Best CPU Coolers: Top Air & Liquid Cooling Systems Reviewed for Heat and Noise

Best CPU Coolers: Planning to buy a new CPU cooler to get rid of that noisy old one pre-installed on your CPU? Out here, we are gonna talk about aftermarket CPU coolers. After all why to settle just for what your manufacturer provides when you can actually go for something more efficient, by just pitching in some bucks.

We have reviewed a bunch of coolers for CPU available in the stores and have come up with a list of top 5 of them. We will come to that in the next post of ours, but before we move on, let’s have a look at all the paraphernalia involved with these coolers to help you decide which product to go for.

How Loud Should An Air Cooler Be? – The Amount of Noise

One of the biggest factor to look into while buying a CPU cooler is to see (should be listening) how much noise is it making. Many experts will recommend Zalman FX70, probably the most silent one available in the market. In fact, it’s completely noiseless. But the question is do you really need to invest so much of money for this small feature?

Let’s have a look, how much do you actually need…

What I would say is that it all depends on the location of your CPU, how far do you keep it from and what environment you are working in. If you use your desktop in a noisy place, you might not even notice the cooler’s humming sound until it exceeds 40 dB. So, in such cases, somewhere between 35 dB and 40 dB is kind of OK OK!

What about in home? Here, if you keep your CPU under your table, then its far away from your ears that you can bear up to 35 dB. But if you are keeping that thing of yours, you need to go for something below 30 dB to make sure that you have the quiet workable environment.

How Cool Are CPU Coolers? – Temperature Stats

After getting done with the noise factor, let’s have a look at the fact for which these things are made for- temperature management! All the modern CPUs have built-in temperature sensors who keep a tab on the overheating factor and make sure that speed reduces if CPU is overheating so that it can revive and cool down.

This reduction of speed happens generally when the mercury goes somewhere around 90 or 100 degrees. Exact values are obviously system dependent. If while you are on 100% CPU usage and your cooler can keep the tab under 70°C, then its adequate and it would come into the very good category if it can manage somewhat below 60°C for you.

Check: best Dating apps.

Heatpipes

Now, this is where it gonna get a bit technical out here. Still, you need not worry, we have got you covered up in the simplest language possible. Just go through! Heatpipes are copper pipes that contain a liquid that vaporizes when heated. This vapor then travels along the inside of the pipe to the cooler end where it condenses, releasing the latent heat.

This technology is used in almost all the modern CPUs and seems to be very effective when compared to earlier methods most of which were dependent on how fast can that rotating fan pull out the heat. Typical modest coolers will have two or three, while the largest may have six or more.

But still, this technology is not as good as the upcoming technology which uses all-in-one liquid coolers. More on this a little later.

Installation

Now, this is another factor, you need to keep in mind while making the final decision. After all, you don’t wanna spend a whole day just trying to figure out which clip will go where? Most of the CPU coolers tend to mount via four points, but some use a crossbar system.

Many large coolers require fitting a backplate to the motherboard, and due to that, you will have to remove the whole motherboard if your PC doesn’t have a cutout on the motherboard tray for this purpose. You surely need to go through the whole installation guide which comes up with a new unit and understand it properly. Once you are clear only then should you open up the hatch.

Should one go for all-in-one liquid coolers?

Now, this is the big next question. Should one go for the liquid cooled methods? To start with, these are surely more efficient and as they don’t have a motor running in them, noise is the last thing you need to worry about.

But the backdrop is that these are gonna put a deep hole into your pockets. So, you need to go for these kinds only if you really need them or if you have a bunch of extra bucks to spend.

Another pain in the a*s is that its setup is really very messed up and there are always the chances of leakage of the liquid flowing inside. And along with that, these are bulkier and bigger and hence require a larger space.

Best CPU Coolers

Coming up next is our list of top 6 CPU coolers you need to go for!

Earlier we covered up on how to decide which CPU cooler to buy. And as promised, to make the things even easier for you, here we are with the top 6 coolers for CPU available on the stores. So get going…

Be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3

Key Features:

• 2 x 120mm fans
• 5 heat pipes
• Quietest air cooler on test
• looks fantastic with its black finish in brushed aluminium
• quite small
• Cooling power is excellent
• 33.9 dB was the max we could get, which is pretty awesome!

Why not to go for it

• Difficult installation
• Quite expensive

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

Socket compatibility	Intel: 1151, 1150, 1155, 1156, 1366, 2011, 2011-3, 2066AMD: AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, AM4, FM1, FM2, FM2+
Dimensions	120x80x159mm (4.7×3.1×6.3in)
Weight	465g
RPM	500-2000
Heatsink Material	Aluminum, copper

Key Features:

• 1 x 120mm fans
• 4 x heatpipes
• Excellent cooling and low noise
• Awesom look with a transparent interface and plain aluminium fins
• 4 heatpipes

Why not to go for it

• Wasn’t much effective with noise levels
• Quite difficult installation.

Arctic Freezer 7 Pro

Key Features:

• 1 x 92mm fans
• 3 x heatpipes
• Very simple mounting system
• One of the cheapest
• Quite small
• Easy to install
• It doesn’t need a motherboard backplate
• Best budget-friendly cooler

Why not to go for it

• Just three heatpipes only and one cooling fin array
• Fixing to motherboard is not strong enough, still OK as far as you don’t decide to play soccer with your CPU
• Tests went up to 70° C and staggering 36.5 dB

Noctua NH-D15

Key Features:

• 2 x 120mm fans
• 6 x heatpipes
• The best air cooler you can buy
• two layers of heatsink fins to ensure an optimum cooling
• two huge 150mm fans
• performed as low as 31°C in tests
• very low noise level
• easy to install even though its large as uses crossbar system

Why not to go for it

• Quite expensive
• Very large in size

Raijintek Themis

Key Features:

• 1 x 120mm fans
• 3 x heatpipes
• Incredibly cheap
• One of the cheapest
• Straight and simple no-frills design
• Three heatpipes
• Easy installation

Why not go for it

• Louder than others- could find just this drawback!

Phanteks PH-TC12DX

Key Features:

• 2 x 120mm fans
• 4 x heatpipes
• Completely color-coded design
• Available in white, red, blue and black, the PH-TC12DX is entirely color-coordinated
• Looks great in different colors
• Easy installation, need to just fix two screwbars

Why not to go for it

• Fairly larger
• A mediocre choice, neither too expensive nor cheap

The Best CPU Coolers For 2018

These are the best cpu coolers as of writing this.

Stay tuned to TheReporterTimes for more updates.