Top Tier CPU Air Coolers Q3 2015: 9-Way Roundup Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 6, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Phanteks is another world-renowned CPU cooler manufacturer, whose high performance designs made them widely known very quickly. Aside from coolers and fans, the company is now active in the field of PC cases as well. For the means of this review, Phanteks supplied us with the PH-TC14PE, their largest and most popular CPU cooler. The PH-TC14PE actually is over two years old, making it the oldest design in this roundup review.
Phanteks supplies the PH-TC14PE in a large cardboard box with an abstract design showcasing the color variations of the cooler. Inside the box, the cooler is well protected within a polyethylene foam shell and the bundled items are secured in small boxes. Aside from the hardware necessary for the mounting of the cooler, Phanteks also provides a tube of quality thermal grease, six anti-vibration rubber strips for the fans, a fan power cable splitter, a fan speed reducer. They also provide six wire clips and twelve plastic fan clip adaptors, for the installation of up to three fans onto the cooler's body.
The PH-TC14PE is a very large symmetric dual tower cooler. The fronts of the fins form small circular notches, with the exception of the top fin that is straight and serves as a cover for the heatpipes as well. One of its prominent features is instantly apparent, which is the colored fins. There are five color variations of the PH-TC14PE and we received the black version. Phanteks calls this "Physical Antioxidant Thermal Shield" (or Physical Antioxidant Thermal Spraying - we found both in the company's texts) and claims that it enhances thermal performance by both increasing the dissipation rate of the heatsink itself and decreasing the radiation absorption rate from other heat sources. The fins are soldered on the heatpipes with another patented method that Phanteks calls "Cold Plasma Spraying Coating", which supposedly increases the heat transfer rate between the copper heatpipes and the aluminum fins.
Phanteks provides two of their own PH-F140 140 mm fans with the PH-TC14PE. The company loves abbreviations, so the PH-F140 have "Updraft Floating Balance (U.F.B)" bearings, "Maelstrom Vortex Booster (M.V.B)" blades and "Maelstrom Air-Fort Optimization (M.A.F.O)" drive systems. Other than the fancy names, no real technical data or schematics of these technologies can be found. All we are left with is their standard manufacturer specifications, which indicate a maximum speed rating of 1300 RPM (1200 RPM in PWM mode). The design of the wire clips allows the fans to be moved upwards by several centimeters, providing clearance to RAM modules and heatsinks that would otherwise be blocked, assuming that the case is wide enough of course.
The base of the PH-TC14PE is simplistic, virtually meant only to provide mechanical retention for the installation on a CPU. Five thick 8 mm heatpipes run through the base and to both fin arrays on either side. The copper bottom half of the base and the heatpipes are nickel-plated, with the contact surface polished fairly well but not down to a perfect mirror finish. Slight machine marks can be seen on the contact surface but there are no major imperfections to speak of.
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zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Someone should test for this. It is quite plausible as it will take time to increase the temperature of water/coolant in the system. Yet, for longer and continuous loads, surface area matters to dump heat in the environment which AIO coolers has less to a similarly priced Big Air cooler which shows in benchmarks.Navvie - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Pretty good.It'd be nice if there was a base line (say intel's current stock cooler) and an AIO water cooler to show the difference between a top tier air cooler and what many consider to be the next step.
One point, SPCR always test each cooler with a 'reference' fan, making it easier to compare the heatsink's efficiency. Can't help but feel you didn't complete the task you set out to by levelling the playing field with your simulated CPU heat source.
maximumGPU - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Great roundup! i for one still believe high end air a good alternative to water if you want dead silence.What i still can't understand is how can Nocuta get away with shipping the most expensive air cooler, likely to be used by enthusiasts who care about aesthetics, with the most hideous fan colours?
'nar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua colors are odd, but I think it forces you to consider performance more than aesthetics. They do look nice, but not "cool" - no pun in tended.Dead silence basically depends on how much heat you need to dissipate, temperature of ambient air, surface area of fins/radiator, air flow, and heat transfer capability of the cooler. Or more basically, how easily you can transfer heat from CPU to the air. Water increases the efficiency of heat transfer, so once you reach a certain power level they will overtake HSF's. They will never be as quite as a good HSF, at least not on low-power CPU's that arguably do not need anything but the stock cooler to begin with.
xthetenth - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua gets away with those colors entirely because they're Noctua. Yes they're not pretty colors, but unlike nice bright/garish colors they are an unmistakable sign that they're the best or at least tied for best.piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Your keyboard seems to have a problem, you've typed "hideous" when clearly "fantastic" would be better. Noctua fans are neat.Beaver M. - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Well, serious people are more likely to buy Noctua anyway. And no serious user cares about what the fans look like, and even if they did, they would still take the Noctua, since you can CLEARLY see the extremely high quality they are just by looking at them. Windows in cases and other stupid bling bling is for the PC-ricer gang. They only choose after looks anyway, and dont care if their fans make noises from day one.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Excellent review of what seem to be very good HSFs throughout (but then again, you did ask them to send their best).A comparison with the stock Intel cooler as supplied with something like the 4790K would be nice, as that is what any expense on a third-party cooler must be compared against. How would the stock-cooler compare at 340W? I was very impressed with the degC/W figures for all those coolers; it almost makes 340W seem an amount of heat that can be dealt with, though I'm thinking it's crazy.
As well as the stock-cooler from a highish end CPU, one or two commonly used AIO liquid-coolers needs to be added to provided a second comparison point, as these high-end air-coolers are presumably expected to be near, possibly even better than a liquid AIO.
I love the fact you are using a properly designed heating rig, and your comprehensive review, but I came away thinking: they're good! But I've no idea how much better they are than the stock cooler, or how any of them would compare with the liquid AIOs also available, both in terms of cooling or noise.
Sivar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
This is probably the best CPU cooler article I've read (and I read such articles when Anandtech when it was on Geocities).Excellent writing, useful measurements, and a cogent conclusion. Thank you, Emmanouil!
orangesky - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
SilentPcReview just posted a review of the new Scythe Ninja 4: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1462-page1.ht... The review includes some good comparison tables with many of the popular air & water coolers.Sounds like a pretty decent option, and probably the best Ninja since the original.