Solution. #2. The best configuration is always a front to back airflow path, but may not always be possible depending on the socket and the rest of the configuration. So I'd go with a front intake 200mm or larger, two top exhausts of 140mm or a single top 200mm, a rear upper exhaust 140 mm and a side intake of whatever size you like.Winner: Noctua NH-D15. The Evo 212 is a good option for light overclocks and does its bit to keep temperatures low. However, the Noctua NH-D15 is a monster and can handle cooling more than many AIO water coolers. That included heavy overclocks and exceptional performances on heavy applications. I like the fact that it's more compact and that heatsink and fans have the latest design by Noctua which the next gen D15 will have. U12A is more than enough and probably better than the D15S. The 7800x3d doesn’t run hot at all. I pull like 86-88w max.
The U12A has 2 more heat pipes than the U12S, and also uses an extra fan (of a different kind as well). Noctua has its own rating system as well, the NSPR, which scores the U12A almost 32% higher than the U12S. The U12S uses the NF-F12, while the U12A uses the NF-A12x25, one of the best 12cm fans in the market.
The NH-D15S chromax.black is an all-black version of Noctua’s award-winning NH-D15S premium-quality quiet CPU cooler. Thanks to the same asymmetrical dual-tower heatsink design and single NF-A15 PWM fan, it stays true to the NH-D15S’s successful formula of fusing dual-tower performance with excellent RAM, case and PCIe compatibility.It's simpler to install and more reliable. Water cooling would get you a little bit better temps for the noise. For Ryzen 7000 a water cooler probably isn't a bad option, but then neither is a D15 or U12A. If you're going a 7900x or 7950x I would heavily weigh up water cooling. 7600x or 7700x I would probably tend toward high end air cooling
While Noctua took care of most of the memory issues the D14 had with the D15, without a front fan on the NH-D15S, there is nothing on the front of the cooler to need to sit lower to fit into a
The best performing fans on the market in terms of CFM and static pressure are (IMO) the Noctua A14 iPPC 3000s @160CFM. The D15 performs extremely well under 250W sustained loads, but struggles when you start to go north of 280W. The thermal performance also starts to stagnate when the fans push past ~2300RPM. The Noctua NH-D14 is still a great air CPU cooler that offers a great performance. The performance difference between the Noctua NH-D14 and the newer NH-D15 is approximately 2 degrees Celsius. This means that if you already have the NH-D14, then upgrading to the NH-D15 purely for a performance gain is not a good idea. 90C might be hot for humans but not really for a piece of metal. 90C is just 363 K instead of the 293K Room temp and being 24% warmer isn´t a big deal for something that isn´t a lifeform. This. Keep what you’ve got. I’ve used both the D15s and a U12A on my 5800X3D. Both performed nearly identical. Good cooling performance. Cons -Premium price-Fan color is not conducive to themed builds. Noctua NH-U12A at Amazon for $119.95; Under 70c with the fans barely spinning is a pretty good result. In the grand scheme of things, big air coolers like the Noctua D15, Cryorig R1, Phanteks TCP14E all perform as good as or better than most 240mm AIO coolers and do it with less noise. Not to mention the only moving parts are the fans so reliability is much higher. gv3b4.