CPU Cooling (Air & Water)
If you're using Intel and using anything north of a G5400/I3-8100, you can probably throw away the stock cooler and get something else. AMD's stock coolers perform much better and should cool quite fine at stock. The Wraith Prism that comes with the 2700x is actually isn't bad, but cannot handle much OC.
Tier 1 Air Coolers ~ Under $40
These are great replacement coolers for any CPU. Can handle some overclocking or just keeping a hotter CPU cooler. Recommended for any Ryzen CPU to do some light OCing and Intel CPU that you want to run cooler. All of these are going to be single fan/tower.
Tier 2 Mid-Ranged Air Coolers & Entry level 240mm AIO ~ $40-$75
This is where you can get some decent overclocking on mid ranged chips and keep higher end chips like the 9700k/3700x cool at stock/lower end OC's. I did not include 120mm AIO's as my testing has proven them to be worse than Tier 1 coolers in many cases. These will be a mix of single/dual fan/tower depending on price point.amzn.to/2JNgEkF
Tier 3 High End air Coolers & Mid RangedAIO 240mm AIO ~$80-110
These are going to be able to handle some decent overclocking on higher end chips and also pushing midranged chips like the Ryzen 5 3600 & I5-9600k to nearly 5GHz.
Tier 4 280/360mm ~$110+
There are a ton of coolers in this area but I will just highlight a few. I avoided high end air coolers because when I tested the Cryorig R1 which cost nearlyt $100 and rated to 250W, it performed significantly worse than my S36 from Fractal Design. These are all designed to do some higher end overclocking but not record breaking.
Custom loops (water cooling)
A good place to start is here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1755-water-cooling-101-a-good-place-for-newbies-to-start And here http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/5435-watercooling-faq-some-basic-qa. These will pretty much cover anything you may want to know about building a custom water loop.
Tier 1 Air Coolers ~ Under $40
These are great replacement coolers for any CPU. Can handle some overclocking or just keeping a hotter CPU cooler. Recommended for any Ryzen CPU to do some light OCing and Intel CPU that you want to run cooler. All of these are going to be single fan/tower.
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo (159mm)
- Deepcool Gammaxx 400 (155mm)
- Hyper 212 Black Edition (159mm)
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EGB RGB Black Edition (159mm)
- Artic Freezer 33 eSports Edition (150mm)
- Be Quiet! Pure Rock (155mm)
- Noctua NH-L9A AM4 (Low Profile)
- Noctua NY-L9i LGA 115x (Low Profile)
- Cryorig C7 (Low Profile)
- Scythe Big Shuriken 3 (Low Profile)
Tier 2 Mid-Ranged Air Coolers & Entry level 240mm AIO ~ $40-$75
This is where you can get some decent overclocking on mid ranged chips and keep higher end chips like the 9700k/3700x cool at stock/lower end OC's. I did not include 120mm AIO's as my testing has proven them to be worse than Tier 1 coolers in many cases. These will be a mix of single/dual fan/tower depending on price point.amzn.to/2JNgEkF
- Scythe Mugen 5 (155mm) - Single Tower/Single Fan
- Cryorig - H5 Ultimate (160-168mm [Fan position]) - Single Tower/Single Fan
- Cooler Master MasterAir MA620P RGB (165mm) - Dual Tower/Dual Fan
- Cooler Master Master Liquid 240L RGB
- Noctua NH-U14S (165mm) - Single Tower/Single Fan
- Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 (160mm) - Single Tower/Single Fan
Tier 3 High End air Coolers & Mid RangedAIO 240mm AIO ~$80-110
These are going to be able to handle some decent overclocking on higher end chips and also pushing midranged chips like the Ryzen 5 3600 & I5-9600k to nearly 5GHz.
- Dark Rock Pro 4 (163mm)
- Noctua NH-D15 (165mm)
- Cryorig R1 Ultimate (168mm)
- Deepcool Captain 240 RGB
- Corsair H110I Pro RGB
- Cooler Master ML240R RGB
Tier 4 280/360mm ~$110+
There are a ton of coolers in this area but I will just highlight a few. I avoided high end air coolers because when I tested the Cryorig R1 which cost nearlyt $100 and rated to 250W, it performed significantly worse than my S36 from Fractal Design. These are all designed to do some higher end overclocking but not record breaking.
- NZXT Kraken x52 (280mm)
- Corsair H115i RGB Platinum (280mm)
- Fractal Design Celsius S36 (360mm)
- Cooler Master ML360 RGB (360mm)
- NZXT Kraken X72 (360mm)
- Thermaltake Floe Triple Ring RGB (360mm)
- Corsair H150i Pro RGB (360mm)
Custom loops (water cooling)
A good place to start is here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1755-water-cooling-101-a-good-place-for-newbies-to-start And here http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/5435-watercooling-faq-some-basic-qa. These will pretty much cover anything you may want to know about building a custom water loop.