CPU Air Cooler Mega Test

tinytomlogan

The Guvnor
Staff member
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We've built a new test rig, and what better way to christen it than with a CPU Cooler Mega test...and we mean MEGA TEST.


CPU Air Cooler Mega Test
 
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Had a quick look..
dont see any AIO's in there as a comparison.. I think it would have been nice to see atleast 1-2 of the most popular ones in there, it would just round out the comparisons a bit better imo if you also factor noise efficiency and redundancy.
 
Great article, good to see my D15 is still a beast in the air cooled department.

One small thing, while reading the D15 page I couldn't help but notice something wrong.

With the front fan installed you are though limited to standard height RAM.

This is actually not the case, the fan can be positioned forward due to the design of the mounting which allows for big RAM if you have the case clearance for the fan to protrude off the cooler.
 
That explains all the hype around the Cryorig lot, good prices and performance there. Great to see so many all together in one place for comparison.
 
The BeQuiet coolers are meant to be tightened from the back of the motherboard, not above and between the fins. No wonder you found it hard to do.. If you are saying that poor fitting is the reason they don't perform well, then the test results are not representative of the coolers performance.
 
I bought the Be Quiet Dark Rock TF for the looks for the Lian Li Q10 build - was supriced that it placed so low.

Have the Raijintek Pallas on my living room rig cooling a G3258 and I thought it was great.
 
It looks like the Raijintek Pallas dimensions are off. Instead of 153x68x150mm (HxWxD), it should be 153×150×68 mm [W×D×H].
 
This sentence seems wrong

"The red bars represent the performance figure and the white bars represent the cost of the cooler. What you're looking for then is a cooler with a small red bar (low temps) and a white bar that is also as small as possible (lower price)."

To me it looks like the white bars are the temps, not the cost.
 
Ι was able to fit the NHD15 with very tall RAM, I just lifted the fan up a bit. Also the reason I went Noctua instead of Cryorig was the fear of the fans beeing loud on the R1 ultimate that's all.. Besides I don't really mind the colours, being on a Sabertooth Motherboard...

Also, the performance of the i32...


Very nice writeup, also, testing all those coolers en masse... Terrible terrible idea :P
 
Good review!
I don't think I have ever seen so many coolers in one review. (I'm sure that I haven't)
I applaud all of the work that had to have gone into its creation. This is something that should be pinned and referred to in the future.
 
The BeQuiet coolers are meant to be tightened from the back of the motherboard, not above and between the fins.
Yes - exactly.

And it seems that every reviewer of bequiet! boolers gets this wrong. I tried to alert bequiet tech support to the need to have clear instructions, but I was not successful.

I own the big bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 3, and it's just about as easy to install as the other big air coolers, if you tighten from the back. I love it, and wish their sales were higher, so that their prices could be more competitive.

I'd love to see Tom Logan correct this misperception in front of the wider audience he has. Perhaps he has better contacts with bequiet ... they must have lost a ton of business in the English speaking countries on account of this. I'd wager that the German instructions are clear enough, and that the English translation, though they do say something like "Tighten the screws on the back plate from below until the end of the threads." are not sufficiently clear on this point, or not usually read carefully enough, to get the message across.
 
Yes - exactly.

And it seems that every reviewer of bequiet! boolers gets this wrong. I tried to alert bequiet tech support to the need to have clear instructions, but I was not successful.

I own the big bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 3, and it's just about as easy to install as the other big air coolers, if you tighten from the back. I love it, and wish their sales were higher, so that their prices could be more competitive.

I'd love to see Tom Logan correct this misperception in front of the wider audience he has. Perhaps he has better contacts with bequiet ... they must have lost a ton of business in the English speaking countries on account of this. I'd wager that the German instructions are clear enough, and that the English translation, though they do say something like "Tighten the screws on the back plate from below until the end of the threads." are not sufficiently clear on this point, or not usually read carefully enough, to get the message across.

Yes, he did mount them wrong.

It is a bit misleading in the manual that step 1 is showing screwing in the nuts onto the motherboard, which is only necessary on 2011-sockets.
http://www.bequiet.com/volumes/PDM/_products/bk019/bk019_mn_de.pdf

I wrote to them in german, see if they respond.
 
Yes - exactly.

And it seems that every reviewer of bequiet! boolers gets this wrong. I tried to alert bequiet tech support to the need to have clear instructions, but I was not successful.

I own the big bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 3, and it's just about as easy to install as the other big air coolers, if you tighten from the back. I love it, and wish their sales were higher, so that their prices could be more competitive.

I'd love to see Tom Logan correct this misperception in front of the wider audience he has. Perhaps he has better contacts with bequiet ... they must have lost a ton of business in the English speaking countries on account of this. I'd wager that the German instructions are clear enough, and that the English translation, though they do say something like "Tighten the screws on the back plate from below until the end of the threads." are not sufficiently clear on this point, or not usually read carefully enough, to get the message across.

I would also like to see a correction of his mistake. Also i got a quick reply form bequiet!, they said a new enhanced manual should be out by October, also they will include QR-codes which lead to video tutorials for mounting.
 
The Cryorigs are actually cheaper than the noctuas
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At least in Greece -infamously the most expensive country in the EU to buy PC parts-
 
The information presented in this test is beneficial overall but the results are a bit disappointing, even misleading.

First and foremost, acoustic information is one of the three major categories any potential shopper looks at. To only disclose thermal performance means results are obviously going to favor louder coolers. While sound was touched-on in the videos, it would have been nice to see it presented in a meaningful way along with the other graphs.

Next, if you mount a cooler wrong, then don't attribute it's performance to poor fit. Read the manual and attach it properly! (BeQuiet coolers, Cryorig H7, perhaps more). Nobody enjoys researching inaccurate information. While we appreciate the time it took you to run this kind of test, it doesn't make sense to put in so much effort and stop short, be it due to laziness or apathy.

Finally, it doesn't inspire confidence if the prices are wrong on the price-to-performance summary chart. (For example, Cryorig H7 is always $35, occasionally on sale at $30). I do not plan to individually verify each cooler but with everything else wrong so far, it's possible for users to believe there would be other mistakes. Speaking of which, the designated labels on the red and white bars also contradict the written paragraph above too. A little confusing at first glance, but an easy fix. [Edit - Did not realize country and currency, I retract my statements about price and admit to being wrong. Those results likely make sense now.]

So, perhaps a bit of correction on a latent edit may be in order? I am sure many others would appreciate the accurate information. After all, this is OC3D, you have a reputation to maintain!
 
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I would also like to see a correction of his mistake. Also i got a quick reply form bequiet!, they said a new enhanced manual should be out by October, also they will include QR-codes which lead to video tutorials for mounting.
Excellent, thanks Schrank.

I should give a shout out to George at HiTechLegion, and Leo Waldock at KitGuruTech, who are the two English speaking reviewers I've seen who have understood the mounting of bequiet! Dark Rock coolers.

I also should confess that my Dark Rock is on an 115x socket, which allows using the bequiet! backplate and tightening from the back. I don't know how the installation works on a 2011 socket ... if that requires tightening from the top of the motherboard, that might be a difficulty ... I don't know.

I agree with WorldQ's comment that accoustics also matter ... coolers that by default run a higher, noisier fan speed at 12 volts (as Tom Logan tested at a constant voltage, cool) will perform better on the temperature tests. That doesn't by itself make the cooler better or worse ... depends on what the customer is looking for.
 
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