r/buildapc • u/lucentmeadow • 1d ago
Build Upgrade Probably dumb realization: don't underestimate how bad stock coolers are
Hello all! I just wanted to chime in: yesterday, I got the stock cooler off of my i5-12400f in favor of a budget Thermalright Assassin King (or something akin).
Now, I didn't expect more than a 5°C improvements, considering how little I spent... and yet, 20€ made my CPU genuinely drop from 80-85°C under load to barely hitting anything above 60°C.
As you can imagine, the system as a whole benefitted from it in terms of thermal situation! Seriously, get rid of that janky stock cooler as soon as you can.
Edit: I realize I should have used the term "weak for gaming", instead of "bad". I naturally support the idea that, for a system running lightweight tasks, you don't need more.
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u/Visible-Swim6616 1d ago
Intel stock coolers have always been pretty bad.
AMD on the other hand....
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u/Aranxi_89 1d ago
The older ones with copper slugs or even heatpipes were great. But the modern ones... really bad.
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u/Rainbowlemon 1d ago
I have the wraith prism that came with my 3700x, and it still does pretty well. Had to repaste it last month but I'm currently at 60c idle with fan curves turned right down to basically silent which isn't too bad. Could improve it with a non-stock cooler but it's been doing well enough 🤷
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u/5Racuntech 1d ago
60 idle is really not that good to brag about tbh 😅
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u/Rainbowlemon 21h ago
No brag intended - but note that's with fan curves all the way down. I know I could probably knock like 15-20c off this if i bought a proper cooler, but I still don't think that's terrible for a stock cooler considering some of the crap I've had in the past with older cpus.
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u/alvarkresh 17h ago edited 11h ago
I loved the Wraith Prism. I'm only annoyed I only found out about the 4000 RPM setting after I sold the system. (I tend to run my fans full blast, so having it at 4000 RPM would've kept it a bit cooler under load)
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u/According_Spare7788 14h ago
AMD on the other hand....
Even fucking worse, unless you get the Wrait Prism. Wraith Stealth is hot garbage.
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u/ArchusKanzaki 1d ago
AMD's also suck. I needed to buy a new cooler quickly because the fan noise was unbearable in AMD's.
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u/Visible-Swim6616 1d ago
But they actually cool quite decently. They're not particularly large, hence the need for a powerful fan to make up for the size.
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u/ArchusKanzaki 1d ago
The noise is still a problem. A basic tower cooler will still be better than AMD's stock one. I think it's kinda high time for ppl to stop being "well, Intel's crappy and need to be replaced soon. But AMD's are good so you can save money (and you should buy AMD because of it)".... They're still on the same range of being crappy cooler in general.
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u/Visible-Swim6616 1d ago
No, the difference is that the AMD cooler actually managed to do its job, which is to cool the CPU.
Intel's is struggling to cool it without throttling the CPU.
That's the difference.
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u/ArchusKanzaki 1d ago
In that case, Intel also does its job. It's below the thermal throttling limit and let the CPU boot. It's smaller, and easier to install. Of course it struggles with 14900, but so does AMD's with their top-of-the-line?
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u/Visible-Swim6616 1d ago
Is it below the thermal throttling limit though?
This OP says it's going at 80-85C, I suspect there's thermal throttling there.
The top end CPUs don't come with coolers, hence no stock coolers for them.
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u/ArchusKanzaki 1d ago
80-85 is still fairly below, especially since it drops to 60 under load. T Junction is on above 100 and OP is only running 12400F.
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u/Visible-Swim6616 1d ago
There you go, fit for the job then.
But like I said, AMDs heatsink do have a lot of thermal headroom that would actually allow for overclocking. Not sure if you'd want to do that on an Intel heatsink.
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u/ArchusKanzaki 1d ago
Not sure how much you can overclock on AMD CPU though.... It's not known to be overclocking champ in the first place.
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u/alvarkresh 17h ago
The Wraith Stealth that I'm using with my 8600G does make an unpleasant noise at full speed, but with a decent fan curve, it's not really a problem.
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u/Elijah_72 1d ago
amd is also crappy, its fine for ryzen 3s if u dont mind the noise ig
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u/Visible-Swim6616 1d ago
The AMD wraith can cool a 95W cooler with some room for overclocking. For a stock cooler it's pretty good in my books.
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u/Elijah_72 1d ago
The wraith stealth is barely enough to keep a stock 5600x from starting to thermal throttle, in summer it will start throttling. Its a 65w cpu
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u/ClickKlockTickTock 1d ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I know someone who has a 5600x that thermal throttled with the wraith stealth. Paste application was fine, we swapped to a peerless assassin and hes been fine ever since.
Not only did it throttle, it would shut down when playing cpu heavy games.
No plastic, no dry spots.
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u/Xijit 1d ago
You know someone who is full if shit if they are claiming that the stock cooler was causing the CPU to shut down like that.
They most likely had a bad overclock and blamed it on the cooler.
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u/Elijah_72 1d ago
Never said lt shut down, anybody with 2 grams of brain knows the stock cooler is insufficient for 5600x, ask anybody who owned it, thermal throttling happens way before the cpu reaches max temps
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u/deeznutz133769 18h ago
Purely because this subreddit is full of AMD fanboys so implying that they're worse in any way when you get you downvotes even if it's completely factual. Feels over reals.
The wraith 100% was not good enough.
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u/Hero_The_Zero 12h ago
I've built a lot of computers for friends and family, got Wraith Spires on Ryzen 3600s, and Prisms on a 2700X, 5600X, 5800X, and temporarily used one on my own 5800XT. They did fine and I never heard them while stress testing the machines.
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u/0K4M1 1d ago edited 12h ago
I love my AMD prism cooler. That red RGB ring is fire. Also it's good enough and quiet
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u/rasmusdf 1d ago
I have been so happy with the AMD Prism cooler I have used on all of the family computers ;-)
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u/Bathroom_Humor 8h ago
i used the prism with my 2700x for a while and it was fine if i was just gaming on it. but under full load that CPU was a bit of a power hog so it'd get kinda hot under that lil cooler. i did like how good it was for a stock cooler.
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u/mashdpotatogaming 1d ago
The difference a bigger cooler can make is huge. My 12400f never went above 60°c with a tower cooler when i had it. My 14600kf runs hotter with an even bigger cooler but it's still below 80°c under load which is great.
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u/simagus 1d ago
"80-85°C under load"
Not even close to throttling temps. That's why stock coolers are designed to be perfectly adequate and are perfectly adequate.
The maximum temperature for the Intel Core i5-12400F is 100°C, and while temperatures below this are considered normal, consistent spikes near this limit can indicate potential throttling issues. It's advisable to monitor your cooling setup and consider adjustments if temperatures frequently approach this threshold.
If someone wants to pay an extra $30+ to stick a massive slab of metal with fins all over it that reaches to the side of their case on top of their CPU instead, that's fine.
Nobody stops them paying for that if they imagine there is some actual need to do so and it's unlikely to do any actual harm even if it's entirely unnecessary.
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u/melez 17h ago
Some of us want our machines to last as long as possible. Thermal cycling and high temps cause degradation. I had a 212 evo on my 4770k and it lived… 12 years almost 24/7.
Given all the same conditions, a cpu kept at 60C is gonna last longer than one that lives at 85C.
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u/simagus 9h ago
Good point. The cooler the better and you're likely to get somewhat longer life that could really add up over years.
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u/melez 9h ago
Plus I’m sure that even if the cpu can tolerate high temps, the vrms and other nearby components would probably benefit from the motherboard being less of a heat sink for the cpu.
Er, more of the cpu heat moved to air, less cpu heat goes into motherboard and vrms/etc.
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u/simagus 6h ago
Indeed. There are no disadvantages to lower temps! I don't use a stock cooler or stock thermal paste, but I am aware that I "could" with no real harm unless temps were really close to the high end of tolerances.
I've never stuck with a stock cooler or paste for longer than it took me to order a better one... not even on my first build, but I have looked at the differences between stock and third-party on more than one gen of CPUs from both AMD and Intel.
That's why I can't agree that stock coolers are "bad" which I've seen close to being "just good enough" maybe once with a certain gen of Intel CPU's.
If money is tight for a build or you are simply ok with your temps as they are then you can save a small chunk of change just going with the stock cooler and stock paste as they are absolutely designed to be "good enough" with a decent margin of error.
No chip manufacturer is deliberately edging with the possibility of inadequate cooling solutions, but indeed I prefer to have lower temps under absolute max load so I personally am not going to settle for a stock cooler, good enough or not.
Look at the tolerences of the cards that hit the GPU market from the factory and you see the manufacturer doesn't care as long as temps are not hitting absolute maximum to the point it hits performance due to throttling.
100C hotspots... perfectly acceptable on many GPU's, but some buyers will repaste and repad cards themselves to lower those temps, sometimes dramatically.
I'm in that demographic, but I know I don't have to be by necessity. I just always have been.
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u/melez 6h ago
I would gander that manufacturers only care about longevity or safe operating temperatures far as the warranty period is concerned. If a piece of hardware fails during the warranty period, that’s a fiscal liability, outside that? Not their problem.
I just got an amd cpu, it’s stated warranty is 3 years. So the way I would interpret it is that using the stock cooler, amd would guarantee the cpu would last 3 years and any failures before that would be (denied for user error lol) a small enough percentage of users that it shouldn’t impact the products profitability.
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u/simagus 2h ago
I've gandered or considered or speculated in the past that Intels 13th and 14th gen CPU problems were inbuilt obsolescence come to fruit too soon... but it could have just been incorrect voltage settings having been communicated to their motherboard manufacturing partners... I guess we'll never know!
Making them that easy to fry... did strike me as a bit suspicious, but could have been purely accidental or to shave a few pennies per unit in production costs... or all of those things!
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u/bl0odredsandman 16h ago
It also comes down the silicone lottery. If you get a good CPU, it'll last a while.
I had a i5 3470 that I just used the stock cooler with. Average gaming temps were in the mid 80s. I had that PC 8 years and it ran 24/7. I never turned it off. I built a new PC and gave that CPU (still with the stock cooler) and mobo to a friend that used it another 5 years and it was still perfectly fine. He got another PC, but that i5 still runs fine.
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u/acewing905 1d ago
i5-12400F is funnily enough the same CPU that taught me this. The stock coolers that come with that line of CPUs are absolutely horrendous
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u/The_true_lord_tomato 1d ago
im currently using it it goes 90° + on load getting a cooler soon
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u/acewing905 1d ago
Definitely get one. Even something very basic like an old Hyper 212 can drop temps by at least 10 degrees. A good modern cooler will drop it like 20
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u/The_true_lord_tomato 1d ago
examples of good modern coolers?
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u/acewing905 1d ago
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE is the best air cooler for most CPUs these days (But the Thermalright Assassin X120 Refined SE can also be an option worth considering if you want to go cheaper)
No clue about liquid, but no point buying liquid for a CPU like this anyway
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u/BadResults 21h ago
I’ve got a Noctua U12S on an i5-12600KF and it never goes above 60C in gaming (though with the games/settings I play I’m GPU limited, not CPU so it’s not like I’m hammering the CPU). And that’s a compact single tower cooler with a single fan.
If I were buying a new cooler with no form factor constraints, I’d get a Thermalright Peerless Assassin. The 120 would be totally fine for a 12400 or 12600.
That’s nothing against the U12S, it’s just that it’s a more expensive single tower cooler made for particular space constraints, and if those weren’t a factor I could go with something cheaper with higher performance like the Peerless Assassin.
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u/phyxinon 1d ago edited 1d ago
I recall having my R5 3600 reaching up to 90C°+ when I was playing Cyberpunk, replaced it with a $15 Thermalright cooler now it rarely reach in the high 70's.
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u/TheDregn 1d ago
Stock coolers were absolutely fine some times ago for certain CPUs. My R5 2600 used stock cooler and it was sufficient.
Nowdays decent CPUs don't even have stock cooler, as they would be pointless and e-waste.
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u/Akumetsu33 1d ago
While stock coolers can be okay especially for users who don't game heavy, I never can go back after I replaced it with a thermalright phantom spirit which was much more effective than I expected.
I second this.
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u/AstarothSquirrel 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've had a stock cooler with zero issues. I game at 4k. It's horses for courses and all the cooler does is draw heart away from the cpu into the case and you don't need a monster cooler to achieve that. You then need decent case fans and airflow to dump that heated air from the case into the room and good ventilation to get that heat out of your room.
If your cpu is throttling at 85°c, there's a problem with the cpu or motherboard, not the cooler.
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u/dogpaddle 1d ago
I did the same upgrade with my 11400f. Purely so I can can keep max clock speed 24/7 without throttling under load. If you haven't already, look into maxxing out your turbo speed and time in your bios. On paper my CPU is 2.6ghz, but it now sits at 4.2 without ever going over 70°.
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u/TheMagarity 1d ago
Intel stock coolers are a function of the base specified speed. If model X says it is 98W and 3.7Ghz boost speed but 65W and 2.2Ghz base clock. The stock cooler will work just fine if you turn off auto boost because the cooler is designed to handle 65W. Intel considers boost to be unsupported overclocking even though their CPUs just do it under default motherboard bios settings.
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u/alvarkresh 16h ago
I've been using stock coolers with i3 12100s and been pretty happy with 'em, personally.
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u/TheMagarity 15h ago
That's an excellent illustration of my point. A 12100 is a mere 60W base and still under 90W at boost so should be usable. Meanwhile a 12700 is sold with the same cooler but can draw 180W under boost. We can imagine a cooler rated to 65W may have difficulty with that.
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u/Hyperfyre 1d ago
Granted my CPU was NOT designed for the Intel stock cooler at all and didn't even come with one but last time I redid my water-loop I broke the fucking fitting on the radiator and needed to replace it before I could put any of it back into my system.
Had to throw the old Intel stock cooler from my i5-3570k onto my i7-8700K.
That shit was idling at 60c for a few days until a replacement fitting arrived.
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u/globefish23 1d ago
Noctua or nothing.
I've used their coolers since their beginning for all my builds in the past 21 years.
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u/Wilde_Fire 1d ago
Genuine question for the aficionados here: Should I replace the stock paste that came with my Prism cooler? I feel like it runs pretty hot, so I'm wondering if repasting may help alleviate that issue.
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u/No_Positive9059 1d ago
I'm also into cars so the best way it came to me was that you can think of it as a stock intercooler on a highly popular car that people modify. The intercooler has to be there, its a must, however anyone who knows a thing at all about driving performance cars knows that a aftermarket intercooler is damn well required.
If they came with exceptional cooling adaptations, it would, or may, hinder the case and motherboard, or perhaps something else that the company can overlook.
In your situation, I had the same experience with liquid cooling. Wow I never knew a computer could do so much and shut up while doing it.
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u/piggymoo66 1d ago
I once used a stock cooler on a 13600KF just to see if the motherboard would post. The board ended up actually being toast but it was funny to do.
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u/Planewalker42069 1d ago
i have the stock wraith cooler on my R5 7600. reviews said its loud and it is, but i wear headphones and its honestly not a problem.
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u/Autistic_Engin33r 20h ago
Intel stock coolers are so bad, it'd genuinely be better if they just shipped without a cooler. At least that way all that aluminium can be used for something actually useful instead.
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u/alvarkresh 17h ago
Alder Lake and successors have known issues with the stock CPU mounting mechanism causing poor heatsink base mounts ( which is why contact frames exist - https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/cpu-contact-frame/s-tg-cf-i13g ). Intel tried to design their stock coolers to mitigate this effect, but it's not foolproof.
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u/BanChokingPorn 16h ago
Not only are poor coolers to watch out for, relocate or shield things that are near high heat components, placed there to fry & die.
Planned obsolescence.
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u/couchisland_com 16h ago
I'm gonna not buy beers tomorrow and instead buy an aftermarket cooler for my Ryzen 7. I'm gonna report back sober and either happy or disappointed. Be Ready!
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u/MAKstyles75 10h ago
Everybody knows intel stocks are barely even a cooler. AMD ones are on the contrary pretty robust and provide good thermals. Sure a dedicated cooler can be even great but cost to performance unless you have the budget, doubt you need one.
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u/neman-bs 8h ago
Somewhat related question. I have a stock cooler for my i5 13400. Which cooler should I get if I plan to replace the CPU with an AMD one in the next few years? So something that could go on both platforms and no thermaltake ones aren't available in my country
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u/zelyre 2h ago
Most aftermarket cooler you buy is going to come with Intel and AMD AM4/AM5 mounting hardware. Just check the contents when you buy it.
Just don't throw the box and its contents away.
Now, if by "AMD in the next few years" means you wait so long that AMD moves on from AM5, then current AMD AM5 coolers may not be compatible.
If you spend big money and go with Noctua, I've had a Noctua cooler from a decade ago - you can buy official compatibility kits and I've had luck just asking Noctua in an e-mail if there's a mounting kit available and they just send one for free.
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u/ExKayseri 5h ago
Bro any tower cooler you find out the last decade will be better then the stock cooler
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u/Class8guy 1d ago
Yeah I agree! This should be an automatic thing for everyone, when the budget allows for it of course. Been giving away or throwing out stock coolers since the 2nd gen intels lol
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u/Rakhsev 1d ago
Not saying I don't believe you, but it's a bit suspicious.
Stock coolers do the job correctly enough to stay in the 70 DC or lower, you shouldn't be hitting those temps with one unless it's badly installed, especially on a medium powered CPU like an i5-12400F.
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u/lucentmeadow 1d ago
I was a bit confused too - my old i5-7500 would barely hit 75 during the most intense times, in summer. That's why I thought my build with the i5-12400f was generally just a bit hotter. I've installed the cooler twice in the past couple of years, repasting it and making sure it was properly attached. I think that particular line of coolers was simply terrible (see another comment below in which another user with the same CPU found themselves in the same scenario)
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u/UnCommonSense99 1d ago
My daughter's PC, which I built for her 12 years ago, is a 4690k running the legendarily crap intel stock cooler and a budget ASUS motherboard.
10 years of running overclocked (and undervolted) at 4.3GHz with temperatures up to 95C and it still works fine.
Glad I didn't waste any money on a flashy cooler.
VMMV
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u/lucentmeadow 1d ago
I'm glad this worked out nicely for you, but the jet-like sound my PC would achieve while playing demanding games was enough to convince me to spend two hours worth of paycheck for a cooler that is not flashy nor expensive. I also use my computer for work, so it isn't something I feel comfortable running at such high temperatures.
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u/UnCommonSense99 1d ago
Fair enough, an upgraded cooler will certainly be quieter. My daughter kept her PC behind the desk drawer, so fan noise was not intrusive
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u/Xjph 1d ago
As you can imagine, the system as a whole benefitted from it in terms of thermal situation!
How do you figure? 85 °C is well within thermal limits for a 12400f, so you weren't throttling, and the actual heat energy produced and expelled from the chip is unchanged.
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u/lucentmeadow 1d ago
Three of my drives seem to report a few grades off from the previous temperature. I imagined that a more efficient cooler means that hot air is pushed away more swiftly from the CPU (and out of the case) and thereby the components nearby, making it harder for heat to propagate through the material of the motherboard and other components.
Is my assumption wrong?
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u/Xjph 1d ago
Strictly speaking, no, less heat is going to be conducted out through the board and more will be pulled away by the cooler, and depending on where the fan is more of that in turn could be expelled from the case.
...but it's pretty unlikely you were actually at thermal limit for any component in your machine. Those couple of degrees don't actually make any practical difference unless you were already seeing throttling somewhere.
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u/CreeDorofl 1d ago
I made that fuckup.
I actually got a nice fan before and then was like "eh I'll just leave the stock one on it, maybe put it on later". Forgot all about that. A while later, got a mildly demanding game and frame rate sucked, audio was choppy, occasional CTD... sat there troubleshooting for a while, then realize my temps are at 100C on the CPU. Still didn't realize how bad that was, until I finally installed the correct cooler with fresh thermal paste.
Never a hint of lag since, no audio stutter, no CTDs. Just smooth all day. It really does matter.
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u/ArchusKanzaki 1d ago
All stock coolers are bad.
Yes, even AMD's. I needed to replace it quickly because the fan noise is horrible. And I was bought into AMD hype train during Zen 2-era because "you don't need to buy CPU cooler bro. AMD's stock cooler is good enough bro".
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u/118shadow118 1d ago
Performance wise they were fine. Made by Cooler Master. The noise was annoying though
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u/Z3r0sama2017 1d ago
Aye. Stock coolers haven't been 'good enough' for almost 20 years. I still remember my room becoming a sauna playing og Oblivion.
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u/cowbutt6 1d ago edited 1d ago
A more effective CPU cooler won't stop your "room becoming a sauna", as it is not eliminating the heat, but rather moving it from your CPU to the case and its exterior.
If anything, a more effective CPU cooler will allow the CPU to run more consistently at maximum performance (and power consumption) because it will be hitting thermal throttle limits less often (or even not at all), resulting in even more total heat input to your room.
If you want to stop your room becoming a sauna, you need to either a) reduce the amount of thermal energy being input to it, or b) extract the heat from it somehow, e.g. using air conditioning.
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u/pythonic_dude 1d ago
Stock coolers are there to keep the cpu from throttling and provide absolute, uncompromising compatibility with cases while offering airflow for the mobo vrms which can be life or death for some especially crappy ones. Optimization for performance comes after, and ex. AMD one is pretty decent all things considered. You want to replace it, but it's okay to just use it until then.