Do you need a non stock cpu cooler?

PersonAndStuff · Sep 5, 2020

My old computer had a custom cooler because the stock fan was loud and not very good. But when I put together a new ryzen system, the consensus seemed to be that the stock was good and non stock was largely not necessary.
Until I was watching a gamer nexus video about the Nvidia 30 series where tech jesus scoffed at the very idea of some casual with a stock cooler buying a 3080.

Raccoon · Sep 5, 2020

PersonAndStuff said:
Until I was watching a gamer nexus video about the Nvidia 30 series where tech jesus scoffed at the very idea of some casual with a stock cooler buying a 3080.

what an asshole lol

you'll definitely see better performance with an aftermarket cooler though, and tower air coolers aren't too expensive. personally I'd recommend getting a "real" cooler in general.

that said, if your system works for you it works for you, regardless of what tech jesus or linus sebastian or anyone else says

Bradford · Sep 5, 2020

I think if you want to push your hardware, like Steve at GN suggests, a stock cooler will sort of limit you. But for most people not trying to push performance, it's probably okay. They are experts at what they do, and they are used to pushing benchmarks and performance, but that is not everyone's use case and that is fine.

In general though, I would say that there is some difference between stock and aftermarket. You'll get more headroom. That's mostly what it boils down to.

ChristianM · Sep 5, 2020

It also depends on how much noise you can live with. I used the stock cooler for my I5 3570k for seven years. It did the job fine without much noise. Never felt the need to upgrade.

The stock cooler for my Ryzen 3700x though. It was so annoyingly loud it only lasted 2-3 months in my computer before I upgraded.

Static · Sep 5, 2020

Is it generally accepted that if you're getting an aftermarket cooler, you're getting one to overclock? Like, it's not going to give a processor at stock clocks any extra oomph, right? I'm personally terrified to touch overclocking at all so I've never seen the point in my case of not using a stock cooler.

defaltoption · Sep 5, 2020

If your goal is squeezing every last drop of performance then yes you need better then a stock cooler, if you are buying a $700 or higher gpu you can probably afford a $20 reasonable aftermarket cooler for your cpu, which will be more quiet and keep your cpu (and by effect your whole pc) cooler.

But do you need one? No.

Polyh3dron · Sep 5, 2020

if you have a 3700X or higher, an AIO cooler like a NZXT Kraken would do you some good, or even a Be Quiet or Noctua air cooler.

Deleted member 17990 · Sep 5, 2020

Polyh3dron said:
if you have a 3700X or higher, an AIO cooler like a NZXT Kraken would do you some good, or even a Be Quiet or Noctua air cooler.

I can never bring myself to use AIO cooling as I will always be paranoid of it leaking lol air cooler always for me

Elven_Star · Sep 5, 2020

Depends on the amount of noise you can live with and if you want to overclock your CPU. I have been gaming for 25 years without using a single aftermarket cooler.

Polyh3dron · Sep 5, 2020

Russell said:
I can never bring myself to use AIO cooling as I will always be paranoid of it leaking lol air cooler always for me

AIOs are wildly unlikely to leak.

sirap · Sep 5, 2020

Stock Ryzen cooler is decent, but if you care about noise at all you'll want to replace that with a beefier cooler. Just invest in an NH-D15 and call it a day.

Trisc · Sep 5, 2020

I bought an aftermarket cooler not because I needed it, but because the fan that comes with the Ryzen 3700X was noticeably louder than my GPU (a 1080 Ti, also with a stock cooler) when the chip was under load. I wound up picking up a pretty simple Hyper 212 Black, and it's been almost inaudible under load since then.

Deimos · Sep 5, 2020

No. But if you're buying a 3080 then you're probably doing some heavy gaming where one would be needed to prevent throttling.

Sixfortyfive · Sep 5, 2020

If you're buying high-performance parts and/or intending to overclock for maximum performance, then you should also buy an upgraded cooler.

Otherwise I don't think there's much of a point.

Deleted member 34714 · Sep 5, 2020

Stock coolers typically start off ok in noise/temps but rapidly become very fucking loud and inefficient. You're better off getting a typical tower HSF for lower noise/better temps. The difference is massive.

UltraJay · Sep 5, 2020

High-end Intel processors, like the i9 I'm looking at now, don't even come with coolers, heatsink, or even pre-applied thermal paste.

Deleted member 30077 · Sep 5, 2020

Polyh3dron said:
if you have a 3700X or higher, an AIO cooler like a NZXT Kraken would do you some good, or even a Be Quiet or Noctua air cooler.

An 80-100€+ cooler is just way too excessive for a 3700x. That's a third of the price of the CPU. There's much more to gain with spending that on a extra GPU/CPU power. I do however think it's worth to replace the stock cooler. There's plenty of excellent options in the 25-40€ range.

jobrro · Sep 5, 2020

The cooler than came with my AMD 2700X was obnoxiously loud as every time the CPU would boost for even a second it would hit 100% fan speed. My MB doesn't really do the averaging of temps over time (15s or 30s) thing (I have since bought Argus Monitor which works great and allows for these types of settings regardless of MB, there is also a free trial). Also got a cheap AIO (Coolermaster 240L IIRC, replaced fans with ~1200RPM fans).

If you are spending the money on a 3080 you might want to look into an AIO or higher end air cooler. If you are happy with current performance, it might not be necessary.

Also depends on whether you are going to be GPU or CPU bound. If you are going for lower res/high FPS a high end cooler may help more. If you are going for 4K/60 it might be less important.

JDHarbs · Sep 5, 2020

I've had the same stock i7-4770k cooler in my build since 2013. No issues. Granted, I don't overclock either.

Chettlar · Sep 5, 2020

If you have a 3800, not doing anything to overclock it is just a bit of a waste. But it's perfectly acceptable.

Basically you are leaving performance on the table probably. You could be overclocking. But it's a very capable CPU, so it's not like you have to. But you could absolutely get more performance out of it with an aftermarket cooler.

I guess the idea is, if you paid so much for a high end CPU, you are getting a CPU that can do a lot, and you're only using some of it. But again pleeeenty of people leave it like that, and it's a very good CPU out of the box. Most people don't overclock their hardware.

So to someone who overclocks and knows how much performance you can get out of a 3800, they may be kind of puzzled why you'd leave so much on the table and think that's kind of silly.

hiro42 · Sep 5, 2020

Normally I would say a stock cooler is fine unless you want to overclock. However, I just built a Ryzen 3600 system recently and the stock cooler was terrible for me. Too loud and too hot with on stock.

Invested in a Noctua nh-d15s. It's so awesome and quiet. CPU is super cool and have all cores overclocked to 4.45ghz. The cooler is excessive and expensive but it should last into future builds.

nikos · Sep 5, 2020

Do CPUs even still come with coolers? I feel like I haven't seen that in years.

I haven't OCd in a very long time, but I can't see myself going back to a fan after using an AIO.

That said, it'll get the job done if you're not OCing.

Mukrab · Sep 5, 2020

nikos said:
Do CPUs even still come with coolers? I feel like I haven't seen that in years.

I haven't OCd in a very long time, but I can't see myself going back to a fan after using an AIO.

That said, it'll get the job done if you're not OCing.

Most come with coolers yeah. Intel K series doesnt come with one but other than that i think most of them still do.

Chettlar · Sep 5, 2020

Static said:
Is it generally accepted that if you're getting an aftermarket cooler, you're getting one to overclock? Like, it's not going to give a processor at stock clocks any extra oomph, right? I'm personally terrified to touch overclocking at all so I've never seen the point in my case of not using a stock cooler.

You may just be getting one for like noise for example. That's a big thing people do. Noctua makes some absolutely silent fan coolers. But it's kind of like I said in my above comment. You're buying something capable of incredible performance, and you're leaving a lot of it on the table.

That said it's possible you could just look for lower end stuff that is purely there to be quiet, for actually not too much. Be Quiet makes some. I had an FX-8320, which was a power hungry, hot, HOT chip. I got blue screens with the default cooler. I had to get a $30 Be Quiet cooler and that thing worked awesome. Reasonably quiet and all that. Eventually performance started getting worse and I got a few blue screens again, despite very reasonable temps. So I think I just murdered the poor thing too much. It's now a side PC until it runs itself in the ground lol.

Thankfully Zen CPUs aren't like that at all.

jobrro · Sep 5, 2020

JDHarbs said:
I've had the same stock i7-4770k cooler in my build since 2013. No issues. Granted, I don't overclock either.

That's sort of the thing now though. Not sure about that CPU but now AMD CPUs (and Intel's on different metrics) will boost as high as they can given power/thermal loads. So if a CPU is a few degrees cooler, it will boost frequency higher.

Basically automatic overclocking to whatever your cooler can take within spec and power limits.

Chettlar · Sep 5, 2020

hiro42 said:
Normally I would say a stock cooler is fine unless you want to overclock. However, I just built a Ryzen 3600 system recently and the stock cooler was terrible for me. Too loud and too hot with on stock.

Invested in a Noctua nh-d15s. It's so awesome and quiet. CPU is super cool and have all cores overclocked to 4.45ghz. The cooler is excessive and expensive but it should last into future builds.

Yeah you can invest in Noctua quality. I think it's even usually pretty trivial to get new mounting types too usually. And if not, it should not be hard to sell.

Deleted member 16908 · Sep 5, 2020

Raccoon said:
what an asshole lol

you'll definitely see better performance with an aftermarket cooler though, and tower air coolers aren't too expensive. personally I'd recommend getting a "real" cooler in general.

that said, if your system works for you it works for you, regardless of what tech jesus or linus sebastian or anyone else says

Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus is definitely not an asshole. He scoffed at the idea not because of some silly hardware elitism but because if you're spending $700+ on your graphics card, you should at minimum be able to afford spending $20-30 on a budget aftermarket CPU cooler.

raketenrolf · Sep 5, 2020

I only bought one because I wanted to overclock first and foremost but also because it is much more silent.

Decarb · Sep 5, 2020

3080 will pump hot air upwards towards CPU. So unless you have front fans for exhaust and back one for intake, its gonna pump hot air right over the heatsink of stock cooler.

jobrro · Sep 5, 2020

Robinson said:
Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus is definitely not an asshole. He scoffed at the idea not because of some silly hardware elitism but because if you're spending $700+ on your graphics card, you should at minimum be able to afford spending $20-30 on a budget aftermarket CPU cooler.

Yeah Steve is good people. Was surprised he is still rockin' an AMD FX system for his personal rig in a semi-recent video.

hiro42 · Sep 5, 2020

Chettlar said:
Yeah you can invest in Noctua quality. I think it's even usually pretty trivial to get new mounting types too usually. And if not, it should not be hard to sell.

Yup, and correct me if I'm wrong but I think Noctua provides free mounts too.

PersonAndStuff · Sep 5, 2020

jobrro said:
That's sort of the thing now though. Not sure about that CPU but now AMD CPUs (and Intel's on different metrics) will boost as high as they can given power/thermal loads. So if a CPU is a few degrees cooler, it will boost frequency higher.

Basically automatic overclocking to whatever your cooler can take within spec and power limits.

That's interesting. Especially since I'm on a AMD 3600X which is on a lower end when compared to a beefie boy 3080.

Deleted member 45130 · Sep 5, 2020

This might be a silly question but would a non-stock cooler be quiter? I'm helping my dad build a gaming PC with a 3080 and want it to run as quiet as we can, are non-stock coolers generally better for this?

mordecaii83 · Sep 5, 2020

PersonAndStuff said:
My old computer had a custom cooler because the stock fan was loud and not very good. But when I put together a new ryzen system, the consensus seemed to be that the stock was good and non stock was largely not necessary.
Until I was watching a gamer nexus video about the Nvidia 30 series where tech jesus scoffed at the very idea of some casual with a stock cooler buying a 3080.

If you can afford to spend $700 on a 3080, please spend at least $50 on a non-stock cooler.

HairyFist87 said:
This might be a silly question but would a non-stock cooler be quiter? I'm helping my dad build a gaming PC with a 3080 and want it to run as quiet as we can, are non-stock coolers generally better for this?

WAY quieter.

Static · Sep 5, 2020

Chettlar said:
Yeah you can invest in Noctua quality. I think it's even usually pretty trivial to get new mounting types too usually. And if not, it should not be hard to sell.

Worth it to consider then, even if my next CPU does come with a cooler. Thanks.

Chettlar · Sep 5, 2020

hiro42 said:
Yup, and correct me if I'm wrong but I think Noctua provides free mounts too.

I believe that is true yes. I don't have one yet though.

Static said:
Worth it to consider then, even if my next CPU does come with a cooler. Thanks.

It's honestly incredible how unparalleled Noctua is.

But Be Quiet and Cooler Master are definitely up there as well. And there was another kind of no name brand and I cannot find it anywhere, but some smaller brand went and made a really impressive one and it's driving me nuts lol.

But man even like Cooler Master I remember came out with one that was really close to Noctua's NH-D15, and it still ended up performing better when they replaced the cooler master fans...with noctua fans lmao. I think it was Linus Tech Tips did it? I don't remember this was a while ago so my memory is fuzzy.

Blade30 · Sep 5, 2020

I see all the praise for Noctua (nothing wrong with that) but as for someone who wants a somewhat cheaper cooler I'll give a shout out to the Scythe Mugen series. I have a gen 1 on my current pc and it does the job very well especially for the ~€40 range, it has low temp and you can barely hear. I'm looking forward to the Mugen 5 rev.b I ordered and it seems it's still a pretty good cheap cooler from what I've seen.

hiro42 · Sep 5, 2020

Honestly, I was looking to buy a Scythe cooler because they are almost as good as Noctua in terms of performance and noise but at a more reasonable price. But because of the pandemic there was no stock from Japan. Think they are back in stock now. Scythe is another good choice.

Chettlar · Sep 5, 2020

Blade30 said:
I see all the praise for Noctua (nothing wrong with that) but as for someone who wants a somewhat cheaper cooler I'll give a shout out to the Scythe Mugen series. I have a gen 1 on my current pc and it does the job very well especially for the ~€40 range, it has low temp and you can barely hear. I'm looking forward to the Mugen 5 rev.b I ordered and it seems it's still a pretty good cheap cooler from what I've seen.

WAIT yes Scythe. That might be the one I was thinking of. I heard their newest was pretty good. The original had some issues I thought.

Blade30 · Sep 5, 2020

Chettlar said:
WAIT yes Scythe. That might be the one I was thinking of. I heard their newest was pretty good. The original had some issues I thought.

Yeah Scythe Mugen 5 rev.b and Fuma 2 are the ones that get's recommended a lot for a cheaper build.

Chettlar · Sep 5, 2020

Blade30 said:
Yeah Scythe Mugen 5 rev.b and Fuma 2 are the ones that get's recommended a lot for a cheaper build.

I'm just an astonishingly bad googler.

Just Great · Sep 5, 2020

It's important to note that historically, the FE "blower style" coolers on GPUs are notoriously noisy and not all that efficient at cooling. Which is why Steve scoffed at them, because his site is focused on enthusiast performance and empirical data.

I am inclined to agree with the sentiment that if you're spending 700$ on a GPU, why would you get an objectively inferior one instead of spending a hair more. You're already out in the weeds.

Deleted member 30077 · Sep 5, 2020

Blade30 said:
I see all the praise for Noctua (nothing wrong with that) but as for someone who wants a somewhat cheaper cooler I'll give a shout out to the Scythe Mugen series. I have a gen 1 on my current pc and it does the job very well especially for the ~€40 range, it has low temp and you can barely hear. I'm looking forward to the Mugen 5 rev.b I ordered and it seems it's still a pretty good cheap cooler from what I've seen.

I was planning to get one as well, but it seem they're all out of stock around here. It's not even listed in a lot of stores. I can get one from Germany but the shipping makes it just as expensive as the Mugen 5 PCGH version, which is in stock. I think it's the same cooler just with an extra fan, right?

Deleted member 27551 · Sep 5, 2020

I got a 6700 without a cooler so had to get my own (forza S). Just smashed some paste on was dripping out the sides, fan was a bit to wide made it fit by bending my ram over a bit. Forgot to plug the wire for the CPU fan in and had no room so pulled fan back out and made the ram move out the way again

Yea I love stock coolers so much easier to install, I lost even more hair and burst a few blood vessels installing the forza one. Dont listen to the lies its hard to install them very fidgety and should come with warnings they will increase stress levels. Stock is fine if the cpu you have is decent in the first place.

Deleted member 23046 · Sep 5, 2020

No but you want one.

MrKlaw · Sep 5, 2020

sirap said:
Stock Ryzen cooler is decent, but if you care about noise at all you'll want to replace that with a beefier cooler. Just invest in an NH-D15 and call it a day.

My initial instinct. But the size of the D15 will have the 3080 FE exhausting directly into the D15 - maybe even being blocked partly by the front fan. It should have enough headroom to deal but it is making me consider an AIO..

Blade30 · Sep 5, 2020

napata said:
I was planning to get one as well, but it seem they're all out of stock around here. It's not even listed in a lot of stores. I can get one from Germany but the shipping makes it just as expensive as the Mugen 5 PCGH version, which is in stock. I think it's the same cooler just with an extra fan, right?

Yeah it has an extra fan and the fans rpm are a bit lower (300 - 800 rpm instead of 300 - 1200 rpm) so it should be quieter.

Deleted member 45130 · Sep 5, 2020

mordecaii83 said:
If you can afford to spend $700 on a 3080, please spend at least $50 on a non-stock cooler.

WAY quieter.

Cheers pal, I'll make sure he takes that into consideration.

BolognaOni · Sep 5, 2020

Was this really in reference to the CPU cooler or the GPU? The Nvidia blower designs on the FE cards have been terribad for a while now, but have the advantage of exhausting hot air.
The main issue with most stock CPU coolers is that they just blow down. Ok impingement flow is nice, sure, but it doesn't move the hot air out of the case. So you slap on more exhaust fans, run negative pressure and turn your case into a dust ball.
Getting a tower that blows towards the rear (exhaust), just makes a lot more sense.

Lausebub · Sep 5, 2020

I would spent 30€ on an aftermarket cooler just because they make less noise and your CPU might clock itself higher thanks to the lower temps.

Do you need a non stock cpu cooler?

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