****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
The great debate will go on forever between water and air cooling advocates. For a long time it was settled with the fact that, discounting size and cost, water coolers just kept the CPU cooler so that was all that mattered. Recently this company, along with "be quite" and Noctua, have change that formula. These company's have units such as this Assassin III that will keep your processor as cool as a radiator/pump system will.My only caveat is when your case has glass panels. IMO some of these air coolers, which to do the job correctly, must be very large. Because of that size they overwhelm the components on your motherboard and are not particularity attractive. Again, this is only my personal opinion. If you look, the cost of water cooling has been coming down so it is equal with these air coolers. With that it becomes either a personal choice or one of logistics - i.e. will the unit you like fit in the case - height, radiator length/thickness, etc. - this may make your decision for you.Ok, some assembly required. That said, what really made this a worthy purchase, for me, was that they include a long, magnetic-tip P2 driver and if you're above a grade 1 education, you'll be able to follow the install instructions.Now, I have all my own tools for any project that I care to take on, and I've been building my own gaming rigs since the mid 90's (my first had a 28.8 modem), but the fact that I didn't have to get up and go get a screwdriver just really kinda made my day. And honestly, that's why I'm writing this review.Also, be prepared for how massive this thing is. I did not know CPU coolers came in sizes like this when I bought it, and I guess I didn't pay that much attention to the dimensions when i clicked buy now. Thankfully, with my new case, it fits and so far is performing wonderfully, but if I hadn't ordered a new case (with filters, yay) the same day, I'd have been hosed and it would have been entirely my fault.Seriously, guys. It's huge. I can't post the pics for some reason, but your box better be deep, with no side-panel fans in the upper-ish area.Pros:-Quality materials-Required tools provided-Easy instructions-Silent. Not quiet, silent. That's dual 140mm fans, completely silent. I'm dumbfounded.-Size. It's huge.Cons:-Size, if you do not have a deep case (like my old one).-Size, if you have tall heatsinks on your ram.I got this for my Ryzen 3900X buildbecause the stock prism wraith was really irritating in noise level. I went from 55dB next to my computer case under casual use (Just browsing, emailing chatting) to 42dB! On top of the decreased noise the fan noise is less "piercing" so even under load when the fans are spun up, it's more consistent with the other fans in the case, so it's less irritating in pitch; and the full load noise is significantly lower as well. The primary goal here was to get the noise down, and I succeeded in that! As a secondary benefit the temperatures dropped about 8 degrees under extended full load (Compile the linux kernel version 5.6 with all modules built, 24 threads), from 72C to 64C. Neither of those temperatures were too bad for this chip and neither would cause thermal throttling, but an 8 degree improvement is none-the-less good because it means I can run the other fans a lower (Quieter!) RPM. It also idles about 5 degrees cooler (34-35C vs 40C), but measuring a cooler by idle temp is kind of a useless measurement...As far as fitment... It's a big chunky cooler, so I know other people will have the same questions I had... Does it fit with X configuration... So I'll post my configuration and go into some details. It doesn't seem to interfere on the ASUS B-450F with the top graphics card slot or the top PCI-E 1x slot, but it does hang over my ram. I have 64GB (4 sticks) of Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3200 (BL2K16G32C16U4B), so it will fit over that for those of you looking for that info. It also JUST barely fits into my Corsair Carbide 200R case... I think the "spoiler" (The silly plastic thing on top that goes level with the tops of the fans) may be may be in contact with the side cover on my case, but the case still closes fine without effort, so it may not be touching. So I will warn anyone with a 200R, this is the cooler to use, not the slightly taller Noctua (The noctua is 2mm taller according to their specs)... Which was my concern and why I bought this and not that.Installation was pretty straight forward, the directions were well written, well drawn, and easy to follow. Everything you need to install it was included in the box, including plenty of thermal paste (More than enough for one application), a wipe to get the old thermal paste off, and a card to spread it (Which you may or may not choose to do). It was also nice that the screws included tension springs, which helps prevent over tightening (If you're truly determined you could probably overtighten it, so don't be the hulk here). The installation hardware seemed pretty well machined, and it all just fit together with no fiddling around with anything. One thing I'll mention, it's a big chonker, so it may interfere with your ability to get to your fan headers easily so I would plug in any fans BEFORE installing it (Not mentioned in the directions, but you should know). Although it doesn't hang over my fan headers, based on other fan placement in my case and where they are in my board it cuts down on clearance significantly.The included long #2 philips magnetic screw driver was a nice touch, I would assume plenty of people don't have a long enough one to reach down between the fins and tighten those screws... So good on them. It wouldn't be the first screw driver I'd reach for, but it's very nice for a freebie.
