Battle of the air/thermal siphon coolers ( Noctua NH-D15 vs. IceGiant ProSiphon Elite )

Code_Man

Code_Man

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I am building a new gaming rig and the cooler is up next on the list of parts to get. My question is: What are peoples experience with Noctua NH-D15s and IceGiant ProSiphon Elites coolers?

Here are my current part specs:

  1. Fractal Design Torrent RGB ( BIG AIR FOCUSED CASE )
  2. x570s Aorus Master Chipset
  3. AMD Ryzen 5800X3D CPU
Let me know the pros and cons on both parts please. I am leaning towards the Noctua for clearance / DB noise compared to the IceGiant. Where a few reviews stated it had to be set on a higher fan curve compared to the NH-D15. But I do like IceGiants Thermal tech just the cooler is huge and will cover up a lot of the MOBO and RAM.

Thanks,
 
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Well let's start with the fact that both get upgrades in the upcoming months.
The new Noctua one gets overhauled/perfected since 2 years.
The ProSiphon is a very new product still with a few kinks to iron out. Their next step is a copper plate and "let's hope" a better/sturdier mounting mechanism.

Taking your case into account, which likes to passively vent from the backside, i suggest a used NH-D14 (New metall fan hooks/brackets are free of charge if you know which email address to contact) or NH-D15 until its predesessor comes out.

Why?
Can the ProSiphon blast its 4x fans out the back?
 
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Noctua NH-D15 is due for an update any minute now.

ProSiphon Elite has orientation dependencies. The coldplate has to be lower than the condenser. The part that cools the CPU has to be lower than the heatsink fins, basically.

AFAIK overclocking is mostly off the table with the X3D, so you might as well get a less expensive cooler that will do the job and is perhaps smaller.
 
I don't think the Prosiphon Elite is what you're looking for.

I'd also consider some of the top end Thermalright and Be Quiet offerings.
 
TheSlySyl said:
I don't think the Prosiphon Elite is what you're looking for.

I'd also consider some of the top end Thermalright and Be Quiet offerings.
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Researching Thermalright now. The price per performance is unmatched really.. Got to consider this brand when I'm ready to pull the trigger. if the Noctua DH-15 goes on sale ill snag it but if its still $100+ I might go with Thermalright. Thanks for the feedback Sly.
 
Code_Man said:
Researching Thermalright now. The price per performance is unmatched really.. Got to consider this brand when I'm ready to pull the trigger. if the Noctua DH-15 goes on sale ill snag it but if its still $100+ I might go with Thermalright. Thanks for the feedback Sly.
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Do you have any experience with the Thermalright Frost Commander 140mm? Looks beefy as well.
 
I used the old Thermalright flagship, the Le Grand Macho RT to cool my 3900X and it worked splendidly. I've heard the Frost Commander 2 is an even better cooler. I haven't used it personally though.

I've always loved Thermalright. Very underrated in the USA.
 
TheSlySyl said:
I used the old Thermalright flagship, the Le Grand Macho RT to cool my 3900X and it worked splendidly. I've heard the Frost Commander 2 is an even better cooler. I haven't used it personally though.

I've always loved Thermalright. Very underrated in the USA.
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Yep I have been noticing that Thermalright does not reach a lot of markets past the Pacific's..
 
I have FC140.. it’s the best cooler I have used on AM4 so far. I have 4 Thermalright coolers, all of them are awesome but FC140 is the best I have.

I own Le Grand Macho RT, True Spirit 140 Power, the new ultra 120 extreme, and FC140.
 
freeagentt said:
I have FC140.. it’s the best cooler I have used on AM4 so far. I have 4 Thermalright coolers, all of them are awesome but FC140 is the best I have.

I own Le Grand Macho RT, True Spirit 140 Power, the new ultra 120 extreme, and FC140.
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Very nice. Yep gonna keep researching the FC140. Thanks for the input.
 
What freeagentt and TheSlySly said. I have same cooler as well as several other top tier coolers (PH-TC14PE, Silver Arrow IB-E, HE01, etc). Thermalright is one of if not best cooler company out there, and Frost Commander 140 is easily as good if not better than all coolers I've used / tested .. and cheaper as well.
 
When I built my 2600K system, I got the Silver Arrow because it was the best air cooler I was aware of for a PC. It was better than the NH-D14 or anything short of watercooling. I believe the D15 surpassed it, but only barely. I would say their weakness was the included fans. I remember reviews at the time recommended getting better fans, and that was certainly good advice. The RPM on one of my fans kept lowering and lowering and in turn I had to keep going into the UEFI and lowering and lowering the CPU fan RPM alarm threshold. While these fans still technically work 11 years later, which is amazing, it's been many years since I've had to have the alarm turned as low as it can go. If I were using the cooler the way I thought I would, I would not have been as happy.

Are their new fans better? Who knows if they're even claiming that they're better. Supposedly the bearings on new fans is a S-FDB or Sony Fluid Dynamic. Seems they may offer a 3-year warranty while Noctua is 72 months. Maybe. Which is one of the nicer warranties I've seen in all my 476 months of life. I seem to be out of warranty. I need more than new fans.
 
duronboy said:
When I built my 2600K system, I got the Silver Arrow because it was the best air cooler I was aware of for a PC. It was better than the NH-D14 or anything short of watercooling. I believe the D15 surpassed it, but only barely. I would say their weakness was the included fans. I remember reviews at the time recommended getting better fans, and that was certainly good advice. The RPM on one of my fans kept lowering and lowering and in turn I had to keep going into the UEFI and lowering and lowering the CPU fan RPM alarm threshold. While these fans still technically work 11 years later, which is amazing, it's been many years since I've had to have the alarm turned as low as it can go. If I were using the cooler the way I thought I would, I would not have been as happy.

Are their new fans better? Who knows if they're even claiming that they're better. Supposedly the bearings on new fans is a S-FDB or Sony Fluid Dynamic. Seems they may offer a 3-year warranty while Noctua is 72 months. Maybe. Which is one of the nicer warranties I've seen in all my 476 months of life. I seem to be out of warranty. I need more than new fans.
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Yep. The warranty is a big plus for me when investing in parts. Noctua has a good program compared to Thermalright.
 
If I remember correctly Silver Arrow came with TY-140 fans with a max speed of 1300rpm and idled down to about 550rpm. Newest generation (there are several generations) is DL-D14, basically same fan with 350-1500rpm range. "Better" fans are basically just higher rpm versions.

TY-143 is 550-2500rpm version, but very hard to find these days.

I don't know of any "better" fans. To be "better" (higher airflow/pressure ratings) requires higher RPM resulting in more noise.

Warranty means little. If memory is correct, TY-140 have EHFB (Enhance Hyper-Flow Bearing) .. basically same as S-FDB and Sony Fluid Dynamic are just fancy sleeve bearings.

Frost Commander 140 is better than Silver Arrow. FC140 has 5x 140mm heatpipes with base offset 7mm toward PCIe slots for better PCIe clearance and has higher performance fans. Some don't like it's fans as well as TY140 because thin curved blades are more prone to hamonic noise in a few very short and specific rpm ranges.
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I also like Le Grand Macho RT (8x 6mm heatpipes) and TRUE Spirit 140 Power (6x 8mm heatpipes), but they have their limitations. LGM is quite big and TS140 is also very tall.
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Images are not all the same scale. ;)
 

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freeagentt said:
I thought D14 was better than D15? Been so long since I had my D14. Don’t miss it one bit if I’m honest.
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NH-D14 with stock fans is not quite as good as NH-D15, but with same fans it is slightly better. That's assuming same seat quality / heat transfer ability into ccoler, which is hard to verify.
 
duronboy said:
When I built my 2600K system, I got the Silver Arrow because it was the best air cooler I was aware of for a PC. It was better than the NH-D14 or anything short of watercooling. I believe the D15 surpassed it, but only barely. I would say their weakness was the included fans. I remember reviews at the time recommended getting better fans, and that was certainly good advice. The RPM on one of my fans kept lowering and lowering and in turn I had to keep going into the UEFI and lowering and lowering the CPU fan RPM alarm threshold. While these fans still technically work 11 years later, which is amazing, it's been many years since I've had to have the alarm turned as low as it can go. If I were using the cooler the way I thought I would, I would not have been as happy.

Are their new fans better? Who knows if they're even claiming that they're better. Supposedly the bearings on new fans is a S-FDB or Sony Fluid Dynamic. Seems they may offer a 3-year warranty while Noctua is 72 months. Maybe. Which is one of the nicer warranties I've seen in all my 476 months of life. I seem to be out of warranty. I need more than new fans.
Click to expand...
I started cooling my 2700K with a Cogage (Thermalright affiliate) True Spirit 120 with Akasa Viper fans. I actually read about that cooler on HardOCP as it was kicking butt back then. I moved on to an XSPC water cooling kit with a 360 radiator. The pump went bad and I got a replacement, but in the meantime, I tried out a DH14. I couldn't get a good mount. It was warped or something. I sent it back and got a Silver Arrow. It didn't perform quite as well as the water cooler, but I ran that cpu at 4.5 GHz with no issue for many years and you couldn't even hear the fans spinning. I had it at 4.8 for a little while. One fan did die along the way, but Thermalright replaced it for free. That Silver Arrow is now cooling the 3900X in my server. They sent me an AM4 mounting kit for the cost of shipping. It's just running at stock, but it cools it fine.
 
I'll also point out that the Prosiphon is REALLY meant for Threadripper and that's about it, unless something changed - it doesn't cool notably better than the alternatives when on a more traditional CPU.
 
Prosiphon is no doubt a very good cooler, but it's performance isn't evident on normal wattage CPUs. Several users reported higher temps using Prosiphon than with heatpipe coolers. Prosiphon will cool normal CPU but only starts to rise above traditional heatpipe coolers when mounted on super hot CPUs like Threadripper.
 
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