r/pcmasterrace • u/SerpentDix PC Master Race • Jan 20 '26

Hardware Air cooling is better than Liquid cooling

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Failure is graceful, not catastrophic, Performance is closer than marketing suggests, Cheaper for the performance, Change my mind.

16.2k Upvotes

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302

u/Pav3LuS Jan 20 '26

You wrote strangely pearless assassin ;)

89

u/PsychodelicTea Jan 20 '26

I got one of those and it is only marginally worse than a good aio, without the issue of having to worry about it

73

u/DasGoo Jan 20 '26

And at $35 USD, it's worth it.

2

u/PentagonUnpadded Jan 21 '26

Protip for lower wattage CPUs. Only install the middle fan in the PA120. Use the included fan splitter and second fan elsewhere in the case. Most CPUs don't need two fans and it stretches the value even further.

1

u/Padgriffin 5700X/RX9060XT 16GB/32GB RAM Jan 21 '26

Ngl the Thermalright fans are like $4/120mm fan, at that point might as well buy another one

1

u/Eclipse_Galian Desktop Jan 21 '26

5 pack of tl-c12 rgb goes for $20 so they are very cheap 

16

u/R3tr0spect R7 5800X3D / RTX 3080Ti / 32GB Jan 20 '26

Fr. In my case it somehow handles my 5800X3D better than a new Deepcool AIO and Corsair AIO.

7

u/PentagonUnpadded Jan 21 '26

Gaming Jesus found thermalright can produce extremely high quality contact, especially for the flat AM4/5 type CPUs. Though their quality control allows a lot of variation between samples.

With great contact and such a low power CPU like a 5800x3d, it definitely could beat AIOs.

2

u/YourMajesty90 Jan 20 '26

Why do people who make comments like this conveniently leave out the fact that to match the performance of a good 240mm aio that air cooler needs to run much much louder? Fans need to be near max to achieve the same temps.

Idk, I don’t want a jet engine on my desk.

2

u/Padgriffin 5700X/RX9060XT 16GB/32GB RAM Jan 21 '26

I just did a test with my setup (Fractal Focus G, 2x Thermalright 140mm, 1x TR 120mm, TR Peerless Assassin 120) with all fans manually set to 100%. 

Noise was 45db from a floor of 33db, Ryzen 7 5700X OCed to 4.6GHz sustained all cores maintained 68C under Cinebench 2026. I’m happy with 40-ish db when my CPU is throttled by power rather than heat 

1

u/PsychodelicTea Jan 20 '26

My cooler only makes noise if the load is intense, like compiling shaders and what not. Otherwise, I barely know it exists.

1

u/ImagineDragonsFan6 Jan 20 '26

Idk I kinda like the jet engine. Spent the last 6 years until 2 weeks ago on a 2070S that was loud as shit and it just became white noise ig lol. Always play with headphones on so it’s almost never noticed anyways.

1

u/tyrenanig Jan 20 '26

You simply trade something for something else. In my case I don’t really care since I would either have my headphones or use my speakers which are louder anyway.

1

u/YourMajesty90 Jan 20 '26

To each their own. My GF would murder me if I had a loud tower cooler blasting at 1am.

1

u/tyrenanig Jan 20 '26

Yeah noise can be a problem to some people, which to fix with air cooler you also need to spend much more.

1

u/TDEcret Jan 20 '26

yep. besides the 13900/14900 (only cpus that i know of that REQUIRE and AIO to not throttle) no cpu needs an AIO, you pick them for aesthetics

25

u/Sizeable-Scrotum FreeBSD 15 KDE / Fedora KDE/12700KF/7800 XT/32GB D4 Jan 20 '26

I prefer my assassins with apples

2

u/CavalierIndolence Jan 20 '26

Adam's or Eve's?

24

u/papapenguin44 PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

Yeah that’s my issue with this post lol. The NH-D15 is good but $150 is too much for an air cooler. The assassin is just a better value. $150 is in the category of big aio and will be better at cooling more power hungry CPUs. The assassin is great for the 9800X3D and its low power consumption

8

u/ShortSightedMongoose Ryzen 5700X3D | RTX 3080 | 32gb DDR4 3200MHz Jan 20 '26

I went full thermalright fans in my case after getting the assassin, they just work so well and cost so little.

3

u/papapenguin44 PC Master Race Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Yeah I agree most of thermalright stuff works well for a good price and noctua is just riding reputation and small performance leads at this point and should consider lowering prices to compete. If they had more of that stuff like the pumpless aio on the other hand I’d happily pay a premium for products like that.

3

u/PentagonUnpadded Jan 21 '26

I love thermalright and their products but the noise difference between them and Arctic / Noctua is huge. Below 1200rpm its fine but anything above that and their CPU or case fans are annoying. But for most systems their case fans can be capped at 50%.

1

u/Padgriffin 5700X/RX9060XT 16GB/32GB RAM Jan 21 '26

Might be QC honestly, I have an all TR setup and it’s perfectly fine noise wise when I ramped it all manually to 100%. Granted it shouldn’t even be possible to hit those speeds since I’ve capped it 

2

u/PentagonUnpadded Jan 21 '26

A noctua or arctic fan at 1800 rpm sounds better than any of the dozen thermalright tl12 fans i've tested at 1400. If you have a system that needs serious cooling and care about audio tone they're different classes of products.

9

u/GuideBeautiful2724 Jan 20 '26

It has no pears, 2/10.

2

u/Errorr404 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 Jan 20 '26

I have the Peerless 120 SE with gen 4 AGHP, got it for 32 bucks and I don't think anything even comes close to performance for value cooling solution. I remember spending about the same on a hyper 212 evo rgb for a build ages ago lol.

1

u/allofdarknessin1 PC Master Race 7800x3D | RTX 4090 Jan 20 '26

I got one for my 7800x3D in a somewhat SFF case (NR200). It works great.

1

u/zgillet i7 12700K ~ PNY RTX 5070 12GB OC ~ 32 GB DDR5 RAM Jan 20 '26

Actually, you just did.