CPU Advice on CPU cooler?

Dawelio

Awesomeness
Original poster
SFFn Staff
Dec 17, 2017
524
440
Heya everyone,

So this is most likely a question that has been asked a million times by now, but since I've basically always been an AIO person, I still wanted to ask this specific question to you all, the SFF community.

As mentioned above, I've always been an AIO person. I've always gone with 240mm AIO's, even 120mm or even 92mm in the past. Currently on an 240mm in the NCASE M1.

Although, for someone who's starting to get older and feeling less and less into the whole PC building, and the need for upgrading as often as I have done, I've started looking into the whole air cooling segment for the first time. The reason for this? Simply because of most people saying it's silent, without pump noise (although personally never had this issue or cared enough to notice it), since it is a moving part and hence does produce noise in some way. And the most important point, reliability. With an air cooler, you don't have the worry of potential leaks and hence water damaging your computer in any way. Only thing that could fault is the fans on it, and those are usually much easier to swap out, than an AIO (even though these are quite easy today as well).

So I've done some researching this afternoon and come up with 2 air coolers that I find interesting, the Noctua NH-U9S and the Be Quiet! Pure Rock Slim.
Now the latter has a TDP of 120W, whereas the former doesn't publicy say on their website. I'm currently using an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU (stock) and won't be upgrading it for some time, as it's more than enough for my needs and on paper, has a very impressive 65W TDP (not sure how much of that is actually real life truth though).

IF I would be getting one of these to swap out for the reason(s) mentioned above, I will be getting two (2) Noctua NF-A9 PWM chromax fans to put on it, for that nice aestethics.

My question to all of you are, which one would you all go for? Considering that currently, the latter (Pure Rock Slim) is slightly more than half the price of the former (NH-U9S). Is it worth the extra cost, for how much more performance do you really gain?...

Also because during my research, I came across few posts where people mentioning they had some issues/troubles with the mounting of the Pure Rock Slim. Although once installed, it was very solid. But since I've never actually used an air cooler, I don't have any experience with them and hence reaching out to you people, with more experience with air coolers and their respective mounting solutions.

Thanks,
Dawelio
 

judokamak

Trash Compacter
Sep 25, 2019
38
26
Both can cool 3700x no problem. NH-U9S would be few degrees (5-6) cooler. If you are going for a overclock go with Noctua, otherwise it doesn t really matter.
 
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ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
655
510
The Noctua C14S is the best air cooler for the NCase M1. recently there's been a bunch of testing on this, it handily outperforms the U9S and the PR Slim.
 

Dawelio

Awesomeness
Original poster
SFFn Staff
Dec 17, 2017
524
440
The Noctua C14S is the best air cooler for the NCase M1. recently there's been a bunch of testing on this, it handily outperforms the U9S and the PR Slim.

Thanks for the tip and it might. But unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of down blowing coolers and it's even more expensive than the U9S. Almost three times the cost of the PR Slim.