Can anyone clarify how it is possible for a cheap aircooler to surpass one of the best AIOs?

[Nets]

ok, i have my game pc with one ryzen 7 7700x  and it was until 2 days ago  with one arctic freezer 2 360mm, the pump died and it wasnt cooling at all, so i send to RMA and bought a cheap cooler on amazon, the thermalright phantom spirit evo.. 
and this is where it gets fun.

i installed the cooler (used noctua nt-h1 thermal past), last night and did some tests.

for my big surprise its gives basicly the same temperatures, and on benchmarks/gaming has better performance ????
was my old 360 bad for almost an year or what ? 

left it the entire night on cpu z stress, on the morning was 88C wich is the comon on my cpu and with clocks stable on 5.3 

this cooler is a freaking beast

 

[Naijin]

1 minute ago, Nets said:

ok, i have my game pc with one ryzen 7 7700x  and it was until 2 days ago  with one arctic freezer 2 360mm, the pump died and it wasnt cooling at all, so i send to RMA and bought a cheap cooler on amazon, the thermalright phantom spirit evo.. 
and this is where it gets fun.

i installed the cooler (used noctua nt-h1 thermal past), last night and did some tests.

for my big surprise its gives basicly the same temperatures, and on benchmarks/gaming has better performance ????
was my old 360 bad for almost an year or what ? 

Your mount could've been a bit off, thermal paste, ... The Thermalright is just a good cooler but the Freezer II 360 should perform slightly better.

Is the cooler mounted as exhaust? If yes, that could explain higher temperatures. If you would mount the AIO up front you draw in cold air instead of hot air from the GPU. An air cooler will more or less channel the air and exhaust it to the back, generally using less hot air from the GPU.

 

Bitwit tested this, while the GPU temp would stay roughly the same, CPU temperatures change a lot.

 

[GuiltySpark_]

Without knowing how effective your mounting job was or what you were running the pump at, its hard to say. Modern dual tower air coolers are very good. 

 

You also have to keep in mind how Ryzen 7000 operates, its going to push clocks, power and voltage as high as it can by default until it hits 95c at stock. If you tweak things with PBO you can bring that down but by default, temps alone are not a good metric.

 

What were you scoring in a Cinebench R23 multicore test before? And now? 

[Nets]

4 minutes ago, Naijin said:

Your mount could've been a bit off, thermal paste, ... The Thermalright is just a good cooler but the Freezer II 360 should perform slightly better.

Is the cooler mounted as exhaust? If yes, that could explain higher temperatures. If you would mount the AIO up front you draw in cold air instead of hot air from the GPU. An air cooler will more or less channel the air and exhaust it to the back, generally using less hot air from the GPU.

 

Bitwit tested this, while the GPU temp would stay roughly the same, CPU temperatures change a lot.
 

 

Yes the cooler was top mounted on exaust

[Nets]

25 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Without knowing how effective your mounting job was or what you were running the pump at, its hard to say. Modern dual tower air coolers are very good. 

 

You also have to keep in mind how Ryzen 7000 operates, its going to push clocks, power and voltage as high as it can by default until it hits 95c at stock. If you tweak things with PBO you can bring that down but by default, temps alone are not a good metric.

 

What were you scoring in a Cinebench R23 multicore test before? And now?

 

 

 

now im getting 19523, before i know i have a print somewhere but cant Find it… on cpu z wich i used recently i remember it was 7600+ on Phantom Spirit im getting 8100+ 

[freeagent]

Phantom Spirit Evo is a little beast. Thermalright makes the best coolers. Might not make the best fans, but they make the best coolers.

[Nets]

10 minutes ago, freeagent said:

Phantom Spirit Evo is a little beast. Thermalright makes the best coolers. Might not make the best fans, but they make the best coolers.

I did mount a while Back a peerless assassin for a friend, easy to mount a keep the cpu cool but it was a 5600x  i can say i was surprised about the quality, the fans a pair of arctic p12 Will do the trick of they start getting loud

Edited March 15 by Nets

[PDifolco]

33 minutes ago, Nets said:

ok, i have my game pc with one ryzen 7 7700x  and it was until 2 days ago  with one arctic freezer 2 360mm, the pump died and it wasnt cooling at all, so i send to RMA and bought a cheap cooler on amazon, the thermalright phantom spirit evo.. 
and this is where it gets fun.

i installed the cooler (used noctua nt-h1 thermal past), last night and did some tests.

for my big surprise its gives basicly the same temperatures, and on benchmarks/gaming has better performance ????
was my old 360 bad for almost an year or what ? 

left it the entire night on cpu z stress, on the morning was 88C wich is the comon on my cpu and with clocks stable on 5.3 

this cooler is a freaking beast

 

Thing is cooler don't scale really, it's more a thing of "max power dissipated"

So a AF2 360 can manage say 300W, an aircooler 150W only, but if your CPU needs only 100W both will manage it as well, the AF2 won't magically decrease CPU temp below ambient lol

Aircoolers may even be better at low loads due to heat being dissipated faster

 

[Nets]

11 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

Thing is cooler don't scale really, it's more a thing of "max power dissipated"

So a AF2 360 can manage say 300W, an aircooler 150W only, but if your CPU needs only 100W both will manage it as well, the AF2 won't magically decrease CPU temp below ambient lol

Aircoolers may even be better at low loads due to heat being dissipated faster

 

Yes, i know it wont decrease below ambient, males sense. but a sub40€ cooler having same performance/ better performance just surprised me 

[PDifolco]

Just now, Nets said:

Yes, i know it wont decrease below ambient, but a sub40€ cooler having same performance/ better performance just surprised me 

TR PS/PE are extermely cheap for their performance, comparable hi end aircoolers (Noctua, BQ...) often are in the $70-$100 range

But TR fans are average only and cheap, can explain a bit the difference ($8 to $25 a fan for Noctua's..)

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Nets said:

Yes, i know it wont decrease below ambient, males sense. but a sub40€ cooler having same performance/ better performance just surprised me 

The thermalright can cool a 14700k but that is about it's limit. A lf2 360mm can just about cool a 13900k/14900k. It's basically just all about what it's maximum thermal load is. The thermalright is an AMAZING cooler and EASILY matches/beats 240/280mm coolers.

 

The liquid freezer 360mm is a bit better but it could have just been running at a lower pump/fan speed which is why you could have seen higher temps.

[freeagent]

It takes 260w from my 5900X, about 3-4c off from their 360 that I was using. For 58X3D it can run semi passively in my current set up.

[Nets]

7 minutes ago, jaslion said:

The thermalright can cool a 14700k but that is about it's limit. A lf2 360mm can just about cool a 13900k/14900k. It's basically just all about what it's maximum thermal load is. The thermalright is an AMAZING cooler and EASILY matches/beats 240/280mm coolers.

 

The liquid freezer 360mm is a bit better but it could have just been running at a lower pump/fan speed which is why you could have seen higher temps.

Maybe my pump wasnt at full performance it died within less than an year 

[RevGAM]

On 3/15/2024 at 11:05 AM, Nets said:

Maybe my pump wasnt at full performance it died within less than an year 

That's possible. The LF2 is notable for being one of the best AIOs when noise is important but, if not, it is way down on the list of top AIOs (but still very good). Also, as suggested,  it may not have been mounted optimally. The LF3, in contrast, is much better, but they handicapped it by continuing to use the P12 PWM PST (for 120/240/360). If they'd used the P12 Max, it wouldn't have led in quietness anymore but it would've beat the coolers that beat it. Then again, they could've also chosen a stronger pump and a better rad...

 

TR is known to make great coolers (a bewildering selection,  honestly), but their fans aren't necessarily as good. I can't even find out the lifespan and warranty on their fans, but the B12 Extreme defeats the P12 Max except for noise. 

[NorKris]

On 3/15/2024 at 3:01 PM, Nets said:

ok, i have my game pc with one ryzen 7 7700x  and it was until 2 days ago  with one arctic freezer 2 360mm, the pump died and it wasnt cooling at all, so i send to RMA and bought a cheap cooler on amazon, the thermalright phantom spirit evo.. 
and this is where it gets fun.

i installed the cooler (used noctua nt-h1 thermal past), last night and did some tests.

for my big surprise its gives basicly the same temperatures, and on benchmarks/gaming has better performance ????
was my old 360 bad for almost an year or what ? 

left it the entire night on cpu z stress, on the morning was 88C wich is the comon on my cpu and with clocks stable on 5.3 

this cooler is a freaking beast

 

pump was about to fail or user error  is the only options 

[Godlygamer23]

Not necessarily unexpected.

If a cooler can dissipate 300W of heat, and the other 200W, with them both cooling 100W, they might perform fairly similarly. Things will start to change though as the heat load approaches the limit of the second cooler, where now it will run out of steam, but the 300W will keep going.

 

Other aspects to consider here are the mount itself, thermal paste application, and the amount of heat that can actually be transferred. All those impact how much heat can be pulled away from the component. Additionally, if the pump failed, it was probably weak and running much slower than it would've when it was brand new, so it will circulate less coolant, whereas the air cooler is purely relying on the small amount of liquid inside each heat pipe to phase change to a gas, and back again, so there are no real mechanics that fail - strictly just exploitation of chemistry and physics.