CPU Cooler Advice

Need to know EXACTLY which Antec case you have in order to know what height of CPU cooler it supports. Without knowing that information it is impossible to accurately tell you which cooler will work in your tower, however, in general I'd offer this.

Below is my list of preferred CPU AIR coolers, also known as Heatsink fans (HSF).

Do not look here for recommendations on water/liquid cooling solutions. There are none to be found.

They are basically listed in order of preference, from top to bottom. To some degree that preference is based on known performance on similarly overclocked configurations, but not entirely. There are likely a couple of units that are placed closer to the top not because they offer purely better performance than another cooler which is below it, but potentially due to a variety of reasons.

One model might be placed higher than another with the same or similar performance, but has quieter or higher quality fans. It may have the same performance but a better warranty. Long term quality may be higher. It may be less expensive in some cases. Maybe it performs slightly worse, but has quieter fans and a better "fan pitch". Some fans with equal decibel levels do not "sound" like they are the same as the specific pitch heard from one fan might be less annoying than another.

In any case, these are not "tiered" and are not a 100% be all, end all ranking. They are simply MY preference when looking at coolers for a build or when making recommendations. Often, which HSF gets chosen depends on what is on this list and fits the budget or is priced right at the time due to a sale or rebate. Hopefully it will help you and you can rest assured that every cooler listed here is a model that to some degree or other is generally a quality unit which is a lot more likely to be worth the money spent on it than on many other models out there that might look to be a similarly worthwhile investment.

Certainly there are a great many other very good coolers out there, but these are models which are usually available to most anybody building a system or looking for a cooler, regardless of what part of the world they might live in. As always, professional reviews are usually an absolutely essential part of the process of finding a cooler so if you are looking at a model not listed here, I would highly recommend looking at at least two or three professional reviews first.

If you cannot find two reviews of any given cooler, it is likely either too new to have been reviewed yet or it sucked, and nobody wanted to buy one in order to review it plus the manufacturer refused to send samples out to the sites that perform reviews because they knew it would likely get bad publicity.

IMO, nobody out there is making better fans, overall, than Noctua, followed pretty closely by Thermalright. So if you intend to match case fans to the same brand on your HSF, those are pretty hard to beat. Of course, Corsair has it's Maglev fans, and those are pretty damn good too, but since they don't make CPU air cooling products, only AIO water coolers, they cannot join the party.


Noctua NH-D14 (Replace stock fans with NF-A14 industrialPPC 2000rpm)
Noctua NH-D15/D15 SE-AM4
Noctua NH-D14 (With original fans)
Thermalright Silver arrow IB-E Extreme
Phanteks PH-TC14PE (BK,BL, OR or RD)
Cryorig R1 Ultimate or Universal
Thermalright Legrand Macho RT
Thermalright Macho 120
Noctua NH-U14S
Scythe Mugen max
Scythe Mugen 5 rev.b
BeQuiet dark rock pro (3 or 4)
BeQuiet dark rock (3 or 4)
Deepcool Assassin II
Thermalright true spirit 140 (Direct, Power, BW)
Cryorig H5
Noctua NH-U12S
Phanteks PH-TC12DX (Any)
Phanteks PH-TC14S
Cryorig H7
Deepcool Gammaxx 400
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

Looks to me like just about any of them will fit, however if you want to use one of the taller models you will have to forego use of an intake fan on the case side panel. That would interfere with any of the taller coolers. If you have a side fan installed and can take a measurement from where the current CPU cooler contacts the top of the CPU to where it would come in contact with that side fan, we can narrow things down.

If you have no side fan installed, then I do not think you will have any interference issues, even with a very tall cooler.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1526-intel-4th-gen-core-i7-vs-8th-gen/

That is a good review that shows what the differences are right now in gaming.

the haswell and haswell refresh devil canyons still got a pretty good following because of DDR3 high performance ram kits, but I think people are selling 4790ks in anticipation of the new i9 which is the logical upgrade from it.

Well, if they are doing that NOW, that's rather premature. When Coffee lake released, it was a paper launch, and we didn't actually see mass availability for about six or seven months after that. Considering all the fab problems Intel has been having, it's been said and I agree that we may likely see the same thing again. Timeframe is about right as well. Last time it was prior to the holiday shopping season and while there were plenty of motherboards available, Coffee lake CPUs were mostly like Unicorns and Dragons for about a half year after that. By that I mean, you hear about them, they sound wonderful, but are mostly just fanciful and nobody you know has ever seen one. LOL.

I agree that when they become available they are probably the first release since Skylake, which was the first REAL DDR4 capable platform release, to be worth buying into. Performance per core isn't likely to be much better than Kaby/Coffee, but the additional cores on the i7 models might make it a worthy purchase and the fact that at least the top shelf models are returning to internal solder rather than TIM, might make them very good thermally and for overclocking.

The thrifty ones are selling now to get the price they want. After new chips release the 4790k prices will likely take a bigger hit IMHO.

Maybe. Usually the market value on hardware is fairly well settled by the time four generations have passed.