DEEPCOOL Assassin III vs. Dark Rock Pro 4 vs. Noctua NH-D15 Chromax Black

For my future 11th gen Intel/4th gen Ryzen 8 or 12 core CPU. Likely the i7-1170k or Ryzen 7 5800/5900x. Looking to secure less-return sensitive parts before they get harder to acquire. So I figure a cooler is an easy bet.

Current 8700k is going to become my new TV gamer and will be donating my Ryzen 5 1600 to a family member.

Case will be Corsair 275R Airflow (170mm CPU Cooler height)

What will have the best performance for the money?

$89 DEEPCOOL Assassin III
https://www.amazon.com/Assassin-III-Heatpipes-Clearance-Technology/dp/B07T4FNXWD

$89 Dark Rock Pro 4
https://www.amazon.com/quiet-Dark-Rock-BK022-Cooler/dp/B07BY6F8D9

$170 Chromax Black (low stock, should be $100. Won’t get the ugly one)
Noctua NH-D15 Chromax Black

I’m leaning towards the DEEPCOOL Assassin III for price, aesthetics, and RAM compatibility.

What’s you opinion? Lily? “You”? Others?

IIRC the d15 can fit tall rams as well, you just have to offset the fan a bit which seems to be the case with the deep cool as well.

Really at this point it comes down to what your choice aesthetics since they’re all similar in perf.

My preference
D15 Chromax > Assassin iii > BeQuiet
D15 Chromax’s black is a matte black which looks amazing…when its dust free.
I believe the D15 beats the Assassin iii by a bit.

I used the dark rock pro 4 and removing the fans to take off the cooler pains me cause it scratches the cooler.

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I’m personally a fan of Noctua so I would say look at the UPS truck and learn to love the brown!

That said $170 chromax is outrageous. Having known a guy who tests coolers for one of the large web sites we link to a lot here, he always raves about Noctua’s build quality and I swapped over to them a decade ago and never looked back.

For the money, the deepcool offers Noctua like performance, slightly louder, and a killer price. Build quality may be a step back but still better than most of the competition.

Here’s my two cents about Be Quiet Dark Rock coolers; they look great, the coolers are well built, the fans are silent, I look at their performance against the competition and I often shake my head. That said it’s more than capable.

All three coolers are easy to install but Noctua customer service is top tier. Ten years from now AMD or Intel can come out with a new socket that my cooler won’t support and I know I can contact Noctua and they will send me a free mounting kit.

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I bought the NH-D15 Cromax Black on 12/29 for the same reason but I got it for $99.95. That gets my vote too. I considered the others but this one is king based on reviews. Just wait for it to be retail price again.

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I believe you have to do the same with the dark rock pro 4 as well so all three should have similar RAM clearance

I think the DRP4 has the worst “look” with RAM accommodations, since the unit itself seems more unified. The other two look less so, but the Deepcool seems to look less strange with the fan raised.

The NH-D15 is my first choice too, but yeah it’s just not available.

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I think the Noctua NH-D15S Chroma Black (the single fan version) is available through Amazon and for a reasonable price ($90 as of today: 1/11/2021).

And I think the single fan version’s performance is very comparable to the double fan one (if it isn’t, you can always add another AF-15 fan).

The only difference between the NH-D15 and NH-D15S that I can determine, is that the S variant has the cooler leaning slightly away from the GPU side to give more room for too-close-to-the-CPU 16xPCIe slot motherboards.

Hard to go wrong with Noctua. I don’t have a D15, but do have an D14 and it’s been performing beautifully for going on 5 years now.

Deepcool Assassin III review: Slaying the competition!:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/deepcool-assassin-iii-gamer-storm-cpu-air-cooler

Plenty of Deepcool Assassin III reviews.
https://www.google.com/search?q=deepcool+assassin+iii+review&oq=deepcool+assassin+iii+review&aqs=chrome.0.0i457j0i22i30.5507j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

They all seem pretty comparable in performance; think it’s mostly price and aesthetics.

I really like the Deepcool looks, so it may end up just being that.

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Yup, I bought my Assassin 3 at USD 70. It can tame my 5900X at 82C (30C ambient with RTX 3080 dumping heat) max load.

One more thing. Don’t forget to get lipstick paste. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme. 2g version if you can find it with stock.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Kryonaut+extreme&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Kingpin Kpx works as well.

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I recently just bought the NH-D15. Pretty impressive performance. My CPU is 8600k overclock to 4.9 GHz. My old cooler was AIO keep the temperature under 81 degree celsius. The NH-D15 keep temperature is under 74 degree celsius. Most of the time it’s under 70. And I only use one fan because of ram height.

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30c ambient holy cow

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Thats what you get when you live in tropics.

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If your PC case can fit it, get the D15.

It also lacks the high fan position of the D15, the “s” can go in cases that take coolers up to 160mm as opposed to the D15 165mm height. That’s not a bad prrice of $90 for the Noctua NH-D15S Chroma Black. You can wait for the chroma version of the NF-A12x25 and stick it on the front of the cooler down the line for even better performance.

I just put a Scythe Mugen 5 on my itx build…best cooler I’ve ever had.

On second thought, went with the Deepcool since it seems to perform a bit better than the Noctua if a bit louder. Also wanted to be different than my friends system.

Picked it up for $89.99.

Going to use it on my 8700k for now, until I finally find a 5900x or later in March when the new Intel chips launch, I will have a good cooler ready.

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I missed this thread, the noctua dh 15 ram space will still give you ram clearance, I have changed cases 3 times and still have my current G skill flare X sticks, you just have to slightly adjust the fan upward and it will be fine.

either way the assassin and noctua are neck to neck cooling wise, for the price now, the assassin does make sense

From my personal experiences, I’d avoid Deepcool products.

They are trash. I had a AIO cooler, and it leaked at the seals due to faulty manufacturing and not enough bonding. I know you’re not going liquid, but still, avoid them.

Buy once, cry once, and get the Noctua.