Thanks Mike for the positive review and top3 position for our Freezer 34 eSports. For the 34 CO, Let me add the mention about the dual ball bearing of the fan that makes it lives for like forever. Congratulations on completing such extensive round-up.
I really like this dude's delivery and calm demeanour. He keeps me focused on the video. Wish you guys did more videos like this. Cpu fans next, maybe?
Remember the days when the CM Hyper 212 was the go to budget cooler? Seeing them at the bottom of this list, when they come in more expensive then a lot of the coolers shown here is really telling. Cooler Master hasn't done anything really unique with the design for so long and now they've been surpassed. Hopefully this gets them working on the line of Hyper 212 coolers to get more performance out of them because the only time I ever pick them up nowadays is when they go on sale for $20. Any other time I go with the other alternatives for $20-30 since $40 standard pricing for the Cooler Master brand name is NOT worth it.
To be fair to CM, the RGB version has a higher RPM fan which helps it perform better than the version here which uses a lower RPM fan. I'm not sure if that brings it in line with the rest here or not though.
I'd bet that a number of these other brands are also manufactured by Cooler Master since they're huge in the manufacturing side of things. They certainly have the capability to do better, but when the tooling is paid for and they keep selling there's not much of a need to improve.
Dunno mate I've been looking at one of them "esports" coolers tested here for a couple of months to replace my AMD stock cooler, they cost about 30 quid in the UK new so.....
Fantastic review! I've been using the Se224xt (white) for a month now and I'm pretty happy with it. Since it comes with an extra set of retention clips, I went ahead and bought another identical fan for a push pull config. Now I'm running the fans slower without changing the performance and having it too loud.
This video was great. Was looking to upgrade my cpu cooler from a small cheap 92mm tower to a bigger 120mm tower. After watching I went with your pick of the ID Cooling SE-224, and I love it. I like having that extra headroom when it comes to the cooling, and a little extra noise under heavy load isn't too bad on my system. Thanks for all the work comparing all these coolers and making my decision easier.
I have the ID-Cooling SE-224-XT and tested it with several fans I have laying around; Noctua NF-P12 1700, Scythe Wonder Snail 120, Arctic P12, TT Toughfan 12. The cooler then goes to the next level.. says a lot about what an excellent heatsink ID-Cooling made.
Any chance you still have the results and could post them? I currently use a Scythe Mugen 5 but upgraded the fan to the Phanteks T30, would prefer having a smaller tower personally and seems like the SE-224-XT is a great performer despite being much smaller and having less heatsinks, it's not available here atm so next option was the Gammaxx 400 v2, sadly i can't find any reviews comparing heatsinks with standardized fans at different heat loads, wondering how the SE-224-XT and 400 v2 would do with the T30 on a 5900x or similar, compared to the Mugen 5
Did mine dirty by slapping two, 12-inch, industrial, 3000 rpm molex fans on the tower (push-pull config) and my worldly desire for Noctua ND-H15 is out the window. My PC sounds like a vacuum cleaner but temps are relatively low and fans go brrr haha
This was a great video. Informative and well researched. I do agree with the other comments about the 212 being a relic and not improving, but personally having had one in push, pull, it was still pretty good especially since we can't find many of the others here in South Africa. But that aside, I'm glad you made this. The Noctua is a bit above the pack, but when you're considering that people running 150w CPU's are probably paying a fair amount for them, I think it's valid to say they won't use a sub 50$ cooler on them. This is the reason I found LTT's video on the Noctua very shilly. You need comparisons when releasing new products, comparing it to those from the same manufacturer won't get you anything more than, more money more good. Keep up the great work!
This has got to be one of the toughest comparison challenges out there. Not for the reason that most people think. The ID Cooling SE-224-XT that is recommended is priced in the canuck market for almost 3x the price. The vetroo is 2x the price. Artic cooling Freezer 34 eSports is 2x that price. Still, even with all the variance in pricing, this is a great resource and the effort is to be lauded.
Best tech RU-vid video I've watched since the start of the human malware situation. In depth, informative and yet still palatable. Must be something to do with the delivery :) Also it helps that it's something that we can buy.
Amazon had the coupon check mark option that manufacturers can use to evade price check cites like CamelCamelCamel, so it's hard. To figure out msrp sometimes if your a reviewer just trying to do things imperically. 😅 I don't really fault Hardware Canucks or anyone else who gets fooled by deepcool. Deepcool also has like three different neer identical models that they shuffle around sales and are nearly called the same thing and have the same number of heat pipes. 🤔 So everyone could just look for deals if they want cheep cooler goodness.
SE 224 XT is your go-to budget cpu air cooler if you can live with that noise. There are ways which you can do to reduce the noise levels, but to perform that good while being cheap is absolutely a win for me. A great video nonetheless!
ID cooling is great. its cheap and it works like a charm. i mean even their $33 GPU AIO is amazing. it managed to cool my overheating overclocked RX580. its been 2 years and it still works its charm
I’ve been trying to decide between the Vetroo V5 and the Arctic 34 esports. Where I’m at the vetroo goes for 45$ whereas the Arctic is 80$. Your reviews and comparisons really helped me decide that based on the price difference vs relative performance difference that the v5 is good enough for me. Thanks a bunch for these!
The gammaxx 400 was my low cost go to for a long time, because I just dont like the stock fans from intel, AMD not so bad but why not something a little better. But the Gammaxx 400 has gone up in price, so when I saw these ID-Cooling SE244XTT locally for real cheap, it looked good. So glad I came upon your review, as this might be my new default cheap replacement for stock CPU coolers. Nice review!
That Thermaltake ToughAir 310 is blowing my mind! I would be happy to recommend it to anyone since that’s the one thing they can do is make good fans and it’s the cleanest looking one
I have the ID Cooling XT224 RGB on my 5600X and I love the way it looks (I'm using a different fan). Had the Freezer 34 Duo before and it was decent too!
While I'm a Noctua guy and totally admit to being biased when it comes to air cooling this is a great review as I'm often helping people put together systems who think Noctua prices are way too high. Sad to see the hyper 212 rank so low, I remember when it was the king of budget cooling and I installed quite a few of the initial version in quite a few systems. I know it would be a huge pain to do but I'd love to see how all these coolers do with better fans i.e. if some of the included fans are the limiting factor and not the cooler itself (which in the past has usually been the case).
Great video. I am sure I can speak on behalf of a large part of the community and say this is exactly of type of content we look for and enjoy. We appreciate your efforts.
agreed. but there is something about the CPU area being accessible and visible that is very appealing. I keep switching between my AIO and tower air cooler every now and then.
For me its access to the case. With an AIO I have a lot of room to work and I dont have to pop off the AIO to get access to the area around the CPU. A good AIO will last you at least 5-6 years if you dont position it in a stupid way.
The Deepcool Gammaxx 400S has a non-PWM fan that maxes at 1,300 RPMs. All the others have a PWM fan that maxes out at 2,000 RPMs. I switched out the fan for the Be Quiet! Pure Wings 2 fan. There was only a one-degree Celsius difference between 1,300 and 2,000 RPMs. YMMV
I’ve been using the white ID Cooling cooler on my Ryzen 5 2600X for the past few months and love it! It was on sale for $25 with free 2-day shipping. I use an Antec Prism fan on it instead of the stock one but the temps and noise are phenomenal. It pulls around 110-120 watts at full load and has only seen a max of 70C. I also used Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste as I will never trust a generic paste that comes with cheaper coolers.
I’ve been super loyal to the Arctic esports 34 duo for $40/$50 and I am betting it doesn’t let me down. Freaking solid price to performance! I am at the start of the video and betting it’s at least top 2!
@@HardwareCanucks fair enough. I have been estacted to find it for $43 lately in all varieties including the “grey” one that is actually the all white edition! Ari ie the techbuyersguru has some amazing fan related content for everyone who is itching for more case fan content. Amazing channel and I was insanely happy and surprised to meet him in real life. It’s crazy when your favorite content creators live in your neighborhoods :)
A great follow up test would be to normalize the fan to test the performance of just the coolers' heatsinks. In other words, run the tests with all the coolers again but use the same fan on all the coolers.
Ooh that's actually a good experiment to perform! They can also try testing different 120mm fans on different heat sinks to see which fans move air more efficiently through the fins. I'd love to see the data on each of those!
That would be a awesome to see the results of that test! Maybe with an Arctic P12 PWM PST CO fan, since that seems like a most likely purchase for... "frugal" gamers. I'd like to see someone cover the recently released ID-COOLING A410 also. No one has reviewed it yet afaik.
Not surprise at all about ID-Cooling, been screaming in the comment section for you to notice it and I'm really happy that you actually finally get it for the series. ID-Cooling also has a few slightly more expensive cooler that would 100% beat the U12S.
I just saw this now but props for the great list of CPU coolers. Love that you threw in one of the cheapest/best selling coolers on Aliexpress too. Awesome awesome.
Back when I started getting into building PCs, these would've been $150 and loud. Just got myself a Pure Rock 2 for the living room HTPC/Gaming rig, and it's amazing how much it cools for how little sound it makes. Pretty awesome.
What a great video. I personally own Arctic Freezer 34 (non duo, with just one fan) and it's the best cooler I ever had. Not only it cools great, but it's so silent I don't even hear it at all, even when gaming.
I'd love to see a fan normalised test on these, I mean it's all well and good to test them with their included fans but I have a few spare arctic fans left over from downsizing my rig and would be really interested to know which heatsinks have the best raw performance. It would also answer the question of how much of the performance of these coolers is purely down to the fan.
Thank you. Finally a review for us 3rd world peasants. To put things in perspective, the case I've been desperately saving for almost a year now, the Cooler Master H500, costs 1/3 the average income here. I'd be fantastic if you guys add a segment to review really low budget hardware even once a month. There's no political correctness here so you can even call the suck to be you budget Keyboard etc. :D
If this is ever revisited, it would be awesome to include the various stock coolers as a comparison point. The main thing with budget coolers is that the performance needs to be proven to be substantially greater than the stock coolers to convince me to spend my $30 for example. The other thing that I think can be explained better is the noise output - you provide decibels as a measurement, but it is real hard convert that to real world experiences. Decibels being on a logarithmic scale, I think it may be better to provide a perceived loudness for us (Tech Jesus does a good job at this, where his comparisons may include something like "3dba is where things are noticeably louder" or "X vs Y is twice as loud," or "multiple times as loud in acoustic perception". Love the good work though, doing this many tests is definitely tedious!
I have seen a few of your videos in the last month or so as I help my son research and choose components for his first build.... this was a really good video, thanks for the content... this video has me deciding to click the subscribe button and heading over to check out what other previous content I have missed... cheers!
The Wraith Prism is really one of the most visually pleasing coolers and I'm glad i bought one for my Ryzen 3600. I prefer the blow down coolers compared to upright coolers, they help cool VRMs, RAM and other motherboard components.
I’ve got an Arctic Freezer 34CO with a second fan for push pull. It’s mounted On a ryzen 3900x. When playing cyberpunk I get between 54-65degrees depending on areas of the game missions. On doom eternal and forza I get a range of 45-50degrees. As I go into animation and 3D design I am getting high 80s on a blender render. Will go for artic freezer 50 or Ndh15 chromax
I bought 4 right when Jay first dropped that video. 4 accounts to leverage 4 Amazon coupons = 4 20 dollar coolers. Had my family bring over their computers and en masse upgraded their crappy coolers to those bad boys.
for an extra like 10usd, the scythe mugen 5 is an awesome cooler. the heatsink itself isnt anything special but the fans scythe makes are the quietest ive ever seen. i threw 4 of them in my pc including the one on the cooler and pretty much any noise drowns them out, like any gpu fans or a ceiling fan or your home AC.
Thanks for a great video. I love building computers and the average person I help spec out a system will seriously benefit from this information. Also Dmitry's ad spot... "well, well, well..." lol just his voice alone made me watch the whole ad. Haha.
hey social media influencer, thanks to you, the price of the top fans are through the roof. 😂 love the group reviews. thank you for your hard work. i hope you can incorporate some comparison component in your future videos.
Looking forward to the ID-Cooling dual tower cooler se 207xt black. Solid copper base. The id cooling perform differently if you have a single chip ihs(5600x or 5800x) or multi chip ihs 5900x, 5950x. They perform even better on the 5800x/5600x
Came back to this video to leave a comment. I wanted the Arctic Freezer 34 eSports but it didn't make sense in terms of price compared to the ID Cooling SE224XT Black V2 (could find the Basic version). The Freezer 34 eSports was ~$47.68 vs the SE224XT Black V2 was ~$22.51, that makes the Freezer 34 a bit over 2x the price of the SE224XT for not too far off performance wise. So far in my initial testing it made a 20C drop on my R5 2500 when comparing it to the Wraith Stealth it came with at 100% fan speed. So its pretty good. Fan noise wasn't bad but it might have a different fan from the SE224XT Basic version since it just tops out at 1950rpm and at that speed it was just a bit louder than my Arctic P12 fans at 1400rpm. Also it has a pretty shiny base plate like mentioned in the video which was neat to see is true. I checked some of the other coolers mentioned in this video like the Pure Rock Slim 2 (~$88), Snowman MT-6S (~$34) but they were all more expensive than the SE224XT I got. Also checked the Scythe coolers particularly the Fuma 2 that Gamers Nexus reviewed but its stupidly expensive (~$100), the prices of Scythe products in my country are stupidly close to Noctua and if I was at that price range I would go Noctua honestly. Got the SE22XT Black V2 as it was the best value for the performance it had.
I had the unfortunate privilege of using a CM cooler for my first build a decade ago and I remember tearing my hair out at the finnicky mount and backplate. If you're a first-time builder, it's better to get something more user-friendly like a Noctua if you plan on going the aftermarket route.
i missed the Scythe Kotetsu Mark II. 35€. nickel plated copper baseplate. very good mounting system. if you have someone (like me) who has some skill, you can make a 2nd pair of fanclips, because the cooler is build in way to put a 2nd fan on it (its just not included in the package). But a big thanks to you, fo doin this massive review.
Have been using the id cooling 224xt basic. Very satisfied with it. The only cons of this cooler is the fan can be very noisy and adding another fan for pull push config will create a high pitch noise on the pull fan at high rpm. I replaced the stock fam with cm sickleflow and the sound improved so much without sacrificing the thermal performance.
Bit higher on the budget category but once you go Scythe, you never look back. Kutetsu is $40, Mugen is $50, Fuma is $60, latter leaves Noctua in the dust.
