Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB CPU Air Cooler,6 Heat Pipes Cpu cooler,Dual 120mm TL-C12C-S PWM Fan,Aluminium Heatsink Cover,AGHP Technology,for AMD AM4/AM5 Intel 1851/1700/1150/1151/1200

My CPU temps were hitting up to 90-100°C on demanding games with the STOCK intel cooler (was playing Oblivion Remastered, so maybe I should say poorly optimised games lol).I’ve got an i5 14400f paired with an RTX 4070, so these temps were crazy high, and straight up dangerous for my CPU.Now, I know the stock intel cooler is generally not great, but I was not expecting the crazy results that this CPU cooler gave me. I bought this for £27 (I think on sale). And, for £27, it lowered my temps from 90-100°C in Oblivion, to 50-55°C — incredible.This game often utilises up to 70% of my CPU, and sometimes higher, and the fact that I’m getting such low temps is amazing. I was honestly expecting, and hoping for, maybe 70-75°C on this game. I am really pleased with this CPU cooler, and it seems to be working amazingly.It gets kinda noisy in-game, but still NOT as loud as the Stock Intel Cooler. It’s audible when the fans start speeding up in more demanding games/environments, but I assume it’s to maintain those lower temps. If you really wanted to, you could create a custom fan curve, and you’d probably solve this issue. It’s honestly not an issue for me, it’s really not that loud at all. Also, at least it doesn’t turn my room into a sauna like the stock intel cooler!TL;DR: good quality, really nice temps with my CPU, really affordable price, and is compatible with AM4 boards, AM5 I believe as well (double check that), in addition to Intel boards. Can get a bit noisy, create a custom fan curve or buy a more premium CPU cooler or even a Liquid Cooler if you are sensitive or disturbed by fan noise.I used to play PS4 all the time, so I can tolerate fan noise pretty well, since that console was a jet engine. But honestly, it’s not that loud at all, just audible. Even playing with speakers, and no headphones, the fan noise doesn’t bother me.

Needed a replacement cooler for my i7 12700k in a hurry due to my AiO cooler failing, but as it would only be needed while I waited for a warranty replacement for the AiO I didn't want to spend too much. This worked perfectly and was quick and easy to install. Performance was really impressive for the money, kept everything cool and quiet. It comes with suitable mounting hardware for a variety of Intel and AMD sockets, and even fitted into my ASUS Z690-F motherboard which has big bulky heatshields around the CPI socket area. Only minor negative is the fan mounting clips are a little fiddly to install and can bend the cooler fins if you aren't careful, but this is reasonably easy to check and adjust if needed. Overall really happy with it and would have been satisfied with it as a permanent replacement had my AiO not been in warranty.

As other reviewers point out, this is a big air cooler, so you need to make sure you have space in your case for it. Even on my full-sized ATX motherboard, it hangs over the RAM slots, so the fan on that side needs to be shifted up a bit, so it doesn't get in their way. It's also so close to the GPU slot that I needed to use a plastic tyre lever to pop open the catch when I needed to remove my GPU.But. . . it's a small price to pay - the cooler and the pair of RGB fans cost about the same as a pair of decent quality RGB fans. The fans themselves seem to compare very favourably to the Arctic F12 PWM fans I use as case fans, and it keeps my Rzyen 5600 nice and cool at fairly low speeds, so my PC doesn't get crazy loud.

Great cpu cooler! Solid build quality and the hardware supplied was well made, was easy to install, instructions could have been a little clearer and the fans could have had airflow and rotation arrows to make working out the airflow easier. The supplied thermal paste was more like jelly and didn't want to spread so had to use my own which wasn’t an issue for me.

One of the best things about this is it's so easy to install compared to the cooler I was replacing (Hyper 212 Evo). The Evo has to be one of the most annoying products (not just coolers, but any type of PC hardware) to install. Whereas the Peerless Assassin is super easy - they definitely nailed it with an easy and frustration free mounting system.Now I will say I've recently changed out my CPU, case, case fans, and the cooler, so It is hard for me to say exactly how much this cooler contributed to my reduced temps, but I feel like it's definitely helped. I was previously using a Ryzen 3600 in a mATX case with the aforementioned Hyper 212 Evo. The temps while just doing light work and internet browsing would hover around the 45-60 degree range, which I felt was a bit on the high side. In games it would go as high as 75 degrees.I've now switched to an ATX case and a 5800x3d and of course replaced the Hyper 212 Evo with this cooler. My temps now are around 30-40 degrees while doing something like watching a Youtube video or just browsing the web, and I haven't seen them higher than about 65 degrees when under load in a game.So the overall effect does seem to be a reduction of at least 10 degrees, which I think is really impressive. Again the fact I changed from a mATX to an ATX case probably helped too, but I still think this cooler has had the main impact.The ARGB also looks cool too, and I have it synced with the rest of my ARGB PC case fans to create some nice visual effects.The only slight negative for me is that because it's so chunky, the fan closest to the front of the case has to overhang the RAM slightly and you have to attach this particular fan a bit higher than intended (physically not possible to lower it the full way since the RAM gets in the way). When I think about it, this might be an issue specific to my motherboard even though it's ATX (but I expect lots of other motherboards will have the same issue). It might be the case that if you have certain motherboards where the RAM slots are further away from the CPU socket, then maybe this won't happen. It's not a big issue, but might annoy some folks with OCD over that sort of thing since it is clear when you look at your PC case interior that the front fan on the cooler is positioned higher than the rear fan. If you don't care about how it looks or if you can't see the side of your PC case anyway, then this won't be an issue.Other than that, it's a really impressive cooler for the price and would definitely recommend it.