Question about upgrading to Air cooler for 3900x Moving away from AIO

R0gueBogue · February 27, 2022

Okay, first off I'll give you what I'm building with. I have an TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) x570 MB

The ram (I mention this because of possible clearance issues with cooler) is G.SKILL Trident Z Neo 32GB PC4 28800

Obviously from the Title, Ryzen 3900x

not sure if it matters, but a 1080 ti FTW 3 GPU

and possibly the most important is the case. I have a Phanteks Enthoo Pro Series PH-ES614P_WT White Steel

I am CURRENTLY using a Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240 AIO CPU Liquid Cooler that I purchased in 2017. it's 5 years old, when gaming the cpu only gets around 70c at the most.. so it's still doing okay.. but.. being 5 years old, and the fact I purchased it in the build before the 3900x and when I upgraded to the 3900x it was NOT on the list of recommended AIO's or coolers, one of the newer masterliquids was.

The cooler that i'm looking at possibly purchasing is Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 4

from what I have read, it does have enough clearance for the ram that I have. I know that it's SUPER QUIET and from most of the videos I have watched it seems like it holds it's own on the temps. But, it's been quite a long time since I had a fan cooler

if I do end up going with the mentioned Cooler, should I get some extra fans to place on the top of the case? Where the radiator is right now? to help with air flow? it's a pretty big case, it does REALLY GOOD on keeping out dust and the like.

I just want to make sure that I get the best cooler for that price range. I also looked at the Noctua fan.. noctua nh-d15 and also Thermalright Frost Commander 140

What do you guys suggest?

Thank you so much in advance. I'm a new user to the forum, just signed up to ask. I have been a reader for quite a while here and respect the community. I figured if I was going to look for advice anywhere, I would do it here.

Please let me know if you need anymore information

freeagent · February 27, 2022

I am using a 5900X with a Thermalright FC140 inside of a Meshify C, performance is excellent.. I would say it’s as good or better than what many other top end Air/AIO users are getting. It is the best cooler I have used so far.. and I have some good ones.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermalright-Cooler-TL-D14X-TL-C12PRO-Technology/dp/B09QRH7LNF

D1D01 · February 27, 2022

Hi R0gueBogue, Nice work freeagent,

I too am in the market for a new Cooler and had not heard of this one (Thermalright). Too new for many reviews yet but will take your recommendation, others, (Users) have also said good things. It seems it has an asymmetrical design to allow clearance for RAM, the Dark Rock Pro 4 has something similar. Also someone has pointed out to me that for further clearance if nec you can simply just mount the fan higher up the heatsink in some cases. The Thermalright is a tall boy at 160mm so need to check Case specs for clearence. Otherwise it has a slightly larger primary fan than the DR4 at 140mm so should be very good on the noise spec.

I will be taking a good look - Usually a Noctua Fanboy.

D1D01 · February 27, 2022

Recenty working on my Brother's re-build, I found adding even just one 120mm exaust top fan at the rear of the case just above the rear case-fan was indeed killer!

freeagent · February 28, 2022

I have my Meshify setup a little different than most.. I have the top and basement sealed off, and am running 3x Noctua iPPC 3K fans at the very front of the case, and am using no exhaust fans, and no pci covers. On the cooler itself I am not using TL-D14X, but am using TY-143 instead, and I do have TL-C12 Pro on the front of the cooler. Overall it works fairly well I think..