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GotNoRice
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2001
- Messages
- 12,369
I have had really amazing results with the larger thermalright air coolers in the last year or two. I have two systems with Xeon E5-1660 v3 CPUs on X99 motherboards, which are basically i7-5960X Xeon equivalents, both highly overclocked. Those CPUs are absolute heat factories with an aggressive overclock. One system is now running a Peerless Assassin 120 and the other is running a Phantom Spirit 120 and they work great (the later works better).
There just seems to be a lot of product congestion up top, where they have a lot of fairly similar coolers around the same price without much guidance about which way to go.
I think one of the only things that is pretty much undisputed is that the Phantom Spirit 120 is better than the Peerless Assassin 120, since it's essentially the exact same design but with 7 heatpipes instead of 6. Beyond that, there are a lot of questions.
How does cooling performance compare between SE and non-SE models of the same heatsink (Phantom Spirit 120 vs Phantom Spirit 120se, for example)? Lots of conflicting information here. Some claim that the SE models are actually improvements, but to me they really look like cost-cutting versions where they mostly omit the top part of the heatsink, which is why the tops of the heatpipes are exposed on the SE versions. I personally prefer the non-SE versions, but if there is actual compelling evidence that the SE versions are better I'd love to know.
How does the Frost Spirit 140 compare to the Peerless Assassin 120 and Phantom Spirit 120 models? The Frost Spirit 140 has been on sale for such a good price lately, I ended up buying two of them recently. I'm pretty sure that the Frost Spirit 140 will not outperform the Phantom Spirit 120, but I'm debating swapping the Peerless Assassin 120 in my other computer with one of the Frost Spirit 140 heatsinks.
What's up with the Frost Commander 140? This is supposed to be Thermalright's premium air cooler if you have money to burn, right? It's similar to the Frost Spirit 140 but it has 5 large heatpipes instead of 4. But Hardware Canucks did a video where the Frost Spirit 140 clearly outperformed the Frost Commander 140. They supposedly checked these results multiple times using multiple different Frost Commander 140 heatsinks. Their conclusion is that even though it has 5 heat pipes instead of 4 like the Frost Spirit, the location of the heat pipes means that only three are being used most of the time whereas with the Frost Spirit all 4 are being used most of the time. Seems like this would obviously vary depending on the CPU, but really adds to the confusion. Some seem to regard the Frost Commander 140 as being better than the other three heatsinks mentioned, while others regard it as even being worse than a Peerless Assassin.
Out of all the high-end thermalright air heatsinks, which one responds best to fan upgrades? It looks like, even on heatsinks like the Frost Spirit 140, we're mostly still talking about 120mm fans or 140mm fans that happen to have 120mm mounting holes. The fan clips that come with the heatsinks (even the 140mm heatsinks) only seem like they are big enough to support 120mm fans, which is why the 140mm fans on the Frost Spirit and Frost Commander both have 120mm mounting holes that are used. Since I bought two Frost Spirit 140 heatsinks, I was thinking about grabbing the 140mm fans from both and using them on one of heatsinks, and then just using both 120mm fans on the other. I'm not sure if there is actually a benefit to having the 120mm+140mm fan mix, but I'm not a huge fan of how it looks; I kind of prefer matched fans, all things being equal.
There just seems to be a lot of product congestion up top, where they have a lot of fairly similar coolers around the same price without much guidance about which way to go.
I think one of the only things that is pretty much undisputed is that the Phantom Spirit 120 is better than the Peerless Assassin 120, since it's essentially the exact same design but with 7 heatpipes instead of 6. Beyond that, there are a lot of questions.
How does cooling performance compare between SE and non-SE models of the same heatsink (Phantom Spirit 120 vs Phantom Spirit 120se, for example)? Lots of conflicting information here. Some claim that the SE models are actually improvements, but to me they really look like cost-cutting versions where they mostly omit the top part of the heatsink, which is why the tops of the heatpipes are exposed on the SE versions. I personally prefer the non-SE versions, but if there is actual compelling evidence that the SE versions are better I'd love to know.
How does the Frost Spirit 140 compare to the Peerless Assassin 120 and Phantom Spirit 120 models? The Frost Spirit 140 has been on sale for such a good price lately, I ended up buying two of them recently. I'm pretty sure that the Frost Spirit 140 will not outperform the Phantom Spirit 120, but I'm debating swapping the Peerless Assassin 120 in my other computer with one of the Frost Spirit 140 heatsinks.
What's up with the Frost Commander 140? This is supposed to be Thermalright's premium air cooler if you have money to burn, right? It's similar to the Frost Spirit 140 but it has 5 large heatpipes instead of 4. But Hardware Canucks did a video where the Frost Spirit 140 clearly outperformed the Frost Commander 140. They supposedly checked these results multiple times using multiple different Frost Commander 140 heatsinks. Their conclusion is that even though it has 5 heat pipes instead of 4 like the Frost Spirit, the location of the heat pipes means that only three are being used most of the time whereas with the Frost Spirit all 4 are being used most of the time. Seems like this would obviously vary depending on the CPU, but really adds to the confusion. Some seem to regard the Frost Commander 140 as being better than the other three heatsinks mentioned, while others regard it as even being worse than a Peerless Assassin.
Out of all the high-end thermalright air heatsinks, which one responds best to fan upgrades? It looks like, even on heatsinks like the Frost Spirit 140, we're mostly still talking about 120mm fans or 140mm fans that happen to have 120mm mounting holes. The fan clips that come with the heatsinks (even the 140mm heatsinks) only seem like they are big enough to support 120mm fans, which is why the 140mm fans on the Frost Spirit and Frost Commander both have 120mm mounting holes that are used. Since I bought two Frost Spirit 140 heatsinks, I was thinking about grabbing the 140mm fans from both and using them on one of heatsinks, and then just using both 120mm fans on the other. I'm not sure if there is actually a benefit to having the 120mm+140mm fan mix, but I'm not a huge fan of how it looks; I kind of prefer matched fans, all things being equal.
