If you want more details on the Noctua NH-U12S Redux, you can get them here: ruclips.net/video/kgwuUupf1q8/видео.html We previously looked at the Scythe Fuma 2 and were impressed: ruclips.net/video/BT0UtQQ1rEo/видео.html If you want to see how we test coolers, check out our methodology here: ruclips.net/video/fmTOJP4KOyk/видео.html
can I recommend the gelid phantom black dual tower cooler for a future video? it's a $40-$50 cooler, and seems to be a bit too good to be true. if you don't want to take suggestions from some random guy in your comment section, that's fair, just thought I would suggest it
I got a cheap cooler. It works. But given how much I paid for the rest of my computer, I wish I got a quieter cooler for a given power output, it's not much more price in comparison to the CPU (or even a GPU).
@@hadiabdul9266 The same can be said for every single component. Sticking to a budget means you have to make compromises and "cheap out" on certain spots.
I really appreciated the conclusion made regarding the 3600. I feel like a lot of cooler performance is focused on the highest end chips, but a 30 dollar cooler on a $700 CPU would be as dumb as a $150 cooler on a $200 CPU. I'm liking the content targeting mid tier hardware where I feel like most people are actually shopping
Ive been using the evo 212 with a phenom ii 720 OCed/ fx 8120 heavily OCed and now my R5 3600 stock (had to buy a new one TY Am4) its been great thermals very low noise. My HDDs are louder. Here in Argentina its not choose a brand its whats available. Id love a noctua but it never existed here
@@muaries12 Only reason I had to replace my older arctic cooler was the new mounting brackets. Otherwise that 10 year old thing wouldve been enough for an R5. Also yeah, switching from stock to new cooler really reminded me aware of how loud hard drives actually are. Gotta replace with a cheap SSD soon.
Oh my god the amazing measurement graphics again. I absolutely fucking love them. They help people like me who have a near impossible way to imagine things, or picture things in my head. They help tremendously. Thank you for this, it genuinely helps a lot.
@@GamersNexus I’m just curious, but a lot of these cheap cooler brands are Chinese, so is it possible that there’s also Chinese motherboards that have different ram orientations where the clearance could actually matter
@@GamersNexus @Razer want a thermal paste for my razer blade 15 (2020) with which paste should I go with kryonaut, noctua nt nh1 ,or artic mx4,or kingpin kpx which one will last 8 -10 months without drying or significant rise in temp and kingpin kpx suitable for laptop
@@aringiri1946 Just buy a big tube of KPX or Kryonaut Extreme and your set forever! Really it doesnt matter though, they all work just fine and they will all last years unless you are pushing 400w through them 24hr a day...I've done some home testing and the KPX was the best but it only dropped temps by 4C compared to the worst and that was a very high heat load...
I'm not entirely sure why... but I got this strange sense that Steve is fed up with people who don't pay attention to what he says and then proceed to misquote him or argue against points he never made in the first place... We're probably well into the territory where Steve is, in fact, *disappointed* in some of those people...
And I have a sneaking suspicion that comments like "this random cheap small tower cooler will outperform a large AIO" are intentionally spread bot comments in the first place.
@@chanchomanco Yeah Noctua get an inordinate amount of praise for premium build quality and service, but let us not forget, they DO get paid for it! I love Noctua but you get what you pay for, they're not 'heroric' or anything lol
@@chanchomanco Also, it's a cheap PWM ARGB fan cooler. Those usually cost a bit more. For kids who want a cheap aircooler upgrade but still want to keep the RGB from their Wraith Prism, this is the way to go. If only they had better mounting kits though... The Noctua mounting kits can't be beat, they're so damn good... and the overall quality is superb. I always buy Noctua and recommend it to my friends.
Echoing other comments, I say it’s kinda nice to see some budget oriented solutions run the gauntlet. Every 20 bucks saved on a cash constrained build may make it possible to stretch for a better case or this or that.
I'm a newer viewer but have looked at a lot of your videos. As someone in the metrology and Engineering space I highly appreciate your attention to detail and thoroughness in testing. I think you do great with the limitations you are working with, keep up the good work!
Of all the tech media youtubers, Gamers Nexus has the most thorough explanations on their limitations and the best statements on what their data points actually mean. From a scientific standpoint, it's exceptional. From the layperson's standpoint, the summary/conclusion is all they need to look at. It's evident that people often skip through the videos and don't read/listen to the details of the charts based on the comment sections. I have a degree in secondary science education; Steve and crew do a better job of explaining lab limitations than most teachers.
Please do more of these budget brands! I can figure out heatpipe counts and fan rpm, but there's no else who can check mounting pressure or coldplate flatness.
It doesn't really matter with these budget coolers, especially on amazon. The products can change at any point and you'd be doing good to get what you see on screen. These are not established brands as you know them and chinese companies really don't care about image (see minisforum pc nonsense). Quality and results vary -- the most important aspect is that it's US shipped product --- you're not waiting 3 months on, and you can return it if it doesn't work.
I'm always impressed by how you add graphical effects to teach and show your points, like when you show the measurements of the cooler, using diagrams, etc. As a teacher, I find the pedagogy of your films impressive as always. 😊 Thanks for sharing!
Great video. I've used this cooler with two builds, once with a R5 3600 and the other time with a 5600X. It definitely outperforms the stock AMD cooler and I felt was well worth the price.
I bought a vetroo v5 for one of the builds I was doing and I really liked it, it looks good and the RGB is a nice touch in this price range. It is also very quiet and thermals were pretty good.
The Vetroo V5 was one of the few, readily available 120mm air coolers that can fit in the Corsair 280x mATX case. Component dimensions are really important, especially for those building in smaller cases
Hey Steve, you should also consider testing out the Arctic freezer 34, also in this price point. Imo that's one of the best coolers for the price, also with very nice design choices for most builds!
@@mr.t459 yeah that one too. But from a few not as deep reviews as nexus ones, I figured the other fan doesn't add much to the cooling/noise aspect. But sure looks better 🙃
@@paladinsk2 came looking for 34 esports and esports duo :) steve, consider this please, i have one and thinking of using it on 5800x wanna know if it will hold up or should i upgrade
@@Bl4ckP0150n i have the single one on a 5600x.. up to around 52°C when stock, and up to 65°C heavily overclocked :)) so I'd say go for it! It's awesomr for it's Money. Also the fan is really quiet, and doesn't need more than 70% load level.
I was thinking the same thing. I think it also comes with the clips to attach a second fan for push/pull, so I’m kinda curious what an absolutely best case scenario would look like.
Super happy with my V5! My AMD R5 3600 idles at 29c, games in the mid 50s, and maxes at 67C on heavy benchmarks. That max temp went down over 30C from the stock AMD cooler.
These are awesome coolers! I've used them on at least 20 builds so far and they look great and perform great ( for the price ). 0 issues with them since.
It’s great to see that air cooling chart fill up! Thank you. Many are calling the NH-U12A the equivalent of either a large air cooler or 240mm class AIO. Please debunk or verify once and for all!
Considering that Noctua rates their own coolers' performance against each other we do have an idea of where it stands compared to larger coolers,or at least the Noctua ones in stock configuration. According to Noctua the NH-U12A outperforms the NH-D14 by a bit and narrowly outperforms the NH-D15S (probably because it has twice the fans) but the regular two fan NH-D15 is still much better.
I've been running this cooler for about a year now, picked it up on sale for $25. first on a r5 3600 and now on a 5600x it's handled light overclocking well holding the 5600x to ~75°C @ 4.9mhz all core run on timespy I tend to keep the cpu on eco mode and I rarely see over 60°C with the stock fan curve while gaming.
Very excited to see the hyper212 (Evo V2 hopefully) review. Also curious to see what the average performance uplift is when you add a second fan to any of the coolers that come with only one
The t400i should be another good pick for lower end, since it's basically the 212 with one less fan and the AMD bracket + top plate removed. My brother's 9400f idles at only 33°C, which is really good for just $12-14, so it'll be interesting to see how it compares to more expensive coolers.
push-pull configurations only brings you some minor advantage if you got a real deep and real fine finstack who restricts airflow realy realy realy hard and even then its not that mutch. if you run in that problem where it would help your airflow is restricted that mutch your fans would have to run lot faster and it gets louder. this obstruction can also be a dustfilter or case grillmesh in front or behind the radiator in this one particular case 2 fans in push pull help since they can run more quietly as one fan on higher rpm to create the same airflow or transport the air out of the case where they would be start to swirl arround and loose direction and speed (thats the reason backside exhaust fans or the last top fan in the back of a case are effective even on low speed settings) but i think no air cooler these days got such a deep fine fin configuration you would run into such a prob lem and some of the older models like a ninja have open sides you loose all the pressure and airspeed and the dont perform that good even as the raw fin stack size compaired to a duel tower would be even pulling fans allways are less effective since the air is going the easiest way trugh the widest gaps and thats not trugh tight corners close to the fins and it creates more laminar flow trugh the low pressure areas and this transports the heat less effective away. some cooler fins even got a 3d imprint to create more turbulant flow or tryed with some wavy or spikey surfaces or x crossing interstions. but at the end you got almost allways slower airflow with it because you have more obstructions or waste potential fin volume in your radiator area. you also cant push the fins infinetely close together as at some point you just create a solid wall for the air. all this together is the reason the good aircoolers are nowdays all dual towers in push-push config who dont waste radiator volume. enough heatpipes spread out as far as it gets in the finstack without obstructing the airflow and a stacked arrangement to get them even more spaced out i think the modern air cooler. heatpipe, direct touch, dual tower design is the end of the race to the best cooling solution and you can only get better if you go even larger with good airpressure/speed optimised fans i think more optimisation potential to push it further is now in the contact area to the cpu with higher surface finish, even/higher pressure and good thermal paste with matching surface topography (well we could just say make all cpu surfaces and cooler bottoms dead flat cant we? and large enough bottom plates/areas to dont let gaps if the chiplets get more spread out and something
@@GeminionRay idle temps don't mean anything except how good your air conditioning is....the intel stock cooler can idle at 33c too if your ambient temperature is good
@@samgoff5289 Sorry, I should have added more to that. In this case it's ambient temp of about 30°C with absolutely no AC, so if you have an Intel cooler it'd be like 45°C at minimum. Back when I tested the CM at high load it was still around 60°C, so I'd say it's quite good for its class.
The “ram clearance” actually turned out to be very useful because it allowed the cooler to clear the heatsink on my gen 4 nvme ssd. Without it, the cooler wouldn’t fit. Whether this is the real purpose of this cutout or an engineering mistake is immaterial. The cooler worked where the original attempt to use an aio cooler failed. There just wasn’t room for the cold plate and hoses because of the heat sinks surrounding the cpu for the vrms and the ram and ssd. For a 3700, it does well enough because it isn’t over clocked. The cpu was bought used without a stock cooler. It isn’t great but works. Any other solution would involve using a different motherboard. Way more expensive than using a cheap cooler that no one respects. It’s good enough and works. The expensive cooler didn’t fit.
The V5 at $38 CND was an easy choice for me two months ago; the U12S is regularly $95 CND up here. I'm hoping it'll eventually handle an upgrade to a 5800X. Thank you for this review, Steve!
I would really like to see the Thermalright peerless Assassin 120. It seems like it should perform similarly to the fuma 2 but regularly sells for around $41.
got this myself and i'm really surprised thermalright hasn't just shipped hundreds of these to gamernexus to test already. there is one benchmark on youtube where it punches between the dark rock pro 4 and the nh-d15, and for $41 that is just nuts.
Not only that but the Assassin King 120 in white/black is also $40-$45 which is an awesome value. And the PA and FS 140 and FC 140 black/white/argb versions that are out are also very competitively priced.
6:30 if I had to guess, it comes from mindlessly copying the 212 EVO. The EVO, due to how the bracket works, you can turn it 90 degrees, and thus needing that clearance. This cooler doesn't use the same mounting hardware, but I guess the approach to designing this cooler was "monkey see, monkey do" without using the good ol' noggin.
It's clearly this. A lot of Chinese brands just shamelessly copy. And if there are engineers on the team that tells them this isn't needed or a good idea, the clueless boss typically shut them down with a lot of yelling. This is typical of how things are...
Why? We already know that its one of the best if not the best pound-4-pound coolers! I have used many and for the money (£25-£30) it is fantastic, way better than the stock nonsense AMD give out!!
@@Leftfield2k7 ive heard that too but im curious on how it would perform in a standardized test, also i wanna use it on a 5800x, wanna know if it will hold out or should i upgrade from a credible source like GN
Hey Steve ~ Looking forward to the Hyper 212 review, as it's been my go to air cooler for quite a while now on new clients builds, when they either don't want, or can't afford, a liquid cooler solution. I love the fact that it just does what it says it does with no muss and no fuss. Also, because I get used equipment all the time, I have extra brackets, so I end up putting two fans on the Hyper, (depending on the mobo) which really helps a lot when gaming or overclocking. I agree that for a tight budget build with i5 / R5 CPUs the Vetroo would be a good choice.
Other aspect to note is that the Vetroo V5 comes in at 150mm height where as the othe U12s is closer to 160mm. For the tight fitment/shallow side panels, the V5 is a life saver. (Coming from a D15 or Blackridge2 Enthusiast).
6:42 Just want to point out that it absolutely can be for RAM clearance... Coolers can be mounted horizontally too... At least on LGA115x. That's what I used it on, and mounting it horizontally allowed me to mount my GPU vertically with very close clearances. That being said the fan completely negates the clearance by blocking up the cut-out fin stack. I had to chop a bit of the fan corner off to make it fit over my RAM
This is all good and well but i really think the hyper 212 shoulda been included in this first round of lower end coolers. By far the most popular cooler at that price point and the measuring stick for all entry level towers.
The Hyper 212, even with updates, is kind of out dated now and really isn't good value for money when it's over about $25. Even coolers such as the Gammax 400 perform better and cost less.
I personally have the Vetroo V5 on my Ryzen R7 3700x (B450i Aorus ITX motherboard) and i have been using now for about 8 months with no issues or overheating of my cpu. My cpu generally runs around 70c to low 70c's during intense gaming session. For the money I found the Vetroo V5 to be more than capable for gaming and heavy cpu use on my SFF pc case (Cooler Master NR200P) and I'm more than happy to recommend it. Great review GN. It's great to see more budget friendly brands getting reviewed and tested, showing how good they can be for the right scenarios :D
10 dB isn't a 10x difference to perceived volume. You kept pointing that out that it's perceived volume not power, but I still think you got it backwards. That's a 10x difference in acoustic power, but only about 2x the perceived difference. You might check your notes on this one. If there's a definition of dB that is a log scale for perceived loudness, then I am unable to find it. If such a scale does exist, then why use it?
The "rule of thumb" is 6dB for 2x perceived audio loudness. So 10dB is maybe 2.5 to 3x? Also higher frequencies tend to be more noticeable than lower ones. The other thing is that in a normal "office" environment anything less than 40dB is considered below the noise floor.
You're correct that 6 dB in power is roughly a 2x perceived loudness difference, but GN is reporting dB*A*, not dB. dBA is corrected for psychoacoustic factors so it's closer to 10 dBA = 10x difference. Keywords for further reading include "a-weighting curve" and "IEC 61672:2003"
This is my favorite little cooler. Vetroo often does sales and you can get these even cheaper. Great for budget builds, and to give something a little pop (rgb) The quality of the fan is decent and it uses standard connectors for the rgb. I also like their liquid coolers and so far I've had good luck with them all.
This review helped me out a lot, thanks GN. Upgraded my sons rig for Christmas with an R5 3600 and he needed an affordable but capable cooler vs stock. The V5 has been fantastic for his needs. Thanks again!!!!
Love the coverage on things that are not Top Tier/Most expensive products. I've spent nearly 30 years with second hand/budget parts for my PC builds going back to my first 286sx build. A lot of time and effort goes into budget building looking to get the best you can for the least amount of money. I truly appreciate this review (and others you've done like this) 2021 is the first year that I've gone all in out and gone high end (3090, 10900K, etc)... honestly it wasn't as fun this time around. Thank you for your efforts here, it's appreciated.
I'd love to see fan normalised testing of these coolers, to test which of the bare metal coolers performs better. It would also show how much of their performance is down to the fans being good vs the quality of the heatsink. I've not used the included fan on a CPU cooler in about 5 years now (since RGB all the things happened!). I get that you're testing the "out of box" experience though and realise that putting someone else's fan on a cooler might annoy certain manufacturers.
@@chanchomanco I did and raised the same point on that video, it's fine if you consider the fan and heatsink as a single unit, but I'd be very interested to take out a variable and see tests of the raw performance of each heatsink, just test them all with the same fan (so RPM/CFM is not a variable) perhaps something like a Fractal Design 120mm fan as they have no skin in the air cooler game?
I would put the Alpenföhn Brocken EcoAdvanced on the list which would be in the same league of 30-50€. It was one of the few Air Coolers which fit in to the O11 Dynamic non XL and have a reasonable cooling capability. Paired with a R7 3700X it works well.
@@stewenw4120 Very few have heard of Alpenfohn - they do some good stuff - very much on a par with Scythe, who themselves are underrated. I wonder if Alpenfohn are available in the U.S - if not the Steve less likely to review as that is a large portion of his viewership.
Great job as always @GamersNexus! One small thing I think might be helpful is on your "pressure map" slides, have a coloured legend showing high/med/low pressure, just to make clear that white it is white - purple - blue - teal - green as the order of pressure amounts...
Can you make a video like "How many fans do we need in a case?" but if you can do it in a relatively large case like Phanteks enthoo pro 2. it will be much better to see all sights.
Yes, as you have mentioned in the closing of this video, a revisit or review or the Hyper 212 would do a lot of good since it is still regarded as one of the best bang for buck cooler. I am using one myself (Hyper 212 LED Turbo), so I would look forward to that as well.
Thank you for reviewing low end/mid tier coolers! I suggested that months ago on your channel and I am happy that you are taking a look at the cheaper side of the fan coolers. I am curious now to see ol' reliable hyper 212 and other "uninteresting" fan coolers like the offerings from Gigabyte, Thermaltake and some of those strange CoolerMaster offerings (like the V8 or so), for example. I was kind of sure that we would find hidden gems - at least for lower heat loads - among those less famous offerings. Also curious to see for sure now the difference between single and dual fans configs, or maybe just for the sake of it - how would a certain cooler do with a set of Noctua fans. My thoughts are for the dual fans while they might not yield lower temperatures, they will sure expel the heat faster resulting in interesting time-to-stabilize.
I’m just waiting for the completely designed ARGB LEDs-only cooler reviewed. Like, the LEDs ARE the cooler. Because this is the world we want but never asked for.
Just bought one for a 5600X build I'm doing. Was looking for something that's better than a Wraith Prism - which looks cool and can be bought second-hand for $20 -$25. This is it.
6:40 If you COULD rotate it to a vertical position it's a valid claim (4eg linear airflow up from the bottom and out the top), and it also still applies to weirdly formatted OEM boards with the RAM above or below the CPU instead of in front (Dell still does this sometimes).
You don't take into account, that the cutout on the fin stack is instantly reversed by mounting a 120mm fan. Have you ever seen a fan with a cutout? There is no cutout in this cooler, once you run it with a fan. It would be extremely coincidental if ANY board would have some partial obstruction around STANDARDISED socket placement(and area around it) to make use of the fin stack cutout and at the same time allow obstruction by the fan. Boards are not made by aliexpress emerging brands
I love these for $25. Great quality for the price. I have 2, one Intel and one AMD. The one had a fan bearing go bad (noise), and Vetroo replaced the fan. He was too harsh on a $25 fan that is exceptional for a low TDP cpu.
With the intel stock cooler on a 12100f I was averaging around 80 degrees Celsius with an obnoxious fan noise playing Elden Ring. After installing the Vetroo V5 I haven't seen it go above 50 degrees and I can't even hear it over my case fans. Best $35 I've spent in a long time.
I found that slapping a 2nd fan on the backside of the cooler makes a significant difference, though if you don't have an extra one of those lying around it might not be worth it to you to spend more money on fans
Same, I used 2x Corsair 120 fans from an older AIO that I swapped out those fans for, and it can keep an 8700K cool enough at the 4.6GHz I set it at (the 8700k can do 5GHz, but that's best left to AIO or better air coolers).
I'd love to see some budget case reviews to pair with these budget coolers. Cases under $50. The kind of stuff you find when you filter pcpartpicker cases by price - rosewill, DIYPC, HEC. I know most of them are going to be pretty bad, but hopefully GN can find one to give the "we don't hate it" award, at least. If they all perform poorly thermally, maybe some of them can stand out for build quality and/or ease of use.
Not every budget has $20 to spare. And to head off the followup comment, not everyone has access to a plentiful second hand market. Fact is, people are buying those $35, $40 cases. Whether or not they SHOULD is beside the point. It would be nice to know which ones are the least bad.
I wonder if AC freezer 34 wouldn't smash this one, just by having no paint and most likely better fan as well as more consistent quality=piece of mind and consistent results for the buyer. Generally i think arctic cooling towers are probably the right budget option for most people instead of gambling with emerging china brands
The only reason I went with a Chinese AIO is because they had a pink version :( If only the Arctic Freezer 120 or Corsair Hxx at least had a white version
I bought this cooler earlier this year for my R1600 low-end build and was glad to see 10C drop in my average CPU temps compared to stock AMD. Interesting finding on the fan speed/noise levels under heavy load. Great work!
I'm sure it would significantly complicate your testing, but it would be interesting to find out how coolers perform with a "standard" fan, like an Arctic P12 (budget) or Noctua NF-A12x25 (premium). This would give a more like-for-like comparison, and it's a common upgrade path for many users - even when it's _not,_ strictly speaking, an actual upgrade.
I’m running the Ryzen 7 stock cooler with my 3800x, and it works wonders. Considering it was free, it’s genuinely an amazing cooler. I don’t plan to upgrade until I hit the point where overclocking might actually be necessary, or if I get more into rendering 3D models in non-real time renderers (I work in games so there’s not much point in using Arnold or iRay). The RGB is pretty nice too, definitely better than previous rgb coolers I’ve seen
When GN inevitably gets to the Mugen, they should emphasize they ship with a 1200 RPM max fan. They're sort of like Be Quiet on their approach. I seem to remember one of their earlier Scythe reviews mentioning they couldn't get a cooler loud enough for the noise normalized test by a dB or so.
@@bothellkenmore yes that was both the Fuma 2 and the ninja5 if I recall correctly. Ninja5 is even lower I think. That was one of the only complaints from GN is they left performance on the table. The Fuma 2 really is probably the best bang for buck available.
I gotta love how gamer nexus is putting attention on this CPU cooler as I had mine since January and its been performing like a champ with my OC'd 1600
I got one of these for something like $23 and paired it with an Intel 11500. I was shocked at how well it cooled and quiet it was. An absolute buy for a budget build willing to get an aftermarket cooler. Also, my main PC has a 360mm Fractal Celsius+ and yes, that mount is complete trash. I hated it so much I bought the basic Asetek mounting hardware aftermarket on Amazon to use instead.
I have two 280s cooling 5800X's on two SFF PCs and those were incredibly annoying to mount, but I didn't know it could affect thermals that badly. Did the mounting hardware swap help much besides ease of installation ?
@@carsanwitt I noticed a couple of degrees when gaming, though it was hardly a scientific comparison. I regret not doing full blown benchmarks before and after.
At this price point look at the ID Cooling options on Amazon. Handles 5900x fine fans are ok but I did upgrade/recycle Cooler Master 2k fans. Great mounting system.
I'd love for you to go through all the lower profile coolers, from be quiet pure rock slim 2 to the noctua l9. Odd stuff I don't normally see reviewers compare and test as thoroughly as you guys.
I wonder if strapping another or a different fan you had lying around would help...? Great vid as usual guys!! Love the measurement graphics at the beginning :)
Why not normalize the flatness chart btw? If the offset to the zero point doesn't (really) matter, why not place the spreads so that the median is at the same height for each cooler?
used this cooler for a while on a R5 3600, dropped my cpu temps by 10-15 degrees during gaming. Was impressed with the quality and performance for the price
I bought the V5 not too long ago for my first build, and I honestly couldn't be more happy. The thermals were technically fine on my 3600 with the stock cooler but it gives me peace of mind knowing my CPU will never go above 70 degrees under any situation. Only complaint is the LEDs on the fan are somewhat more bland than on my case fans, but you can't have everything.
I've had that Vetroo for about a year now. All I did was add an additional fan to it. And I have to say, it's been doing a pretty damn good job. Nowadays, it's $28, so it's even cheaper now.
I replaced the stock Wraith cooler with a Vetroo V5 about 6 months ago on my 3800X. Cools better, good thermals even pushing the system, worth the $30 I paid.
Installed it on my machine today. Significantly better than the stock cooler. Highest was 71c at load, vs 82c. 39c at idle. Very easy install. Might try to set up a push pull since I have an extra fan and it has two spare fan clips
Curious, do you use a specific torque spec when doing your pressure map testing? I know 99.9% of PC would never use one when installing a cooler, but could it reduce another variable within testing. Just a thought.
I've seen them use a torque driver in some of their other videos. I would think the pressure testing would be a waste of time if they weren't controlling the torque.
Usually coolers are designed so you just have to bottom out the screws, and the torque is determined by springs, or the slight bending of the mounting bracket for cheaper ones. Not sure it would be usueful.
AM4 has hooks that the cooler clasps with a sprung mount, the screw actually can have thumb style screws so finger tight or tighter cannot affect the mounting pressure
I'd really like you guys to test the Phanteks glacier one 360mm AIO if that'd be possible. It's Phanteks' first foray into AIO cooling, for that reason alone it might be interesting.
I would love to see a be quiet pure rock 2 review. Its around $45 but I got it on sale last year at Christmas for something close to $35 which seems like a steal based on my temps. I’d love to see your team really give it the works
they're all basically the same cooler with a few visual changes and how they're mounted.. from a lot of the testing they're about equal with the wraith prism(comes with the 5800x/3700x/etc.) but with a significantly better noise profile.
I don't really understand why the H212 still gets recommended nowadays. The fan on it is an extremely mediocre sleeve-bearing one, and there are coolers with better fans on similar heatsinks for cheaper.
Hyper 212's are old yes, but are still being used A LOT, I see tons of cheap PCs being sold on Facebook marketplace with hyper 212's in them. Definitely a good one to review not only for people on a budget looking to get one, but for the ones that might be stuck with one as well.
Wanted to add a story about their customer service. I bought the Vetroo L5 off Amazon, got a replacement for a bad fan through Amazon, then still bad fan, so contacted them directly. They sent me a new fan (which worked) after sending them a video of the problem
@@bradhaines3142 It on the order of around 500 micrometers for just a 30C rise over ambient on a 6mm aluminum plate measuring 235x235mm with a 40x40mm heater positioned dead center. That's with a copper and aluminum layer serving as heat spreader and a layer of insulation to box in that heat under the plate. As you raise that delta over ambient, the effect gets kind of wild, around 80C you get two zones of heat falloff, a central smaller drop followed by a sudden larger drop. It gets really weird when you have mixed metals heating and cooling in direct thermal contact with one another.
As a small system integrator, we can second be low pressure mounting mechanism - the pressure on AM4 is low enough that these coolers will often suction the CPU out of its socket when a machine is shipped and not even handled roughly - just some slightly stronger springs on the mounting screws would completely remediate this, and increase mounting pressure and cooler performance.
When you test the coolers are you using the stock thermal paste or standard one? I know different coolers might come with different qualities of paste.
I'm 90% sure air coolers in sub ~80 dollar pride range most of the time don't come with any thermal compound. I've had use around 40 tower CPU coolers over the years for various system, all cheaper than 80 bucks, none have come with thermal compound pre-applied, and only like 2 coolers from thermaltake and 2 coolers from cooler master have come with thermal compound syringe. Granted, this probably can differ depending where you buy yours.
if they are making standard tests, they will not be using the thermal paste included in the box if it had any, they must be using a specific one like mx4, but they did not mention, so it would be great if they read your question and mention it on the next video
![Oasis - Oasis Live '25 [Official Trailer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gol_JnuEtKM/mqdefault.jpg)
If you want more details on the Noctua NH-U12S Redux, you can get them here: ruclips.net/video/kgwuUupf1q8/видео.html
We previously looked at the Scythe Fuma 2 and were impressed: ruclips.net/video/BT0UtQQ1rEo/видео.html
If you want to see how we test coolers, check out our methodology here: ruclips.net/video/fmTOJP4KOyk/видео.html
Please do Scythe Mugen 5 Black Edition. It think it has the same price as the FUMA 2.
Check out the Dark Rock Pro 4 or the IceGiant ProSiphon Elite if you specifically want to check out something with a very unique cooler design 😉
I hope you guys test out Agio's Gale 3 triple tower cooler which runs around $20-$25. Its a small changus
You need to add the windale 6 you can usually get it around 35 to $40
can I recommend the gelid phantom black dual tower cooler for a future video? it's a $40-$50 cooler, and seems to be a bit too good to be true. if you don't want to take suggestions from some random guy in your comment section, that's fair, just thought I would suggest it
It’s cool that you guys are putting a lot of attention in this more budget space where the majority of people would be looking.
We don't have much budget left after getting a GPU lol
save money somewhere else. try not to cheap out on cooling
@@hadiabdul9266 It’s not really cheaping out on cooling if a less costly cooler calibrates well to what you are trying to cool.
I got a cheap cooler. It works. But given how much I paid for the rest of my computer, I wish I got a quieter cooler for a given power output, it's not much more price in comparison to the CPU (or even a GPU).
@@hadiabdul9266 The same can be said for every single component. Sticking to a budget means you have to make compromises and "cheap out" on certain spots.
Congrats Vetro! You have been blessed with an "it's fine" by Tech Jesus. Go and prosper!
I mean it's a glowing "Highly recommended" from almost any other tech tuber.
Can we consider "it's fine" to be superior to "it's better than Dell"?
@@Fay7666 drastically I'd say.
Actually Good:Platinum Standard
It's Fine: Gold Standard
Better Than Dell: Bronze Standard
They'll prosper more once they've fixed the issues Steve has pointed out.
I really appreciated the conclusion made regarding the 3600. I feel like a lot of cooler performance is focused on the highest end chips, but a 30 dollar cooler on a $700 CPU would be as dumb as a $150 cooler on a $200 CPU. I'm liking the content targeting mid tier hardware where I feel like most people are actually shopping
3600 and 5600x - are great cpus for almost every use case and you can cool those with cheapest coolers.
Exactly. If your cooler costs more than 20% of your CPU, then youre probably doing something wrong. And most CPUs really dont produce that much heat.
Ive been using the evo 212 with a phenom ii 720 OCed/ fx 8120 heavily OCed and now my R5 3600 stock (had to buy a new one TY Am4) its been great thermals very low noise. My HDDs are louder. Here in Argentina its not choose a brand its whats available. Id love a noctua but it never existed here
@@muaries12 Only reason I had to replace my older arctic cooler was the new mounting brackets. Otherwise that 10 year old thing wouldve been enough for an R5.
Also yeah, switching from stock to new cooler really reminded me aware of how loud hard drives actually are. Gotta replace with a cheap SSD soon.
(with the exception of Noctua,where you should buy the $150 cooler anyways)
Oh my god the amazing measurement graphics again. I absolutely fucking love them. They help people like me who have a near impossible way to imagine things, or picture things in my head. They help tremendously. Thank you for this, it genuinely helps a lot.
Absolutely! Glad it's helpful!
I second this. It’s been invaluable.
@@GamersNexus I’m just curious, but a lot of these cheap cooler brands are Chinese, so is it possible that there’s also Chinese motherboards that have different ram orientations where the clearance could actually matter
@@GamersNexus @Razer want a thermal paste for my razer blade 15 (2020) with which paste should I go with kryonaut, noctua nt nh1 ,or artic mx4,or kingpin kpx which one will last 8 -10 months without drying or significant rise in temp and kingpin kpx suitable for laptop
@@aringiri1946 Just buy a big tube of KPX or Kryonaut Extreme and your set forever! Really it doesnt matter though, they all work just fine and they will all last years unless you are pushing 400w through them 24hr a day...I've done some home testing and the KPX was the best but it only dropped temps by 4C compared to the worst and that was a very high heat load...
I'm not entirely sure why... but I got this strange sense that Steve is fed up with people who don't pay attention to what he says and then proceed to misquote him or argue against points he never made in the first place... We're probably well into the territory where Steve is, in fact, *disappointed* in some of those people...
Yup...
Remembered the AIO placement video. It was so educational, yet people argued.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that comments like "this random cheap small tower cooler will outperform a large AIO" are intentionally spread bot comments in the first place.
Welcome to the Internet. A bit of everything all of the time. (Bo Burnham)
@@Lishtenbird It might have something to do with Jay's video on this cooler that showed this cooler outperforming the AIO on his testbench
"It's Fine" for the base $30 price tag...
But these are almost always on sale for $20 - $25.
Making it an even better purchase.
It's HALF the price of the Noctua NH-U12S redux and gives about the same performance, so I'd say it's great value.
@@chanchomanco Yeah Noctua get an inordinate amount of praise for premium build quality and service, but let us not forget, they DO get paid for it! I love Noctua but you get what you pay for, they're not 'heroric' or anything lol
@@chanchomanco Also, it's a cheap PWM ARGB fan cooler. Those usually cost a bit more. For kids who want a cheap aircooler upgrade but still want to keep the RGB from their Wraith Prism, this is the way to go. If only they had better mounting kits though...
The Noctua mounting kits can't be beat, they're so damn good... and the overall quality is superb. I always buy Noctua and recommend it to my friends.
Echoing other comments, I say it’s kinda nice to see some budget oriented solutions run the gauntlet. Every 20 bucks saved on a cash constrained build may make it possible to stretch for a better case or this or that.
Yes I'm trying to get a better case
I'm a newer viewer but have looked at a lot of your videos. As someone in the metrology and Engineering space I highly appreciate your attention to detail and thoroughness in testing. I think you do great with the limitations you are working with, keep up the good work!
Of all the tech media youtubers, Gamers Nexus has the most thorough explanations on their limitations and the best statements on what their data points actually mean. From a scientific standpoint, it's exceptional. From the layperson's standpoint, the summary/conclusion is all they need to look at.
It's evident that people often skip through the videos and don't read/listen to the details of the charts based on the comment sections. I have a degree in secondary science education; Steve and crew do a better job of explaining lab limitations than most teachers.
Please do more of these budget brands! I can figure out heatpipe counts and fan rpm, but there's no else who can check mounting pressure or coldplate flatness.
It doesn't really matter with these budget coolers, especially on amazon. The products can change at any point and you'd be doing good to get what you see on screen. These are not established brands as you know them and chinese companies really don't care about image (see minisforum pc nonsense). Quality and results vary -- the most important aspect is that it's US shipped product --- you're not waiting 3 months on, and you can return it if it doesn't work.
I'm always impressed by how you add graphical effects to teach and show your points, like when you show the measurements of the cooler, using diagrams, etc. As a teacher, I find the pedagogy of your films impressive as always. 😊 Thanks for sharing!
Great video. I've used this cooler with two builds, once with a R5 3600 and the other time with a 5600X. It definitely outperforms the stock AMD cooler and I felt was well worth the price.
Steve giving Ventroo flak about adopted, but then you spot a wild "Descriptopn" at 8:30 is funny.
They did it on purpose I bet.
Lmao
I bought a vetroo v5 for one of the builds I was doing and I really liked it, it looks good and the RGB is a nice touch in this price range. It is also very quiet and thermals were pretty good.
The Vetroo V5 was one of the few, readily available 120mm air coolers that can fit in the Corsair 280x mATX case. Component dimensions are really important, especially for those building in smaller cases
Hey Steve, you should also consider testing out the Arctic freezer 34, also in this price point. Imo that's one of the best coolers for the price, also with very nice design choices for most builds!
Or 1 up with the Freezer 34 Esports Duo
@@mr.t459 yeah that one too. But from a few not as deep reviews as nexus ones, I figured the other fan doesn't add much to the cooling/noise aspect. But sure looks better 🙃
@@paladinsk2 came looking for 34 esports and esports duo :) steve, consider this please, i have one and thinking of using it on 5800x wanna know if it will hold up or should i upgrade
@@Bl4ckP0150n i have the single one on a 5600x.. up to around 52°C when stock, and up to 65°C heavily overclocked :)) so I'd say go for it! It's awesomr for it's Money. Also the fan is really quiet, and doesn't need more than 70% load level.
I used the arctic duo on my sons 3600xt, and it is chilly
I would actually be interested to see the difference between a 'this is mounted with poor pressure' and 'this is properly mounted' comparison
I was thinking the same thing. I think it also comes with the clips to attach a second fan for push/pull, so I’m kinda curious what an absolutely best case scenario would look like.
Me too!
me too
Super happy with my V5! My AMD R5 3600 idles at 29c, games in the mid 50s, and maxes at 67C on heavy benchmarks. That max temp went down over 30C from the stock AMD cooler.
Thanks for the review Steve. I got one for my 5600x... "Because it's fine!"
These are awesome coolers! I've used them on at least 20 builds so far and they look great and perform great ( for the price ). 0 issues with them since.
It’s great to see that air cooling chart fill up! Thank you. Many are calling the NH-U12A the equivalent of either a large air cooler or 240mm class AIO. Please debunk or verify once and for all!
Considering that Noctua rates their own coolers' performance against each other we do have an idea of where it stands compared to larger coolers,or at least the Noctua ones in stock configuration. According to Noctua the NH-U12A outperforms the NH-D14 by a bit and narrowly outperforms the NH-D15S (probably because it has twice the fans) but the regular two fan NH-D15 is still much better.
@@ffwast understood, but it's self proclaimed thus the "need" for independent testing especially vs aio's
I enjoy the positive reviews. Steve is always surprised that this stuff is halfway decent.
I’d love to see you review the Arctic freezer 34 eSports duo
I've been running this cooler for about a year now, picked it up on sale for $25. first on a r5 3600 and now on a 5600x it's handled light overclocking well holding the 5600x to ~75°C @ 4.9mhz all core run on timespy I tend to keep the cpu on eco mode and I rarely see over 60°C with the stock fan curve while gaming.
Very excited to see the hyper212 (Evo V2 hopefully) review. Also curious to see what the average performance uplift is when you add a second fan to any of the coolers that come with only one
The t400i should be another good pick for lower end, since it's basically the 212 with one less fan and the AMD bracket + top plate removed. My brother's 9400f idles at only 33°C, which is really good for just $12-14, so it'll be interesting to see how it compares to more expensive coolers.
push-pull configurations only brings you some minor advantage if you got a real deep and real fine finstack who restricts airflow realy realy realy hard and even then its not that mutch. if you run in that problem where it would help your airflow is restricted that mutch your fans would have to run lot faster and it gets louder. this obstruction can also be a dustfilter or case grillmesh in front or behind the radiator
in this one particular case 2 fans in push pull help since they can run more quietly as one fan on higher rpm to create the same airflow or transport the air out of the case where they would be start to swirl arround and loose direction and speed
(thats the reason backside exhaust fans or the last top fan in the back of a case are effective even on low speed settings)
but i think no air cooler these days got such a deep fine fin configuration you would run into such a prob lem and some of the older models like a ninja have open sides you loose all the pressure and airspeed and the dont perform that good even as the raw fin stack size compaired to a duel tower would be even
pulling fans allways are less effective since the air is going the easiest way trugh the widest gaps and thats not trugh tight corners close to the fins and it creates more laminar flow trugh the low pressure areas and this transports the heat less effective away.
some cooler fins even got a 3d imprint to create more turbulant flow or tryed with some wavy or spikey surfaces or x crossing interstions. but at the end you got almost allways slower airflow with it because you have more obstructions or waste potential fin volume in your radiator area.
you also cant push the fins infinetely close together as at some point you just create a solid wall for the air.
all this together is the reason the good aircoolers are nowdays all dual towers in push-push config who dont waste radiator volume. enough heatpipes spread out as far as it gets in the finstack without obstructing the airflow and a stacked arrangement to get them even more spaced out
i think the modern air cooler. heatpipe, direct touch, dual tower design is the end of the race to the best cooling solution and you can only get better if you go even larger with good airpressure/speed optimised fans
i think more optimisation potential to push it further is now in the contact area to the cpu with higher surface finish, even/higher pressure and good thermal paste with matching surface topography (well we could just say make all cpu surfaces and cooler bottoms dead flat cant we? and large enough bottom plates/areas to dont let gaps if the chiplets get more spread out and something
Both my machines have them.
Go Coolermaster !!
@@GeminionRay idle temps don't mean anything except how good your air conditioning is....the intel stock cooler can idle at 33c too if your ambient temperature is good
@@samgoff5289 Sorry, I should have added more to that. In this case it's ambient temp of about 30°C with absolutely no AC, so if you have an Intel cooler it'd be like 45°C at minimum. Back when I tested the CM at high load it was still around 60°C, so I'd say it's quite good for its class.
The “ram clearance” actually turned out to be very useful because it allowed the cooler to clear the heatsink on my gen 4 nvme ssd. Without it, the cooler wouldn’t fit. Whether this is the real purpose of this cutout or an engineering mistake is immaterial. The cooler worked where the original attempt to use an aio cooler failed. There just wasn’t room for the cold plate and hoses because of the heat sinks surrounding the cpu for the vrms and the ram and ssd. For a 3700, it does well enough because it isn’t over clocked. The cpu was bought used without a stock cooler. It isn’t great but works. Any other solution would involve using a different motherboard. Way more expensive than using a cheap cooler that no one respects. It’s good enough and works. The expensive cooler didn’t fit.
They have removed the ram clearence in the newer version I got it today
@@likeabosslinc I can also confirm with mine I received this week. But still a nice cooler for 30 bucks to cool 5600x
@@lsh19930713yeah the ram clearness was never a worry to me cause I only have 2 ram sticks so I was not mad about it not being there
The V5 at $38 CND was an easy choice for me two months ago; the U12S is regularly $95 CND up here. I'm hoping it'll eventually handle an upgrade to a 5800X. Thank you for this review, Steve!
I have one on my stock 5900x and it's fine. I have a second fan on it now but it was also okay with just one.
Maybe liquid metal and a 2nd fan would help
I would really like to see the Thermalright peerless Assassin 120. It seems like it should perform similarly to the fuma 2 but regularly sells for around $41.
Agreed; the price on that one is ridiculously low in a lot of cases.
got this myself and i'm really surprised thermalright hasn't just shipped hundreds of these to gamernexus to test already. there is one benchmark on youtube where it punches between the dark rock pro 4 and the nh-d15, and for $41 that is just nuts.
It's had a few coupons recently to drop it into the mid 30's too.
Not only that but the Assassin King 120 in white/black is also $40-$45 which is an awesome value. And the PA and FS 140 and FC 140 black/white/argb versions that are out are also very competitively priced.
would add the gelid phantom. it's a slightly better fuma 2 (iirc) but 35$
6:30 if I had to guess, it comes from mindlessly copying the 212 EVO. The EVO, due to how the bracket works, you can turn it 90 degrees, and thus needing that clearance. This cooler doesn't use the same mounting hardware, but I guess the approach to designing this cooler was "monkey see, monkey do" without using the good ol' noggin.
that could be
It's clearly this. A lot of Chinese brands just shamelessly copy. And if there are engineers on the team that tells them this isn't needed or a good idea, the clueless boss typically shut them down with a lot of yelling.
This is typical of how things are...
Would you mind putting The Arctic 34 through its paces too? Preferably the duo
+1 for this
Why?
We already know that its one of the best if not the best pound-4-pound coolers!
I have used many and for the money (£25-£30) it is fantastic, way better than the stock nonsense AMD give out!!
@@Leftfield2k7 ive heard that too but im curious on how it would perform in a standardized test, also i wanna use it on a 5800x, wanna know if it will hold out or should i upgrade from a credible source like GN
Hey Steve ~ Looking forward to the Hyper 212 review, as it's been my go to air cooler for quite a while now on new clients builds, when they either don't want, or can't afford, a liquid cooler solution. I love the fact that it just does what it says it does with no muss and no fuss. Also, because I get used equipment all the time, I have extra brackets, so I end up putting two fans on the Hyper, (depending on the mobo) which really helps a lot when gaming or overclocking. I agree that for a tight budget build with i5 / R5 CPUs the Vetroo would be a good choice.
Other aspect to note is that the Vetroo V5 comes in at 150mm height where as the othe U12s is closer to 160mm. For the tight fitment/shallow side panels, the V5 is a life saver. (Coming from a D15 or Blackridge2 Enthusiast).
6:42
Just want to point out that it absolutely can be for RAM clearance... Coolers can be mounted horizontally too... At least on LGA115x. That's what I used it on, and mounting it horizontally allowed me to mount my GPU vertically with very close clearances.
That being said the fan completely negates the clearance by blocking up the cut-out fin stack. I had to chop a bit of the fan corner off to make it fit over my RAM
This is all good and well but i really think the hyper 212 shoulda been included in this first round of lower end coolers. By far the most popular cooler at that price point and the measuring stick for all entry level towers.
The Hyper 212, even with updates, is kind of out dated now and really isn't good value for money when it's over about $25. Even coolers such as the Gammax 400 perform better and cost less.
@@ObakuZenCenter same for most ID cooling coolers
I almost bought a 212 for 35 but got teh v5 for 50. (CAD)
Love the content Steve keep up the great work.
09:49 I honestly laugh at the A500 surface flatness every time
Yes! I shake my head in shame everytime I see it! lol
They just use the concrete sidewalk to grind down the coldplate.
I'd love to see a review of the ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO cooler! It has two fans at a nice price point.
Go with a gelid phantom or thermalright peerless assassin
ID Cooling SE 224 XT Basic seems to be a good budget cooler too.
Yes I hope he reviews that next, amazing budget cooler. Got the argb version, it is excellent
That's the cooler I brought recently. Works very well keeping my cpu cool even overclocked.
or the ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO
It's a great cooler, I posted another comment so hopefully GN sees this.
I had it running my 5800x stock while waiting for an ek air 360.
225 is good too but 224 has the best price to performance ratio. I have both and currently running 225 with 1 fan only (P12) at very low speed.
Solid testing from a solid trusted source. Thanks - I'm in the market right now.
I personally have the Vetroo V5 on my Ryzen R7 3700x (B450i Aorus ITX motherboard) and i have been using now for about 8 months with no issues or overheating of my cpu. My cpu generally runs around 70c to low 70c's during intense gaming session. For the money I found the Vetroo V5 to be more than capable for gaming and heavy cpu use on my SFF pc case (Cooler Master NR200P) and I'm more than happy to recommend it. Great review GN. It's great to see more budget friendly brands getting reviewed and tested, showing how good they can be for the right scenarios :D
10 dB isn't a 10x difference to perceived volume. You kept pointing that out that it's perceived volume not power, but I still think you got it backwards.
That's a 10x difference in acoustic power, but only about 2x the perceived difference. You might check your notes on this one.
If there's a definition of dB that is a log scale for perceived loudness, then I am unable to find it. If such a scale does exist, then why use it?
The "rule of thumb" is 6dB for 2x perceived audio loudness. So 10dB is maybe 2.5 to 3x? Also higher frequencies tend to be more noticeable than lower ones.
The other thing is that in a normal "office" environment anything less than 40dB is considered below the noise floor.
You're correct that 6 dB in power is roughly a 2x perceived loudness difference, but GN is reporting dB*A*, not dB. dBA is corrected for psychoacoustic factors so it's closer to 10 dBA = 10x difference. Keywords for further reading include "a-weighting curve" and "IEC 61672:2003"
This is my favorite little cooler. Vetroo often does sales and you can get these even cheaper. Great for budget builds, and to give something a little pop (rgb)
The quality of the fan is decent and it uses standard connectors for the rgb.
I also like their liquid coolers and so far I've had good luck with them all.
This review helped me out a lot, thanks GN. Upgraded my sons rig for Christmas with an R5 3600 and he needed an affordable but capable cooler vs stock. The V5 has been fantastic for his needs. Thanks again!!!!
Love the coverage on things that are not Top Tier/Most expensive products. I've spent nearly 30 years with second hand/budget parts for my PC builds going back to my first 286sx build. A lot of time and effort goes into budget building looking to get the best you can for the least amount of money. I truly appreciate this review (and others you've done like this) 2021 is the first year that I've gone all in out and gone high end (3090, 10900K, etc)... honestly it wasn't as fun this time around. Thank you for your efforts here, it's appreciated.
I'd love to see fan normalised testing of these coolers, to test which of the bare metal coolers performs better. It would also show how much of their performance is down to the fans being good vs the quality of the heatsink. I've not used the included fan on a CPU cooler in about 5 years now (since RGB all the things happened!).
I get that you're testing the "out of box" experience though and realise that putting someone else's fan on a cooler might annoy certain manufacturers.
You should check out this one from Hardware Canucks ruclips.net/video/rhZTMR8mT-A/видео.html
@@chanchomanco I did and raised the same point on that video, it's fine if you consider the fan and heatsink as a single unit, but I'd be very interested to take out a variable and see tests of the raw performance of each heatsink, just test them all with the same fan (so RPM/CFM is not a variable) perhaps something like a Fractal Design 120mm fan as they have no skin in the air cooler game?
Do the Arctic eSport 34 duo, pretty underated and overall very good bang for your bucks I think.
I would like to see that too. It makes big claims.
I would put the Alpenföhn Brocken EcoAdvanced on the list which would be in the same league of 30-50€. It was one of the few Air Coolers which fit in to the O11 Dynamic non XL and have a reasonable cooling capability. Paired with a R7 3700X it works well.
@@stewenw4120 Very few have heard of Alpenfohn - they do some good stuff - very much on a par with Scythe, who themselves are underrated. I wonder if Alpenfohn are available in the U.S - if not the Steve less likely to review as that is a large portion of his viewership.
Great job as always @GamersNexus! One small thing I think might be helpful is on your "pressure map" slides, have a coloured legend showing high/med/low pressure, just to make clear that white it is white - purple - blue - teal - green as the order of pressure amounts...
Jay did a video on this. His Vetroo V5 outperformed his 240mm AIO. You throwing some shade - it did not go unnoticed :3
I’ve been running this cooler for 4 months now on my i7 10700f and it’s been decent. About 60c is the high I see.
yep ,open heatpipe only for intel
Can you make a video like "How many fans do we need in a case?" but if you can do it in a relatively large case like Phanteks enthoo pro 2. it will be much better to see all sights.
LinusTechTips did a video on this topic and it turns out that anything above 4 fans only gives you a 2-degree difference or less per extra fan.
@@Sage009 yeah, you are right but actually i would like to see something more advance testing :)
I'm glad I can see the review linked in the descriptiopn below 8:35 :P
Love your work GN, glad I now own some of your merch to support you :)
Yes, as you have mentioned in the closing of this video, a revisit or review or the Hyper 212 would do a lot of good since it is still regarded as one of the best bang for buck cooler. I am using one myself (Hyper 212 LED Turbo), so I would look forward to that as well.
Thank you for reviewing low end/mid tier coolers! I suggested that months ago on your channel and I am happy that you are taking a look at the cheaper side of the fan coolers.
I am curious now to see ol' reliable hyper 212 and other "uninteresting" fan coolers like the offerings from Gigabyte, Thermaltake and some of those strange CoolerMaster offerings (like the V8 or so), for example. I was kind of sure that we would find hidden gems - at least for lower heat loads - among those less famous offerings.
Also curious to see for sure now the difference between single and dual fans configs, or maybe just for the sake of it - how would a certain cooler do with a set of Noctua fans. My thoughts are for the dual fans while they might not yield lower temperatures, they will sure expel the heat faster resulting in interesting time-to-stabilize.
I’m just waiting for the completely designed ARGB LEDs-only cooler reviewed. Like, the LEDs ARE the cooler. Because this is the world we want but never asked for.
what rgb wast or power wastefull rgb is a wast but keyboard my motherboard has rgb and i refuse to use it trying to burn the crap out of it.
9:05 I like the little elephant in the left-hand corner throwing water ballons...
Just bought one for a 5600X build I'm doing. Was looking for something that's better than a Wraith Prism - which looks cool and can be bought second-hand for $20 -$25. This is it.
6:40 If you COULD rotate it to a vertical position it's a valid claim (4eg linear airflow up from the bottom and out the top), and it also still applies to weirdly formatted OEM boards with the RAM above or below the CPU instead of in front (Dell still does this sometimes).
You don't take into account, that the cutout on the fin stack is instantly reversed by mounting a 120mm fan. Have you ever seen a fan with a cutout? There is no cutout in this cooler, once you run it with a fan. It would be extremely coincidental if ANY board would have some partial obstruction around STANDARDISED socket placement(and area around it) to make use of the fin stack cutout and at the same time allow obstruction by the fan.
Boards are not made by aliexpress emerging brands
I love these for $25. Great quality for the price. I have 2, one Intel and one AMD. The one had a fan bearing go bad (noise), and Vetroo replaced the fan. He was too harsh on a $25 fan that is exceptional for a low TDP cpu.
With the intel stock cooler on a 12100f I was averaging around 80 degrees Celsius with an obnoxious fan noise playing Elden Ring. After installing the Vetroo V5 I haven't seen it go above 50 degrees and I can't even hear it over my case fans. Best $35 I've spent in a long time.
I found that slapping a 2nd fan on the backside of the cooler makes a significant difference, though if you don't have an extra one of those lying around it might not be worth it to you to spend more money on fans
Same, I used 2x Corsair 120 fans from an older AIO that I swapped out those fans for, and it can keep an 8700K cool enough at the 4.6GHz I set it at (the 8700k can do 5GHz, but that's best left to AIO or better air coolers).
I'd love to see some budget case reviews to pair with these budget coolers. Cases under $50. The kind of stuff you find when you filter pcpartpicker cases by price - rosewill, DIYPC, HEC.
I know most of them are going to be pretty bad, but hopefully GN can find one to give the "we don't hate it" award, at least.
If they all perform poorly thermally, maybe some of them can stand out for build quality and/or ease of use.
imo, you shouldn't skimp on PSU and case $10-20 extra can get you a significantly better case.
Not every budget has $20 to spare. And to head off the followup comment, not everyone has access to a plentiful second hand market.
Fact is, people are buying those $35, $40 cases. Whether or not they SHOULD is beside the point. It would be nice to know which ones are the least bad.
I wonder if AC freezer 34 wouldn't smash this one, just by having no paint and most likely better fan as well as more consistent quality=piece of mind and consistent results for the buyer.
Generally i think arctic cooling towers are probably the right budget option for most people instead of gambling with emerging china brands
The only reason I went with a Chinese AIO is because they had a pink version :(
If only the Arctic Freezer 120 or Corsair Hxx at least had a white version
Not paint
peace of mind
Thanks for the detailed review. I have a similar cooler on my CPU (DeepCool Gammaxx 400) and this helps me assess how it SHOULD perform.
I bought this cooler earlier this year for my R1600 low-end build and was glad to see 10C drop in my average CPU temps compared to stock AMD. Interesting finding on the fan speed/noise levels under heavy load. Great work!
Since you're into low end coolers, I wonder how the DeepCool Gammax 400 stack against the competition
I have a Gammaxx GTE V2 Black, which I bought mostly because it looks good with a Corsair LL120. Terrible argument, I know. ^^
I'm sure it would significantly complicate your testing, but it would be interesting to find out how coolers perform with a "standard" fan, like an Arctic P12 (budget) or Noctua NF-A12x25 (premium).
This would give a more like-for-like comparison, and it's a common upgrade path for many users - even when it's _not,_ strictly speaking, an actual upgrade.
I’m running the Ryzen 7 stock cooler with my 3800x, and it works wonders. Considering it was free, it’s genuinely an amazing cooler. I don’t plan to upgrade until I hit the point where overclocking might actually be necessary, or if I get more into rendering 3D models in non-real time renderers (I work in games so there’s not much point in using Arnold or iRay). The RGB is pretty nice too, definitely better than previous rgb coolers I’ve seen
I have used the Vetroo cooler on several builds they work great.
Have you guys tried the Mugen5 from scythe yet? Usually $5-$10 less than the Fuma 2/ninja5. Seems like another decent middle ground.
I would also like to see the Mugen5 compared to the Fuma2. Especially since the Mugen5 is about $10 cheaper atm.
Scythe so underrated, grab before people realise and prices go flying up lol
When GN inevitably gets to the Mugen, they should emphasize they ship with a 1200 RPM max fan. They're sort of like Be Quiet on their approach. I seem to remember one of their earlier Scythe reviews mentioning they couldn't get a cooler loud enough for the noise normalized test by a dB or so.
@@bothellkenmore yes that was both the Fuma 2 and the ninja5 if I recall correctly. Ninja5 is even lower I think. That was one of the only complaints from GN is they left performance on the table. The Fuma 2 really is probably the best bang for buck available.
how companies measure watts for cooling potential is a "little bit screwy" Steve's response is a masterclass in emotional intelligence
I gotta love how gamer nexus is putting attention on this CPU cooler as I had mine since January and its been performing like a champ with my OC'd 1600
I got one of these for something like $23 and paired it with an Intel 11500. I was shocked at how well it cooled and quiet it was. An absolute buy for a budget build willing to get an aftermarket cooler. Also, my main PC has a 360mm Fractal Celsius+ and yes, that mount is complete trash. I hated it so much I bought the basic Asetek mounting hardware aftermarket on Amazon to use instead.
I have two 280s cooling 5800X's on two SFF PCs and those were incredibly annoying to mount, but I didn't know it could affect thermals that badly.
Did the mounting hardware swap help much besides ease of installation ?
@@carsanwitt I noticed a couple of degrees when gaming, though it was hardly a scientific comparison. I regret not doing full blown benchmarks before and after.
Welp this is spooky. Literal hours ago I looked into the performance of the wraith coolers vs cheap air coolers.
At this price point look at the ID Cooling options on Amazon. Handles 5900x fine fans are ok but I did upgrade/recycle Cooler Master 2k fans. Great mounting system.
I'd love for you to go through all the lower profile coolers, from be quiet pure rock slim 2 to the noctua l9. Odd stuff I don't normally see reviewers compare and test as thoroughly as you guys.
I wonder if strapping another or a different fan you had lying around would help...? Great vid as usual guys!! Love the measurement graphics at the beginning :)
The whole video I kept thinking about the hyper 212, now that you mentioned it, I can rest easy and wait for that video
Why not normalize the flatness chart btw? If the offset to the zero point doesn't (really) matter, why not place the spreads so that the median is at the same height for each cooler?
used this cooler for a while on a R5 3600, dropped my cpu temps by 10-15 degrees during gaming. Was impressed with the quality and performance for the price
Did the 3600 come with the stealth or the prism? I noticed an improvement going from stealth to prism on my 2600
@@Rancid_Ninja 3600’s and generally the 6 cores chips come with the stealth coolers
@@TheBadassOne17 The 3600 comes with the stealth, the 3600X comes with the spire.
I bought the V5 not too long ago for my first build, and I honestly couldn't be more happy. The thermals were technically fine on my 3600 with the stock cooler but it gives me peace of mind knowing my CPU will never go above 70 degrees under any situation. Only complaint is the LEDs on the fan are somewhat more bland than on my case fans, but you can't have everything.
sounds like a better fan will benefit alot the vetroo, but cost will go up fast if you do that
I've had that Vetroo for about a year now. All I did was add an additional fan to it. And I have to say, it's been doing a pretty damn good job. Nowadays, it's $28, so it's even cheaper now.
They fixed the weird "ram clearance" shape so yeah good on them
"good enough" is high praise from Steve
I replaced the stock Wraith cooler with a Vetroo V5 about 6 months ago on my 3800X. Cools better, good thermals even pushing the system, worth the $30 I paid.
Installed it on my machine today. Significantly better than the stock cooler. Highest was 71c at load, vs 82c. 39c at idle. Very easy install.
Might try to set up a push pull since I have an extra fan and it has two spare fan clips
Curious, do you use a specific torque spec when doing your pressure map testing? I know 99.9% of PC would never use one when installing a cooler, but could it reduce another variable within testing. Just a thought.
I would bet they do
I've seen them use a torque driver in some of their other videos. I would think the pressure testing would be a waste of time if they weren't controlling the torque.
Usually coolers are designed so you just have to bottom out the screws, and the torque is determined by springs, or the slight bending of the mounting bracket for cheaper ones.
Not sure it would be usueful.
Tighten until you strip it then back off a quarter of a turn.
AM4 has hooks that the cooler clasps with a sprung mount, the screw actually can have thumb style screws so finger tight or tighter cannot affect the mounting pressure
I'd really like you guys to test the Phanteks glacier one 360mm AIO if that'd be possible.
It's Phanteks' first foray into AIO cooling, for that reason alone it might be interesting.
I would love to see a be quiet pure rock 2 review. Its around $45 but I got it on sale last year at Christmas for something close to $35 which seems like a steal based on my temps. I’d love to see your team really give it the works
Been using this cooler with two Noc Redux NF-P12s for a year now, it's worked phenomenally on my 2700X. Haven't seen 80* since.
I'd like to see where the Hyper 212 falls on the chart... Although I'm not sure which one you should test. Black Edition? EVO? EVO Plus? EVO V2?
they're all basically the same cooler with a few visual changes and how they're mounted.. from a lot of the testing they're about equal with the wraith prism(comes with the 5800x/3700x/etc.) but with a significantly better noise profile.
I don't really understand why the H212 still gets recommended nowadays. The fan on it is an extremely mediocre sleeve-bearing one, and there are coolers with better fans on similar heatsinks for cheaper.
@@nunyabeeswax3012 Depends on the specific model. The Black Edition has an LDB bearing. I think some of the RGB models use a sleeve bearing fan.
right now i only find new the evo black, so perhaps that one is the right option?
I love you tech Jesus.
Hyper 212's are old yes, but are still being used A LOT, I see tons of cheap PCs being sold on Facebook marketplace with hyper 212's in them. Definitely a good one to review not only for people on a budget looking to get one, but for the ones that might be stuck with one as well.
Wanted to add a story about their customer service.
I bought the Vetroo L5 off Amazon, got a replacement for a bad fan through Amazon, then still bad fan, so contacted them directly. They sent me a new fan (which worked) after sending them a video of the problem
you can't get better than ID-COOLING SE-224-XT for value
Steve, does thermal expansion change anything on the pressure points as the cpu stablishes its working temperature?
@@bradhaines3142 Thanks!
@@bradhaines3142 It on the order of around 500 micrometers for just a 30C rise over ambient on a 6mm aluminum plate measuring 235x235mm with a 40x40mm heater positioned dead center. That's with a copper and aluminum layer serving as heat spreader and a layer of insulation to box in that heat under the plate. As you raise that delta over ambient, the effect gets kind of wild, around 80C you get two zones of heat falloff, a central smaller drop followed by a sudden larger drop. It gets really weird when you have mixed metals heating and cooling in direct thermal contact with one another.
As a small system integrator, we can second be low pressure mounting mechanism - the pressure on AM4 is low enough that these coolers will often suction the CPU out of its socket when a machine is shipped and not even handled roughly - just some slightly stronger springs on the mounting screws would completely remediate this, and increase mounting pressure and cooler performance.
Thank you very much for this very indept testing of the v5 cooler .
When you test the coolers are you using the stock thermal paste or standard one?
I know different coolers might come with different qualities of paste.
I'm 90% sure air coolers in sub ~80 dollar pride range most of the time don't come with any thermal compound. I've had use around 40 tower CPU coolers over the years for various system, all cheaper than 80 bucks, none have come with thermal compound pre-applied, and only like 2 coolers from thermaltake and 2 coolers from cooler master have come with thermal compound syringe. Granted, this probably can differ depending where you buy yours.
@@X2yt this cooler does come with paste
@@X2yt Vetroo V5 comes with a small tube of paste.
if they are making standard tests, they will not be using the thermal paste included in the box if it had any, they must be using a specific one like mx4, but they did not mention, so it would be great if they read your question and mention it on the next video
Not Hyper 212. My purchase has not been validated. :)
My 2 daughters are rockin' the V5's, 1 in white the other in black both on 8700K's @ 4.8 ghz. 24/7-on machines and they are GREAT.
I got the vetroo v5 for 24 usd. No regrets. Performs so much better than my amd stock cooler. Would recommend for the price point