the map and finally making Intel sweat.

Having competition back in the CPU market again means the people that win is us and that’s a very good thing!.

Finally had the time to open up this bad boy to build my new pc – when I initially opened the package, I noticed that there was a finger print on the chip and the fan seemed a little used and had a few dust particle on the original thermal paste.

but my excitement did not stop me to install the product. The product performed very well while it lasted, however my computer started freezing here and there and all my other parts are brand new and I have went through a thorough inspection and testing and did not find anything wrong with the other parts.

So I finally remove the cpu fan carefully, removing the thermal paste with proper solution and ensured no thermal paste are left behind before lifting the cpu to check the condition and the pins. There I noticed that a few of the pins were discolored and a small hint of thermal paste at the base of those pins.

I am very worried that the my computer problems arises from this finding. I will be contacting newegg to find a proper resolution for this purchase as I’ve purchased many things from newegg and never had this happened before!! Update: Newegg was very professional and has refunded me the money as there were none in stock after the RMA was processed.

2 Stars boosted to 4 stars! Thank you Newegg.

When I first built my PC, back in April of 2020, I had initially purchased a Ryzen 5 2600. I had a pretty low budget, so amazing performance and 4k graphics were already out of the table. Everything worked perfectly fine and I was able to run all the games that I had purchased.

However, after only 7 months of usage, my PC started running into some issues and it even got to the point where it was shutting down on its own. So, after running a few tests and checking a few things, I noticed that the CPU had temperatures in the low 90s even when idle.

Thankfully, I had purchased the warranty on it so I took it to Micro Center and decided to pay off the difference on a newer processor. So far, the Ryzen 5 3600x has worked tremendously well. The left side of my tower doesn’t feel hot anymore and my temperatures are back to normal.

I did notice a small overall improvement in the performance of my pc as well. Everything is running a little smoother and I haven’t had any problems whatsoever. If you’re looking for a cheap processor that can handle most games at high rez, web browsing, and video streaming, then look no further.

This processor will get the job done for you.

Installed this cooler three weeks ago as a first-time builder, and it’s working well on a i7-12700k so far. Quiet operation with idle temps 4-6 degrees above ambient and sustained load temps at about 20-40 degrees above ambient.

A couple install notes: The surface of the cooler that touches the IHS is covered by a piece of rigid plastic. My cooler did not have a peel-off sticker that coolers from other manufacturers may have.

The cooler comes with a mounting bracket for the LGA1700 socket. For intel 12th-gen chips, the Noctua manual shows how to apply the thermal paste in a quincunx pattern, and there’s plenty of paste in the tube to practice your application technique.

For ATX PC’s, I think it’s wise to install a cooler of this size once the motherboard is fixed inside the case, so you can easily attach CPU power cable(s) and fan headers to the motherboard. I attached the cooler outside the which was nice since it served as a secure handle to grasp the motherboard as it was put into the case, but connecting the fans and power cables and screwing in the motherboard was a delicate operation with two gigantic radiators and fans obstructing the space.

Thankfully I had long screwdrivers.

I installed this on a Z390 MB with a 9700K inside a NZXT H510 case. It was easy to install, it runs very cool and very quiet! I did not have room for the second fan due to RAM height, but I didn’t need it anyway.

Running Cinebench a couple of passes resulted in a temp of 70 degrees Celsius. Under normal operation it stays much cooler, and it idles about 31 degrees. This replaces an NZXT Kraken X62 280mm AIO. No more worries about a leaking AIO, I do not have to run the CAM software any longer, and I get much better airflow which is better for my GPU!.

A very efficient processor cooler – which comes with a single Noctua PWM fan (which is itself very quiet in operation). It’s quite a large ‘lump’ overall, which has the supplied fan sitting in the middle between the two banks of fins.

Note: the fan itself is slightly wider than the fins of the cooler – so it will stick out just a little! When fitting this cooler to the processor installed in my MSI motherboard I found it almost impossible to attach the cooler onto the processor when the mobo was already installed into the case, and had to resort to taking the motherboard back out of the case to do so! YMMV of course.

If you do take the fan out of the middle when you’re trying to fit the cooler in, just be aware that the pre-formed wires (which hold the fan in place on either side of the fins) will be very close to the top of the case – and unless you have long, spidery fingers, pulling those wires into place to hold the fan in position will be “difficult”, and you’ll probably skin your knuckles in the process! My advice would be to fit the cooler first – including the fan connection to the motherboard’s CPUFAN connector, and then put the motherboard into the case.

In my case I was building a very quiet Audio workstation which used components that in normal service wouldn’t be producing much heat, and therefore slow speed fans would provide sufficient movement of air to keep everything within the thermal envelope.

Be aware that if you use certain passively-cooled Video cards (as I was with my Sapphire 6600, which also uses heat-pipe technology to conduct the heat away from the GPU) when the Sapphire card was fitted in the first x16 PCIe slot on the MSI motherboard, then the fins of the GPU cooler were too close to the processor cooler fan.

However, the Palit Graphics card I also purchased (which is also passively-cooled) had its cooling fins in a slightly different position and these were well clear of the side of the Noctua fan.

I purchased this CPU Cooler to be used in conjunction with an Intel 7820X processor. The asymmetrical design of the cooler allows RAM and PCIe compatibility. It is well made and comes with one fan, with an option to fit another.

I am using this with self build DAW and find the single fan extremely quiet, yet efficient enough to keep my processor cool. The information provided on the Noctua website is excellent. The instructions which came with the Cooler could have been better, but everything is installed and running as it should be now.

All parts for this new build were supplied by Scan.

The 3800xt has the highest single core and all core boost of the Ryzen 3000 line. Coming from a 3600x, the performance uplift was surprisingly noticeable in both benchmarks and day-to-day feel. Paired with a 32gbs of 3200 cl14 ram on an X470 board, this chip absolutely flies.

The XT line is the highest binned set of dies of the Zen 2 family and thus capable of scaling higher than its x and n-x counterparts, especially under optimal cooling solutions. Under a standard 240mm aoi loop, the 3800xt is idling anywhere between 30-50c and peaking at 71c all-core full load.

At stock clocks and voltage, two cores are reported boosting past 4. 7ghz under single threaded workloads, while the rest of the cores are reaching 4. 6ghz during mixed executions. Undervolting is also great on this cheap for those for eco cosncous.

A 4. 1ghz all core frequency was achievable with less than 1. 2 volts with 4. 45 achievable at just over 1. 3 volts using software over locking methods. Stock, this chip is designed to reach 1. 5 volts safely for very short periods of time.

Overall, this is a great chip, especially had under $300. A sizable upgrade from all previous Zen and Zen+ and a respectable uplift from zen2 non-xt cpus. While it is outclassed by the he latest and greatest I the form of the 5800x, the 3800xt can be had for considerably less and is easier to cool all the while performing admirably in most builds.

I was looking at a CPU upgrade since I built my first computer back in March, initially I had my build set for the standard R5 3600 but settled for pulling the R5 2400G out of the prebuilt I got. I OCed the R5 2400G up to 3.

9GHz all core and it still really wasn’t enough for what I wanted to do so with money getting freed up after paying down some bills I pulled the trigger on the R5 3600XT. First impressions were that it ran hot on air with peak temps on a 4.

4GHz all core OC at ~65C to 70C At that OC it was pulling 1. 54V. So I toned it back 4. 2 then after much deliberation decided to just let the chipset do its PBO thing and leave it alone. With that it isn’t running my fans ragged with my agressive fan curve and I haven’t noticed that much of a performance hit.

In titles like MSFT Flight Sim (2020) I now get close to a steady 50 to 60FPS and ATS is a smooth 60FPS at 1440P. Cities Skylines with 2500 Assets runs 10 FPS faster on average from 35 to 45FPS in a city with 20k people.

I have not tested my emulators but I expect the same over all results. I do wish I waited for a week for the R5 5600X but I may get that next year or just wait till the refresh of the 5000 series.

Very nice CPU. The one I got boosts up to 4. 6 on some cores at stock settings. Much hotter than the 3400g I had before though. Gets up to 85 degrees doing prime95 after a while; but that is still under the 95 degree limit.

That is with an Arctic 34 esport dual cooler. It lets me overclock my crucial ballistix 3600 ram much better than the 3400g. Most I could get with the 3400g was 3333 cl16; now with the 3600xt it’s stable (I think) at 3800 cl16.

Noctua quality in black which includes LGA 1700 support out of the box. No need to order extra brackets and no waiting to build your Alder Lake rig. Installation is very straightforward and although it is expensive Noctua quality and performance is worth the investment.

I have this paired with the i7 12700k at stock settings on an Asus Tuf z690 D4 board. Gaming temps are in the mid 50s C and hold 4800-4900 clocks when multiple threads are used. Running Cinebench pushes temps into the mid 70s and low 80s and considering the max is 100C on these chips there is plenty of headroom there.

Any decent case with some airflow should have no issues with this cooler and any AM4 CPU as well as any i5 or i7. I was concerned about temps with Alder Lake but under realistic loads that most everyone uses, especially gaming, this cooler is plenty.

I highly recommend giving this one a shot.

I purchased this cooler for my Intel 10400F CPU to upgrade to the stock cooler. There is a significant improvement in cooling performance. Up to low loads, the stock cooler maintained the CPU temp around 40-45°C; this Noctua maintains the CPU temp at around 30-35°C.

At moderate loads, the stock cooler operated up to ~60°C; this cooler maintains the CPU in the forties (°C), heading into the low fifties at worst. The additional cooling also means the case fans run at lower RPMs, so the demand on them is significantly reduced.

The cooler footprint isn’t large so combability is good (eg tall RAM still fits, etc). Plenty of parts are included to for compatibility with several types of Intel and AMD sockets. Highly recommended for entry and mid-range CPU cooling upgrades for a decent price.

This cooler is by far the best air cooler money can buy. I don’t have much experience with building computers, but the installation was seamless and easy with the instructions provided by Noctua. The air cooler comes with LGA 115x, the new 1700 socket for the Alder Lake CPU’s and AM4.

The thermal paste provided by Noctua is also top quality. Under load, the highest temperatures I’ve seen were around 75C, idle around 35-40C. Extremely comparable to any liquid cooling/AIO on the market currently.

The fan on the cooler is super quiet, I don’t here a thing when playing games. Overall, extremely satisfied with the purchase.

I must admit, I didn’t really need such a fancy cooler but the looks of this cooler are amazing. It’s super quiet, exquisitely crafted and comes with Be Quiet’s top of the line Silent Wings 3 fan. I don’t have a lot of experience with installing coolers and the instructions weren’t great (just diagrams, no words).

However there’s a ton of information on their website and youtube etc. Once installed, it’s rock solid and it’s a real centrepiece for my PC build. As for performance, it seems to be doing the job with temps well within the acceptable range.

Having said that, I don’t overclock or require my CPU to do a lot of heavy lifting. The slim and tall design also allows for plenty of clearance for your RAM and to get to your other components. The cooler also fits very comfortably in my PC case (Be Quiet! 500DX) For a cheaper option with a similar appearance, check out the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition.

for the Price point this is a good budget cpu cooler cons the fins in this particular model are not stacks densely compered to some other cooler model, so it get easily bent if you are not careful during the mounting process this however doesnt affect the cooling performance because the individuall fins are substantially bigger Pros with sparsely fin stacks, a speciall fan blade to achive high amount of static pressure, is not requiered.

The fan, that comes with the cooler, is sufficient enough to do the job an it is very quiet – like the name suggest be queit! Tips do not mount the fan before the motherboard is seated in the case, because the fins are so big, you can easily running out of space for a cable management if you mount the cooler on the motherboard, before the MoBo seated in the case.

First seat the cable especially the 4+4 pin 8 pin CPU cable usually on the top left of the motherboard and other fanrgb cable then you can mount the cooler on the motherboard. The package comes with long screwdriver, that suitable to mount the cooler and a little amount of thermal paste, so you dont need to buy extra themal paste, however it is not a pre-applied thermal paste.

to the extent that I now cannot tell if my PC is on or off. Retrofitted it to the Ryzen 7 5800x PC I build a few months ago, originally with an Antec Neptune 240 cooler. This was very colourful but so noisy it had to go.

Glad I kept the motherboard backplate, as that’s what this cooler uses (no AMD backplate supplied). Fitting the cooler is no more than moderately fiddly and the instructions are OK – the flat side of the cooler (the one with the t of ‘be quiet’ neaerest) goes towards the memory blocks.

Strongly recommend centring the aluminium locking bridge and putting the screws through its holes before placing the whole thing down onto the CPU and mounting plate. The rear screw is the tricky one – get that started, and then the supplied screwdriver goes down the holes in the cooling fans and can be used to tighten it – and do it evenly as described in the instructions.

Be Quiet have made a video on youtube which makes it look a bit easier than it is in fact! https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=JVjqNJUGgig Overall I’m delighted with this – I’ve not overclocked the CPU (not much point with this processor) but even under full load the temp stayed below 80C in after-installation testing.

I had no trouble installing the fan, the clips were a bit snug. Came with thermal paste pre-applied to the base plate. I didn’t use the instructions, but read them after I installed it and they provide clear pictures.

I did a stress test on the benchmarking software Prime95 with the CPU, a Ryzen 5 2600, at stock settings and occasionally one core would hit 57 C with the other 5 at 37 C to 40 C. (Prime95 pushes your CPU to 100% load on all cores for the duration of the test) So I was really, really happy with the performance of this cooler since at no time during normal usage will my CPU be under constant 100% load.

This is a great cooler for any of the Ryzen 5s, and probably good for the Ryzen 7s, too. I also tested this on an Intel i5-11600k. On Prime95 the CPU hit 98 C-100 C at full load, with all cores running at 4.

6 – 4. 9 GHz. The cooler’s rated TDP is 150W, the 11th gen i5’s TDP is 125W, but when Turbo Boost kicks in it draws a lot more power and the Pure Rock 2 can’t keep up. If you’re not stress-testing it, it goes between 30C-45C, so if you’re not a power user, it should be fine for the i5-11600k.

The non-K versions of the 125W 10th and 11th gen Intel chips may do better. This is a fantastic solution. I was really impressed with its performance on the Ryzen 5. It stays really, really cool under harsh conditions and with the case panels on, you can’t hear a thing from the fan, and the all-black look is great.

I would be curious to see the performance difference when a second fan is added. Overall, a good buy.

From a guy who does very little in the way of system building. Cooler was recommended by the salesman when I didn’t have a clue on selection. Cooler seems quite large but up to the task. The design has some designed offset for clearance of memory and possibly other parts.

For a novice, the instructions are not very clear about a few steps of the assembly and orientation of the cooler on top of the CPU (for best parts clearance). The instructions are seriously deficient in deciding on which side of the cooler to attach the fan (parts clearance?), fan cord orientation (maybe nearest the mother board connector?), and air flow direction (maybe through cooler and towards back panel?).

The cooler came with thermal grease already in place – so I gooped it around while trying to confirm a viable orientation. I also did not need to buy separate thermal grease. In my 10 year old case, I had to remove some case ducting that was intended for much lower profile “pancake” CPU fans.

The Pure Rock 2 is an awesome CPU cooler, it keeps my 12400F under 60 at gaming load, with it usually averaging between 52 and 56 while in more CPU intensive games. It looks great, the black and silver should fit nicely with any build.

It’s also super easy to install, if you (like me) have had trouble mounting some tower coolers, this one is about as easy as it gets. As promised it’s also nearly silent, even at load. For me it ticks all the boxes, keeps my CPU nice and cool, and is quiet and easy to install Not to mention as someone who wanted to go for as little RBG as possible, this does a great job while still looking very nice.

I used this cooler to replace the Wraith unit supplied with my Ryzen 5 3600 CPU. It is fitted on a Gigabyte 570 Gaming X motherboard. I purchased it simply as an upgrade I was not experiencing overheating from the Wraith.

I was surprised by the sheer size and weight of this unit, but it did fit inside my case, (I hadn’t measured to ensure that it would. ) The kit is high quality, and contains a variety of parts to give mounting options.

Mounting was straight forward and secure. The fan is quiet when idling, but becomes audible when it increases in speed. Overall the CPU runs 2 to 3 degrees cooler when idle, the peak temperature I have seen is 74.

5 degrees. This cooler is efficient and more than enough for my needs.

Packaging was neat, product is fantastic quality and the Noctua AM4 installation video on YouTube is worth following along with (linked in this review). The mounting system is really simple and sturdy, although the sprung screws can be a little tricky to get going at first.

I recommend removing the fan until the cooler is mounted, the wire frame mount for the fan is easy to remove if you pull it back and out towards the other fan side rather than just perpendicular to the face of the side of the heat sink.

Once installed, the signature Noctua brown looks cool and really is a mark of quality these days, it’s quiet and easily keeps my 3700x cool on stock settings while doing any task. About a 15-20 degree difference from the stock wraith RGB cooler in my Fractal Design Meshify C case.

The only reason I upgraded was because the stock cooler is very noisy. This one is bliss in comparison.

This is the first time I have fitted this type of cooler, I found the instruction were easy to follow but you must take into account of how the cooler is to sit in your case for complete air flow. The cooler is very quiet, keeps my 5800x at 50c and 75 under load.

Presently doing a good job. I would recommend this product.

I recently bought a Steam Valve Index VR setup and started using it on my home theater PC (i7-6700 on an MSI Pro Carbon mobo with 16 gigs of ram and a GTX1080 GPU). I found that after running some games like Arizona Sunshine or Time Carnage VR, the CPU would spike up to 98-100% on all cores while the GPU was maxing out at about 45%.

I decided to rebuild the computer using this CPU, an ASRock B550 Taichi, and 32 gigs of ram. I kept the GPU since a graphics card will pretty much cost you an organ these days, and the 1080 is still a strong performer.

The 5600X is about 700 mhz faster than the 6700, has 2 additional cores and 4 more threads, a much newer architecture, and it made short work of load times! In addition to that, all cores peak at about 88%, and the GPU is now showing about 55% usage.

5600X and 6700 are both 65W chips, but it’s amazing what 4 or 5 years newer tech gets you! In the AMD lineup, for gaming, the 5600X is it. The 5800X is much more expensive for only modest gains (content creation tasks aside), and the 5900X or 5950X are waaaaay more expensive and very much aimed towards content creators.

The 5600X is probably the very best price:performance deal in computer chips in a very long time!.

It itself is a decent CPU. But at the moment, there are no good motherboards to pair this which, heavily hampering it’s value proposition against it’s competitor, the 13600K, which it’s socket, the LGA 1700 socket, has matured to a point where there are good value offering for reputable brands.

This will most likely not be the case in the future, so don’t let this change your decision. Another issue is not supporting DDR4, which the 13600K does. So if you care about value, the 13600K is a no-brainer at the moment.

As for performance, according to AMD, it is roughly on par with Intel’s last gen 12900K! Usually this would be incredible, but remember, Intel isn’t playing around with 13th gen. Overall review: Due to it’s expensive adoption costs, and being a new platform, I would recommend a 13600K over this.

I used Newegg’s custom build interface to construct what I thought was a sound computer, good for intense graphics processing. Within three weeks, the computer began crashing every other day, until one night when I got a sequence of Blue Screens of Death.

No troubleshooting could fix this, so I returned the computer to Newegg for a replacement. Recently I received an email saying they were converting this to a refund because one of their parts was out of stock.

Which one? Why not replace it with a similar product? Why not warn me in the custom builder that this was the wrong cooler? I couldn’t tell until I looked at my order again, and only the CPU cooler was not eligible to be placed on a wishlist.

Great communication, Newegg. Either the Noctua is a substandard product that can’t tolerate moderate usage, or I happened to get the one bad one in stock, and Newegg has no backup/replacements for it.

I purpose built this PC to run my BlueIris video surveillance software. I needed a fast processor with multiple cores to decode video streams from multiple IP cameras. It appears so far that the built-in Intel QuickSync decoder is doing a good job decoding the H.

264 streams without the aid of a graphics card. I was worried that the Noctua cooler would be too big for the case, but the Fractal specs said it would fit and it does (barely). But the 1st PCI slot is very close so a graphics card probably won’t fit there.

The Noctua site says this slot is not usable with this cooler. The Noctua cooler is quiet and the Fractal case keeps everything very quiet. – Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake Quad-Core 4. 2 GHz LGA 1151 Desktop Processor – ASRock H270M Pro4 LGA 1151 Intel H270 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.

0 Micro ATX Motherboard – G. SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) – Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler – CORSAIR RMx Series RM650X 650W 80 PLUS GOLD Power Supply – SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.

5″ 250GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) – WD Purple 4TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive – ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner – Bulk – OEM – Logitech K740 Illuminated USB Keyboard – ASUS VS229H-P Black 21.

5″ 5ms (GTG) HDMI IPS-Panel LED-Backlit Widescreen LCD Monitor – Windows 10 Home – 64-bit – OEM – Fractal Design Define Mini Black Silent MATX Mini Tower Computer Case.

This CPU cooler by Noctua really gets the job done. I was building a new 5th generation Intel system and didn’t want to go with liquid cooling and this one had high marks. Noctua as a company is in Austria and everything about them screams quality.

Even though my motherboard was only a couple of months old, they already had updated their website to show compatibility. I highly recommend going to the Noctua website and looking up your exact motherboard and RAM on their compatibility page.

I did this and verified that my Gigabyte Champion motherboard and Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM were compatible, but then found that the cooler was just a little too close for comfort to the 1st PCIe slot.

Noctua suggests insulating the fan clips as a solution but that is a little scary of a solution for me, so just be aware of it (I ended up just using the second slot). This is the sole reason for the subtraction of an egg on this review.

Also ensure you have enough case height. I have a rather large Thermaltake Armor 8000 and still just barely cleared the case door. Also of note is the bracket required for the 2011-v3 socket is not included by default, though the company will airmail you one for free if you request it on their website with proof of purchase.

All the size constraints aside, this cooler is amazing. The fans are extremely quiet and keep the CPU at near room temperature most of the time. When the fans spin up you barely even notice. The quality of the parts is top notch, and has sold me on Noctua in general (I just replaced all the fans in my system with Noctua versions.

The two tone brown may be strange for some, but I find it a nice change of pace from blue/black/red everything with LEDs all over the place. Overall a great cooler and a solid four stars. It’d easily be six stars if not for the issue with the PCIe slot.

Granted, the cooler was designed before the motherboard, and the website says there could be an issue, but it’s more of an issue than is led on.

I like to run Folding @ Home on my PC and that is more taxing than any benchmark I’ve been able to find. Using this cooler on a 5900X with PBO enabled, after about an hour it tops out at 86C and 4. 35 Ghz.

If I enable GPU folding (which produces extra heat in the case. Nitro+ 5700XT) the CPU will hit its thermal limit of 90C @ 4. 20 – 4. 25 Ghz. It’s much quieter than the Wraith Prizm that came with my prev.

CPU (2700X) but is loud enough so you can tell by noise level if the CPU is pegged at 100% or not. After carefully reading the included manual, was easy to install; I was able to take my PC apart and after replacing the processor, install this cooler in about 20 minutes.

When gaming or running 3D Mark the CPU will hover around 80C, but take into account that my GPU is the bottleneck in games that would stress the CPU the most. If I can ever get my hands on a reasonably priced high-end GPU I’ll update this review if MC lets me.

So i was building my first PC from scratch, with a Ryzen 3600x on a x570 motherboard. Because of height restrictions in a mid case i couldn’t go with the more flagship noctua cooler, so i went with the U12 model (which barely fits, but as long as it fits it’s fine).

Switching the fan to be ready for an AMD board was pretty simple. But once it came time to put it on, the retention springs were so rigid that getting the screw to thread in was difficult. I managed to eventually get one side on, and when i went to try the other side it wouldn’t thread until i started putting massive pressure on it.

I seriously thought it was going to break my motherboard trying to get it on. And because it would slip on the paste, then not want to slide back, i would have to lift and realign it, which may have caused bubbles.

(my thermals show one core gets pretty hot, in the mid 70s (C) while the rest usually stay in the high 50s even under load). Eventually i finally got it lined up well enough and had enough pressure to sink it onto the screw to thread it, and thankfully the board did not break.

But i’m not sure if i just had a bad batch of product that had the springs too tense, or if they all are like this. Even with it not mounted at all, trying to move the screw receptacle 2mm took all my force because those springs did not want to give at all.

I’m looking at getting another fan so that it can hopefully improve the cooling on that final core that stays hot, since this is only the single fan model. But the added cost of a single extra noctua fan makes the cost overall of the cooler go up substantially.

I should have just gone for a dual fan model to begin with.

The cooler fits the case perfectly. It also leaves about 2-3mm clearance between itself and 1st (yes, 1st, not 2nd) RAM socket on my motherboard when installed to blow air to the rear of the case and fans attached on each side.

So, essentially, it is 2-3mm between the fan and the 1st (closest to the CPU) memory slot. Also, P183 case has an opening on the back side of the motherboard, around CPU area, so removing motherboard was not necessary.

The unit is built very well. Installation is straight forward. Fans are quieter than my 2 case fans, which are very quiet too, so I don’t hear cooler fans even if I try very very hard. With SSO bearing system fans are expected to last a long time.

I purchased liquid cooling system first, but it was leaking on arrival. I was uneasy about liquid cooling to begin with, but the incident made me put liquid cooling idea aside. Noctua I believe is an excellent choice.

I would recommend and purchase it again with no hesitation.

This is my second Noctua cooler, and I am just amazed at how good they are (the other is a NH-C12P SE14). It is very quiet, and it reduced temps on my i7 3770k at 3. 5 GHz at full load from low 70’s C to high 50’s C OCed to 4.

2 GHz! Note that it is pretty big, so make sure you have a case that is big enough to support it. I have G. Skill RipJaws RAM modules on my MSI G77A-GD65 mobo, and it looks like I would have to move the fan up on the heatsink slightly in order to clear them if I had one in DIMM slot 1 (which I don’t).

I don’t think that would be much of a problem if it came to it. It’s not really a con because these things have to be big to be effective. By the way, I don’t understand why people are complaining about the mounting clips for the fan(s).

I thought it was pretty easy to install, and it makes the fan very secure. The whole unit in general is just very sturdy and mounts exceptionally well. I will gladly spend a few extra dollars in the future and buy another Noctua heatsink.

I’ve had this cooler for about 4 months and It hasn’t skipped a beat on my 130W TDP i7-950. I can run an all night compile jop and she’ll never throttle back, I get every clock cycle through thick and thin.

Basically I have no thermal worries. So, I’m thinking of getting another one for a socket 1150 CPU build I made. I could get a cheaper one since that CPU doesn’t have as high a TDP rating as my 1366, but why? If I want to upgrade that CPU this cooler will cool whatever i throw at it especially now that wattage is going lower due to smaller lithography.

Also since I’ve seen this one working I trust it. Now if only Noctua would start making LED fans.

I am extremely satisfied with this cooler. It was nice and easy to install, instructions very clear. Amazing compatibility with a variety of socket types. It is a nice compact design and fits perfectly in my P300 case.

I only use one fan on this cooler since the second fan would be a bit too close to the rear exhaust case fan in my setup. However even with 1 fan, this cooler manages to keep my i7-10700(non-k) under 70°C when all cores are at full load which is excellent and is a massive improvement from my old M9i (which had temps reach 80-90 on full load).

I would highly recommend this cooler to anyone with a powerful CPU.

Insanely simple and easy to install. I used to be scared by the size and weight of big CPU coolers. But these days they are so fantastic. Extremely happy to have got this for my 5900x rather than an AIO water cooler.

I thought I was going to have some difficulty installing this in an already built pc but nope, it was stupidly easy.

This cooler is quite a bit bigger than my original one which was about stock cooler size, but this cooler fitted well into a very limited space on a Micro motherboard. It runs very quiet and I found it very effective at cooling with an average temperature drop of around 20 degrees and worst case 17 degrees lower than my previous cooler.

Very easy to fit but the only negative was that it did not come with the AMD mounting kit but luckily for me I required the Intel kit, but it is supposed to have both? Very good value for money.

It is almost dead quiet after running some applications to configure the fans and temperture. Using Intel 4790K and Asus Gene Z97 motherboard and Super flower 850W. For the money, extremely nice catch.

And also, extremely easy to build with the motherboard and processor. The easiest so far in my exeperience.

Cooler arrived damaged. It was likely defective before shipping since items were packed well.