I’m thinking about building a new PC. Well new so far as in Motherboard, CPU, and RAM. I will upgrade my GPU later. But is there an air cooler that can cool the 9950X3D efficiently? I really don’t want to use water cooling.
i’ll be building with the same processor, with an NHD15G2. The 9950X3D is rated at 170W TDP, but in real world usage it goes up to around 220W, and if you let your motherboard dictate, even higher, but in general you won’t be seeing super high watage.
There are many cheaper alternatives to noctua that come close (and some even apparently exceed) the thermal handling, but speaking for what will be my own build, and going with the NH D15G2, the cooling efficiency is the highest on their chart (they use a measurement called NSPR rather than TDP and currently don’t have a chart for the X3D variant but the regular X model is close enough)
But, you might want to look at the Thermalright Phantom spirit:
or the DeepCool AK620 Digital which apparently has a TDP handling of 260W
There are lots of choices out there for every budget, just make sure that you :
a) check a website like Pangoly or directly from manufacturers that it will fit in your case of choice and
b) that for some tower coolers, ram clearance is an issue and you may be limited to low profile ramkits, like for example, with the NHD15G2, with both fans on the heatsink, you’re limited to 32 mm height… and finally
c) keep in mind your airflow requirements as well as the potential heat load of a future GPU especially since the 50 series dumps a whole bunch of heat vertically right into the path of the tower cooler* . There are many very beautiful cases in the last year or two which sadly are solely designed for AIO or Open loop cooling. So the NZXT 2024 H7 flow, or the Proart wood edition, or the Fractal Torrent are good case choices that will give you good airflow.
c.2) and keep in mind that with many cases for 40 and 50 series cards as well as team red cards, mounting the card on a riser for vertical mounting can impact your ability to use a large tower cooler, think the non VPGU version of the HAVN HS420 (beautiful case, definitely not for aircooling, least not a 16 core processor 
)
Now you know your ABC’s – wishing a great build for thee 
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I think it kinda depends on what you are actually looking for.
I mean if you want absolutely the best cooling performance and acoustics.
And in that regards price does not really matter.
Or if you are looking for the best price to performance options.
Because there are significant price difference between price to performance options.
Or the absolute best performance and acoustics on which the actual performance gabs,
are not even that significant actually.
For example the Noctua NH-D15 gen2 and Deepcool Assasing IV VC Vision,
are the best performers in terms of acoustics and thermal dissipation.
However those are also the most expensive ones on the market.
Coolers like the Thermalright Phantom spirit 120SE or the Peerless Assasin 120SE,
are also very strong options which costs like 4 times less than the Noctua.
However of course the fans are a bit louder and probably a bit less durable.
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I have this on a 9950x - Noctua NH-D15 chromax.Black, Dual Tower CPU (140mm, Black)
Built in January. The Thermalright Phantoms spirit SE and Peerless Assasin were all sold out at the time, but have heard they can cool pretty close to the Noctua. There is also the the newer G2 versions.
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oh and another very good contender:
250W TDP
half the price of the NHD15G2
and some RAM clearance info:
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I’m looking at the Dark Rock Pro 5 and it’s $99 and the Peerless Assassin 120 SE is $34.90. What is the difference between these two? It seems the PA 120 SE has 6 heat pipes though they don’t appear to be copper while the DRP 5 has 7 heat pipes that are copper and is a couple db quieter. Is that the main difference or am I missing something?
What cooler do you currently have?
I’ve upgraded to 9950X a while ago, stayed on Noctua U12A (just bought a mount kit for am5) and so far have no reasons for a bigger one. But that depends on what you’ll be doing with the system. Say for software development - I don’t really care if the processor wouldn’t be boosting to 5.6GHz longer than for 30 seconds, everything will compile by then :).
Edit: I’m just saying, maybe, if your current cooler is at least somewhat decent - you can upgrade the system first and then assess
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I currently have the Noctua NH-U9S chromax.Black with my Ryzen 5 5600x. I don’t think this cooler would be enough for the 9950X3D. I use my PC for internet and games and that’s it. Also I do not OC my CPUs.
The usual basis of comparison is noise-normalized temperatures. Thermalright uses copper bases and pipes like everybody else—the Phantom Spirit 120 wouldn’t beat or tie everything else on the market if they didn’t—and the TL-C12 impeller’s like top three or so for P-Q curve convexity, throw, and noise. Thermalright also runs pretty flat bases. So they’ve pretty well owned the AM4 and AM5 and dual tower market.
Downside is Thermalright downgraded both S-FDB and S-FDB v2 bearings in late 2023. So, depending how noise sensitive you are, expect maybe 10 000 hours from any their fans. It’s not a big deal. On the Phantom Spirit the P12 PWM PST 0dB Rev4’s pretty much a straight swap for performance up to ~1200 RPM and P28s take off a degree or two at a given dB(A). Either option costs less than most of the competition and a P28 swap has a decent chance of outperforming all the other dual towers on the market unless it’s also fan swapped, in which case probably some ties are possible.
The TL-H12-X28 + TL-HD13-X28 and soldered base on the Royal Pretor 130 might do better than Phantom Spirit 120 but I haven’t seen any data. There also isn’t any replacement path for the HD13, which I’d consider a showstopper.
Six versus seven 6 mm heatipipes is pretty well into diminishing returns. The seventh pipe does help some in well executed designs but it might be more about the additional tunability in vapor pressures than the presence of the pipe itself. Not enough data to tell.
be quiet!'s execution’s consistently lagged most of their competitors. Dark Rock Pro 5’s no exception, the Elite’s less far behind but still overpriced. While the Pro 4’s described very good up thread its measured noise-normalized performance is poor. So it’s also a reject on an engineering basis.
Yes, 170 W TDP is 230 W PPT. So all of AMD’s 170 W TDP parts are free pull up to 230 W by default if the workload can use the power and the thermal solution’s adequate.
I’d avoid H7 and Torrent on a performance basis and PA401 and PA602 on and lack of fan replaceability basis (also for Asus and NZXT’s poor corporate behavior, Fractal’s not great here either). PA401 mesh looks like it’d flow better than North but I haven’t encountered any data on it. Don’t know of anything that separates from the perf, price-perf, and fan maintainability on Lancool 207, II, and III. But wood and fishtanks aren’t happening there.
Yup. I’d consider Noctua’s marketing claim of NH-U12A compatibility irrationally exuberant as well. Like, yeah, it’d technically work but the U12A’s already kinda struggling at 142 W PPT.
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It’ll be one of them, dualfan/tower kinda Heatsinks, for minimum
May not not exactly need D15 CHUNGUS-- but still in that vain
Dark Rock Pro 5 / Sycthe Fuma 3 / Thermalright PA 120SE / …
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So do you recommend the Peerless Assassin 120 SE?
I have a D15 (first gen) on a 7950X, which is a bit hotter than the 9950X, and it runs fine. In rare workloads (sustained 100% load like compression, compiling, etc.) it may throttle a tiny bit but not more than 100MHz or so compared to an AIO. So if you don’t want to bother with water cooling you’ll only lose a few percent in performance worst case. In gaming or other medium load performance will be completely the same.
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I am running D15-G2 LBC on 9950X with single fan (mainly because one started making a grinding noise), but turns out the second fan made almost no difference anyway except to noise.
I have delidded the 9950X and replaced stock heatspreader with thermal grizzly heatspreader and liquid metal between die and spreader. Using Duronaut between heatspreader and heatsink. It is running with per core tuned CO average of around -30CO (-22 lowest, and -37 highest)
Before delid it would always thermal throttle 95C@200WPPT on kernel compile with 32 threads, now it never really goes above 90C (see some spike to 91/92 but never had it throttle at all) using 225PPT both using the same CO. This is also inside a Fractal define 7 compact case. I had also tried a 360mm AF3 AIO on it using a different motherboard (AF3 is not compatible with ASUS X870E ProArt) and it would also thermal throttle stock, but was much better for normal loads, but was also much louder than the D15-G2 due the pump noise.
This is all with ambient temps ~22C (+/- 1C)
Stock I would say D15-G2 LBC is the best choice for sure, if you actually want lower temp though you have to get rid of the terrible heatspreader then you could probably use a U12S cooler and do as well as D15-G2 with stock spreader.
Big thing to note is ram/case compatibility with D15-G2, the front fan on the D15 at measured high from docs its for max of like 35mm ram. The G2 fans cannot have any pressure on the side as the gap between blades and rim is tiny so you can’t squeeze it in like you probably could with old D15. I had to replace my GSkill Royal heatsinks with some Barrow ones (which lowered the temps by several C which was nice) to get it to fit without any contact in the Define 7 Compact.
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Oldest to newest, my recent builds have been
- Phantom Spirit 120 SE
- Phantom Spirit 120 SE
- Phantom Spirit 120
- Phantom Spirit 120
- Phantom Spirit 120
See if you can spot a trend. 
They’re all Ryzen 145-162 W PPT.
With the near identical pricing I don’t see reason to skip the Phantom Spirits’ slight advantage over Peerless Assassin 120 [SE]. Phantom Spirit 120 EVO’s a downgrade, so no point spending extra for the TL-K12s either. Peerless Assassin 140 I wouldn’t pick either as it’s not quite as capable and I need the space for M.2 tower heatsinks.
ID-Cooling hasn’t caught up to Thermalright on AM5 yet but the A620 Pro SE’s close.
All core AVX for 3-12+ hours is normal workload around here. Don’t have a 9950X or 9950X3D to look at yet but 9900X’ll sit at ~160 W. So I’d expect the 16 cores to park at ~215 W. That’d be a bit loud for multiple machines in an open plan office unless they’re throttling. If 120 W eco mode undervolts like Raphael 105 W eco does that’d probably be worth it. Or just Galahad II Lite 360.
My experience with throttling is boost power moves down the core performance order. So it’s not quite as efficient but -100 MHz on core 0 might lead to +80 MHz on core 1. I haven’t tested degradation but ad hoc results haven’t looked particularly problematic until power draw starts falling off.
Should about tie a stock Phantom Spirit noise-normalized, yeah. But it’s ~4x the base price and, depending on P28 availability, usually around 2-2.5x a fan swapped Phantom Spirit. Phantom Spirit skips most of the case, DIMM, GPU, and M.2 clearance issues too.
NH-U12S is 2-3x Phantom Spirit pricing here. Can’t think of anything that’d motivate selecting the Noctua.
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Can you link me to the exact Phantom Spirit you recommend? There are like 9 different ones on Amazon.
If nothing else you could switch on the 105W eco mode. You lose about 10% performance, but your CPU does also consume half the power. I’ve cooled a 7950X in eco mode with an NH-L9a, which is a ridiculously small cooler, and while it did throttle a fair bit in benchmarks, for normal use and gaming it performed just fine.
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Refer to Thermalright’s product page for the five Phantom Spirit models. For two not already mentioned,
- See QuasarZone’s fan data for the TL-C12-S’s downgrade from the TL-C12 on the material change.
- I don’t know of data on the black but it’s unlikely to be better. Not uncommon coated fin to air thermal resistance is higher than uncoated, so could be worse.
While Thermalright’s bearings are crap there doesn’t appear to be a more effective tower assembly currently available for AM5 on a noise-normalized basis up to ~75 m³/h and pricing on the alternatives is mostly stupid. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If the intent’s to handle 200+ W by fan swapping and running higher flow rates I don’t know of relevant dual tower data in that range. In principle a wider fin pitch might be helpful but, from what I’m aware of, current gen finstacks have handed that space to 360 AIOs.
I have a 7950X with a Noctua NH D15G2 and it definitely does the job. With all 16 cores going full tilt, temps never get above 85-86C. Most of the time, under lighter loads the cooler is completely silent.
Cant comment on 9950X3d but I run my 7950x3D on a Phantom Spirit 120 SE. I think they have ever so slightly better models but eh. Could also fan swap or get PTM
It doesn’t tie, the D15 G2 LBC is better. Its not much but it is the best air cooler for AM5. The fan noise profile is also great, especially if your case is already using a bunch of 120mm fans to reduce amplification. If you don’t care about the best/ sound profile, or budget/price is a priority I agree the PS120 is a great buy for almost as good performance. Not sure what you mean by M.2 clearance, the X870E Proart as a stupid big PCIE5 M.2 heatsink that blocks the AF3, the G2 has no issues.