Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE CPU Air Cooler,PA120 SE,6 Heat Pipes CPU Cooler,Dual 120mm TL-C12C PWM Fan, Aluminium Heatsink Cover, AGHP Technology,for AMD AM4/AM5 Intel 1700/1150/1200/1851

Long story so please bear, but honest review!Pros: Easy to install, budget friendly, performance gains, lower temps, aesthetics, value for money.Cons: noneI have a high end build consisting of 7700X, X670 and 6900XT, and I bought MSI Mag280R last year, and I won’t say anything bad to the company or my previous cooler, but I had idle temps of 50-60 jerks and upon running Cinebench, my cpu used to hit 5.1GHz choking itself at 95C. (18K score)It was constantly running at 80-90 playing CS GO, Fifa, Jedi Survivor, Avengers almost everygame.Checked multiple videos of PBO and used to crash at every point with -30 -25 and -20. So I lowered the thermal limit and GHz (basically loss of performance but only to have it running smoothly, thought AM5 was shit) (my friends were saying my cooler is shit, but whatever)However, my friend got 7900X and bought this cooler, and he ran cinebench, and his wasn’t even hitting 85C with 5.8GHz. So, I got frustrated that even spending almost $600, I can’t even get the performance I desired so what was the point of buying AM5.Long story short: I got this cooler, and when I installed it. Idle temps were not going above 40C.I ran cinebench on stock settings, it hit 5.3GHZ with 90C. (Didn’t even hit 5.15 previously)Upon making the PBO -30, it hit 5.34 GHz with temps being at 87-88C at the max. No crash, performance drops or anything whatsoever.Tested few games, didn’t cross 50C at any point. (I have attached snapshots of hardware info as-well)All in all, the MSI cooler costed me more than a $100 whereas this beast costed me less than 50%, giving me extra performance. I truly recommend this cooler.

The value of this cooler is absolutely incredible. I paired it with an Intel i5-13600k and even running Burn test for hours and hours at max the hottest the CPU gets is 76 C, and that's just on two cores, the rest are less than 75 C, with the E cores being less that 60 C. The boost is going to max most of that time too, so there is no throttling. The room I was testing is was about 67 F, maybe slightly cooler, and all the fan profiles were set to normal and rarely maxing out, so this cooler can definitely handle more.Compared to other coolers it performs at very high levels, though not the highest admittedly. For an air cooler it's up there with the best. Given the price of these, and that you can get RGB fans too (if you want that I turned mine off) I only see the value in going with something more expensive if you plan to go liquid cooled, and I would only do that if you plan to do overclocking on an i7 or higher.This is one of the best value PC parts available, and for any but the most demanding this will be a cooler that performs better than you need it to.Install is very simple, the build quality is amazing, and the performance is beyond belief. If you need a CPU cooler on a budget you can't do better, and if you just don't like wasting money, then there is no reason not to go with this over the more expensive options.

I upgraded from a Ryzen 5 2600X to a Ryzen 9 5900X and thought I could use the same cooler. It was not nearly powerful enough. I did some research and found this to be the most consistently recommended cooler and bought based on that. It is BIG and it can be a little tricky to install and route around, but it works REALLY WELL, and it's very reasonably priced. Probably exceeded my expectations tbh. Highly recommend.

12700KF processor was running too hot under load with my Noctua. I nearly went Liquid AIO but decided to give this a chance because of all the great reviews. Easy to install. Performance is pretty incredible. Idles are barely breaking 20c & under heavy load, barely breaking 60c and its nearly as quiet as the Noctua. Great air cooler at an incredibly low price.

There's already a lot of five star reviews out there so I'll make the good part short.Very well made heat plate. When I removed the cooler from the CPU the thermal paste was very evenly distributed over the CPU and plate.Installation is very easy.Now for the negatives which may or may not affect you.This isn't a Scythe Fuma 2. This thing will make noise when the CPU is getting hot. You may be able to adjust your fan curve depending on your use case to keep the fans running slower. I had a pretty aggressive fan curve and once a CPU hits 60C I have cooler fans running at 100%.Also, the cooler isn't offset in its design so the front fan will be over the memory slots. So, sorry Thermalright but the clearance over the CPU is variable. The MIN. is 155mm. If you have some really tall memory sticks it could probably be all the way up to 170mm. There are some really tall memory kits because of the crazy heat spreader they have on them. It just so happens that I'm using a memory kit that is pretty modest when it comes to the heat spreader, G. Skill Ripjaws so with the fan sitting over this kit, my cooler height ended up being about the 155mm that's listed.Any builder should keep this in mind. The height of this cooler is variable because it's based on the height of the memory kit you have, the MIN is 155mm. There are other coolers which are the same, so this isn't the only one that can be problematic in this regard.And the last issue is its thermal paste. I find it to be total garbage because I like spreading paste over the entire surface area of the CPU before putting the air cooler on. This paste is very strange and doesn't spread well. I always have thermal paste on hand that I buy so it's not a really big deal, but for a person who doesn't have anything on hand it could be kind of irritating.It does give good temps though, and it's easy to install and as long as you don't have tall memory sticks then this will fit into most cases. For most people I'd say you should expect to have a case with 160mm clearance above the CPU. This is a typical spec listed for a case so you don't have to worry about trying to measure this stuff.I'm still giving it 4 stars because in a typical mid tower case this is going to fit with most memory kits.