Best AM3 CPU Cooler

There are 2 products for this category, yeah for best AM3 CPU cooler label. The first CPU cooler is Thermalright Venomous X and then Noctua NH-D14. Both of this AM3 CPU cooler worked very well, I also found some AM3 CPU cooler articles on the site that contained about Thermalright Venomous X and Noctua NH-D14 and yes both of this cooler is great. So.. will both of this product called best AM3 CPU cooler? let see together. The Thermalright beat more than 10 award (read at thermalright.com) and the the Noctua NH-D14 beat awards too (read it at http://www.noctua.at) with this reality, Thermalright and Noctua is the winner and I can call it "Best AM3 CPU Cooler" so far (2011). Choosing a cooler for CPU is not easy, I mean we should better read more info about the products before we buy it.

Thermalright Venomous X

Here is Thermalright Venomous X AM3 CPU cooler informations
Thermalright Venomous X Specs / Heatsink Dimension:
Size: Length 127mm x Width 63mm x Height 160mm
Weight: 755 g (excluding fan and bracket system)
Heatpipe: 6mm sintered heatpipe x 6 units
Copper base: C1100 pure nickel plated copper base, with ultra-shine mirrored surface

Noctua NH-D14

Socket compatibility Intel LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA775 & AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3 (backplate required)
Height (without fan) 160 mm
Width (without fan) 140 mm
Depth (without fan) 130 mm
Height (with fan) 160 mm
Width (with fan) 140 mm
Depth (with fan) 158 mm
Weight (without fan) 900 g
Weight (with fan) 1070/1240* g
Material Copper (base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints & nickel plating
Fan compatibility 140x140x25 & 120x120x25mm
Scope of Delivery
1x NF-P14 premium fan
1x NF-P12 premium fan
2x Ultra-Low-Noise Adaptor (U.L.N.A.)
Y-Split Cable
4x Vibration-Compensators (for using NF-P12 as case fan)
4x Fan screws (for using NF-P12 as case fan)
NT-H1 high-grade thermal compound
SecuFirm2™ Mounting Kits
Noctua Metal Case-Badge
Warranty 6 Years

Fan specifications
Model Noctua NF-P14 & Noctua NF-P12
Bearing SSO-Bearing
Rotational Speed (+/- 10%) 1200 / 1300 RPM
Rotational Speed with U.L.N.A. (+/- 10%) 900 / 900 RPM
Airflow 110,3 / 92,3 m³/h
Airflow with U.L.N.A. 83,7 / 63,4 m³/h
Acoustical Noise 19,6 / 19,8 dB(A)
Acoustical Noise with U.L.N.A. 13,2 / 12,6 dB(A)
Input Power 1,2 / 1,08 W
Voltage Range 12 V
MTBF > 150.000 h
(* with 2 fans)

Best AM3 CPU  cooler compared - benchmark result from overclockerstech.com, as you can see that Thermalright is the best, and the followed by Noctua.

Best AM3 CPU cooler products must have best performance, but not all of people looking for the best performance, they also looking for best design, best prices, or other CPU cooler series such as quiet AM3 CPU cooler variant. If you're the extreme computer user, and want to try the max CPU performance, you should better use the best CPU cooler, and on this article, you can use the best AM3 CPU cooler for your AMD platform.

CPU Heatsink

CPU Heatsink is the most important CPU cooler parts, CPU heatsink usually come with fan for better temperature and to ensure your CPU stays cool and keep on best performance. Before we buy this CPU part, we must to know what is the meaning of CPU Heatsink or also just called CPU cooler, So this time, let see more closer about CPU heatsink design.

CPU Heatsink - Intel stock cpu cooler

Are you have seen the CPU heatsink form? the Heatsink usually made of aluminum, it's a good medium to transfer the CPU heat. The Heatsink picture above is sample of Intel processor stock cooler, let see the another CPU heatsink form.

It's another aftermarket CPU Heatsink

Cooler Master CPU Heatsink

Asus Triton 88 CPU Heatsink

It's more CPU Heatsink explanation from Wikipedia :

"A heat sink is an object that transfers thermal energy from a higher temperature to a lower temperature fluid medium. The fluid medium is frequently air, but can also be water or in the case of heat exchangers, refrigerants and oil. If the fluid medium is water, the 'heat sink' is frequently called a cold plate."

"A heat sink is a term for a component or assembly that transfers heat generated within a solid material to a fluid medium, such as air or a liquid."

There are a lot of CPU Heatsink (also named CPU cooler) type, such as liquid CPU cooler, air CPU cooler, silent CPU cooler, etc. Here is some good tips before you choose a CPU heatsink for your computer system :

- High heatsink surface
- Good aerodynamics
- Good thermal transfer within the heatsink
- Perfect flatness of the contact area
- Good mounting method
(4 tips from heatsink-guide.com)

Now, you already know what should you do before buying a "CPU heatsink", if you haven't much money for buying aftermarket CPU heatsink, you can still use your stock CPU heatsink, but if you want to get more better cooling system, you can buy it one.

Quiet AM3 CPU Cooler

Looking for quiet AM3 CPU cooler ? if bored with hard noise of your stock AM3 CPU cooler, you need the real silent quiet AM3 CPU cooler for your computer system. On this occasion, I will provide to you information about this product. Before we discuss this cooler series, let's look back a bit, actually, we do not need to purchase this product if we only use the computer as usual, but sometimes, we want to do a little optimization of our computer, especially on the cpu that we have, for example raising our CPU clock, so when the CPU work more than default value, the CPU fans will work more, and then CPU fan noise will be in your head!! everybody hate it..

Quiet AM3 CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler

A lot of people said that the AMD Phenom processor stock fans noise is not so good, and I thing it's no problem for me, the noise problem will coming if we doing some extreme overclocking, or we need a silent situation such as for working, at that time, we need quiet AM3 CPU cooler. When we're choosing a quiet AM3 CPU cooler, the first thing that we should notice is the performance, and then quality, prices, design and also must compatible with our system, in this case AM3 socket must paired with AM3 CPU cooler series.

Quiet AM3 CPU Cooler - Product List

- Cooler Master V8 Heatpipe Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler
- Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler
- Noctua NH-U9B SE2 92mm SSO CPU Cooler
- Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Quiet CPU Cooler
- Noctua NH-C14 Ultra Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler
- Noctua NH-D14 Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler
- Scythe Big Shuriken Quiet CPU Low Profile Cooler
- Scythe MUGEN 2 Rev.B Quiet CPU Cooler
- Scythe Shuriken Rev.B Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler
- Thermalright HR-01 PLUS Quiet CPU Cooler
- Zalman CNPS9900LED Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler
- Zalman CNPS5X Quiet CPU Cooler , etc...

In fact, there are many other quiet AM3 CPU cooler products in the market such as from Thermaltake, Xigmatek, Thermalright, Titan (e.g Titan Fenrir TTC NK85TZ CPU Cooler), but you can buy it one by following the list above, I will discuss it more detail about this CPU cooler type in the next articles, so basically, you will need a quiet AM3 CPU cooler if you want to get the silent situation, or doing overclock on your CPU (example for overclocking contest), and of course you hate the hard noise of you stock CPU cooler right?.. which is the best quiet AM3 CPU cooler for us? well it's defending your need and your money, don't spend your money for expensive CPU cooler, just buy it one with good price to performance value. Good luck.

Glacialtech Igloo 5750

Glacialtech Igloo 5750 is one of the silent cpu cooler series from Glacialtech. Glacialtech Igloo 5750 come for enthusiast computer user, who want to replace the stock cpu cooler with the new cooler for better performance.

Glacialtech Igloo 5750 High Features
Quality Aluminum design with Copper base
Heatpipe-fin-airflow combination with patented engineering principles
PWM version : Enhanced speed adjustable Fan (800~2500 RPM)
Silent version : Silent performance (19dB)
Supports both AMD & Intel processors

Glacialtech Igloo 5750 Supported CPU type
Intel and AMD CPU Models supported
All Celerons - Sempron and Athlon 64
Pentium D 3.4GHz - Athlon 64 FX
Prescott 3.4GHz - Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz - Athlon X2 Dual-Core
Intel Core 2 Duo E6800 2.93GHz - Opteron
Intel Core 2 Duo QX6700/6800/6850 - Dual-Core Opteron
Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600
(CPUID:06FBh) /6700 - Second-Generation Opteron
Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600
(CPUID:06F7h) - Third-Generation Opteron
(CPU Cooler reference and photos : legitreviews.com and glacialtech.com)

Titan Fenrir TTC NK85TZ CPU Cooler

This is one of the best CPU cooler from Titan, specially for Intel series. Titan Fenrir TTC NK85TZ CPU Cooler come with good cooling system, for better performance and this Titan Fenrir is also specially for overclocker who want to get maximum performance of their Intel Processor such as for Intel LGA1366 and also for Intel LGA 1156 socket. The Titan Fenrir TTC NK85TZ CPU Cooler also compitable with AM3 CPU Cooler series. (compatible with Intel LGA 775/1155/1156/1366 - AMD K8/AM2 /AM3).

Titan Fenrir TTC NK85TZ CPU Cooler Features and Specs :
For AMD K8/AM2/AM2+/AM3
‧AMD Phenom™ II X6 Black Edition 1090T
‧AMD Phenom™ II X6 1055T
‧AMD Phenom™ II X4 805~965/B93~B95/900e~905e
‧AMD Phenom™ II X3 710~720/700e~705e/B73~B75
‧AMD Phenom™ II X2 545~555/B53~B55
‧AMD Athlon™ II X4 620~635/600e~605e
‧AMD Athlon™ II X3 425~440/400e~405e
‧AMD Athlon™ II X2 215~255/235e~240e/B22~B24/250u~260u
‧AMD Phenom™ X4 9500~9950/9100e~9450e
‧AMD Phenom™ X3 8450~8750/8250e~8450e
‧AMD Athlon™ X2 up to 6400+/7850/BE-2400/5050e
‧AMD Athlon™ 64 up to 4000+/LE-1640
‧AMD Athlon™ 64 FX up to FX-62
‧AMD Sempron™ up to 3800+/140/LE-1300
‧Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ up to 1389/1224SE/1218HE
For Intel LGA 1366
‧ Core™ i7 i7-920~i7-960
‧ Core™ i7 Extreme Edition i7-960~i7-980X
For Intel LGA 1156
‧ Core™ i7 i7-860~i7-870
‧ Core™ i5 i5-680~i5-760/i5-750S/i5-655K
‧ Core™ i3-530~i3-560
For Intel LGA 1155
‧ Core™ i5-2300、i5-2390T、i5-2400/S、i5-2500/T/S/K
‧ Core™ i7-2600/S/K
For Intel LGA 775
‧ Core2 Duo up to～E8600
‧ Core2 Extreme up to～QX9770/X6800
‧ Core2 Quad up to～Q9650
‧ Pentium D up to～960
‧ Pentium Dual Core up to～E6500/E6500K
‧ Pentium Extreme up to～965
‧ Pentium 4 up to～672
‧ Pentium 4 Extreme up to～3.73G Hz
‧ Celeron up to～365/E3300

CPU Cooler Details
Outline Dimension - 124 x 107 x 156 mm
Fan Dimension - 120 x 120 x 25 mm
Rated Voltage - 12V DC
Rated Current - 0.32 A
Power Consumption - 3.84 W
Rated Speed - 800 ~ 2150 ± 10% RPM
Airflow - 33.20 ~ 78.41 CFM
Static Pressure - 0.02 ~ 0.11 Inch H₂O
Noise Level : < 17.2 ~ < 39 dBA
Connector : 4-PIN PWM function
Bearing Type : Z-AXIS
Life Time : 60,000 Hours
(from titan-cd.com)

This is one of the best aftermarket cpu cooler that win some award.. great cooler from Titan.