**A Look at the CR 1200 Cooler: A Budget-Friendly Option**

The CR 1200 cooler is a budget-friendly option that offers decent performance for low-power CPUs. In this article, we'll take a closer look at its features, performance, and value.

One of the key aspects of the CR 1200 cooler is its flatness test results. The test assesses the flatness of the plate, which is an important metric to consider when evaluating coolers. While this isn't the most critical metric, it's still interesting to see how the CR 1200 performs in this area. According to the manufacturer, the CR 1200 has a good result for the median flatness, with a Box of 121 microns of depth. This is a relatively small Delta, considering that some coolers have larger variations.

However, it's worth noting that the CR 1200 has some spiky craters on the charge, which could potentially affect its performance. The maximum depth of these craters is 121 microns, which may seem like a lot, but in context, it's actually relatively small. The important thing to take away from this result is that the CR 1200 passes the bar of being functional at low heat loads.

In terms of real-world performance, the CR 1200 has some limitations. It's not designed to handle high-power CPUs and may throttle under heavy loads. However, it does perform reasonably well for lower-wattage chips. For example, an R5 3000 Series or R5 5600 non-X would be a good match for this cooler.

The CR 1200 also has some unique features that set it apart from other coolers in its class. It's incredibly affordable, with prices ranging from $3 to $7 on AliExpress and $15 from Amazon in the US. This makes it an attractive option for those who want a budget-friendly cooler without sacrificing too much performance.

One potential drawback of the CR 1200 is its design. The fins are very thin, which may make them prone to damage or wear out quickly. Additionally, the mounting system can be a bit finicky, particularly when it comes to securing the cooler to the CPU socket. However, these issues can often be overcome with some patience and experimentation.

In comparison to other coolers in its class, the CR 1200 has some interesting results. For example, it's actually better than the older Spire cooler at low heat loads. However, it falls behind the newer Spirit cooler, which is about $18 and offers similar performance.

Overall, the CR 1200 cooler is a decent option for those who want a budget-friendly solution for their low-power CPU needs. While it may not be perfect, it's better than nothing and can provide acceptable performance at low heat loads. If you're in the market for a cheap cooler that won't compromise too much on performance, the CR 1200 is definitely worth considering.

**Comparison to Other Coolers**

In terms of competition, the CR 1200 has some interesting results. For example, it's better than the Corsair A500, which was a mainstream brand cooler at launch and costs around $100. However, it falls behind the newer Assassin X cooler, which is about $18 and offers similar performance.

The Spirit cooler is actually one of the best coolers in its class, offering excellent performance and quiet operation. It's worth noting that the CR 1200 may not be the best option for high-wattage CPUs or those who need a cooler with more advanced features.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the CR 1200 cooler is a budget-friendly option that offers decent performance for low-power CPUs. While it has some limitations and drawbacks, it's better than nothing and can provide acceptable performance at low heat loads. If you're in the market for a cheap cooler that won't compromise too much on performance, the CR 1200 is definitely worth considering.

**Recommendations**

Based on our experience with the CR 1200 cooler, we would recommend it to those who:

* Want a budget-friendly solution for their low-power CPU needs

* Don't need advanced features or high-performance cooling

* Are looking for a cooler that won't break the bank

However, if you're in the market for a cooler that can handle higher-wattage CPUs or offers more advanced features, we would recommend considering other options.

**Behind-the-Scenes**

As always, our team enjoys working on these kinds of projects. They're simple, straightforward, and often provide interesting insights into the world of computer cooling. If you have any other unique coolers you'd like us to look at, let us know what they are in the comments! We'll consider them for future review and may even feature them in a Roundup or video article.

**Subscribing and Supporting**

As always, we appreciate your support and encourage you to subscribe to our channel and visit our website to learn more about our projects. If you'd like to contribute to our efforts, please consider supporting us on Patreon or through one of the affiliate links below.

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Thanks for reading, and we'll catch you in the next article!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe bought this cooler originally for 2.77 on AliExpress it's been as much as seven dollars and this is one of the cheapest possible aftermarket cooling solutions available on the market the name for this is the jonesbow CR 1200 CPU Cooler fan RGB three pin two heat pipe Tower automatic lighting cooling Fan's heat sink so the name could use a little bit of work but we're going to go with cr1200 this is actually the first two heat pipe cooler we'll have on our test bench it's a compact 92 millimeter Tower with a pretty dense fin stack surprisingly they've gone as far as including an RGB LED light in the top and miraculously it was under three dollars when we bought it now uh the realistic I'm on new not even cynical might say there's no way they're profiting on three dollars for a cooler how are they being subsidized and we don't know before that this video is brought to you by Squarespace we use Squarespace for our own GN store and juggle complex multi-piece orders all the time with it Squarespace makes it fast for us to roll out new products with detailed Pages full of galleries videos and descriptors it's also useful for your own resume sites for a photographer or project portfolios or for starting your new small business idea there's never been a better time to try and start your new business than right now and we can vouch that Squarespace makes it easy visit squarespace.com Gamers Nexus to get 10 off your first purchase with Squarespace what we can tell you is that johnsbo often oems for other companies so they either own the factories or they have very good relationships with those factories and that probably helps them a little bit on the pricing the closest competition to this is probably going to be amd's included wraith heat sink so like the prism or the spire and then next would be thermal rights Spirit the Assassin Spirit now renamed to the Assassin X which is about 19 and therefore hundreds of percent more expensive than the three dollar Jones boat cooler so uh it seems like AliExpress has about a thousand of these literally left in stock after we bought the two that we bought and we're gonna take a look at it so first off jonesbow is actually a real company it's not just some fly-by-night sticker Factory where all they do is buy things from someone else and put a sticker on it and ship it out the door again so this is a company it's been around a long time Jonesboro made the Rose Bowl cullinan we reviewed it many years ago it's an old case Rosewell is a house brand keeps doing that it's like a it's like a store brand of Newegg and uh jonesbow has been the supplier for Brands like that for a long time where they'll make some tweaks to the supply but for the most part the business is kind of you want one of our cases okay here's the price we'll put your logo on it deal done may we add a fan if you want to pay extra or whatever so they're kind of real which maybe explains part of why it's so cheap the price range on this is extremely variable as a percentage because 2.77 ranging up to seven dollars is over a hundred percent increase in price so uh that affects I guess the value judgment of the review but nonetheless it's it's a sub 10 thing the AliExpress page works actually really hard to try and sell this cooler they highlight it's quote nine centimeter color lamp effect with soft light fan blade to find different beautiful fan blade detachable design for later cleaning and maintenance I will give it to them that's pretty convincing and is in fact why we bought it the page also accidentally copies and pays marketing from an entirely different product page when it says four or six millimeter heat pipes which is actually just not true it's two heat pipes like they already said but it's 2.77 so you can't expect them to be honest with their marketing at that price I look at Corsair Nvidia AMD Intel everyone at some point has fudged the numbers a little bit for far more expensive products we think what they're trying to say is that it's two heat pipes and if you multiply it by two it becomes four because when you look through it it looks like four but it's two because that's how a pipe works but Jonesborough has some brand credibility and as long as it's better than free coolers that are included in the CPU you pay for them of course that's really all it has to be better then and if it stands as a viable alternative for CPUs that don't include a cooler then fair enough from Amazon the competition is the Amazon Basics cooler reviewed several weeks ago and this is just a Cooler Master basically Rebrand with some uh slight modification like to the labeling but the most obvious difference is the thin thickness and some of the fin density where these fins are much flimsier and they make a particular sound when you interact with them that kind of makes clear how flimsy they are but as long as it performs it's all that really matters uh so this thing this thing has measurements of 93 millimeters wide it has a 92 millimeter fan it's 128 millimeters tall and it's 67 millimeters deep clearance is not an issue for Ram with this because it's about the same depth as the CPU socket itself it is a very small cooler and the height is beneficial to it as well the cooler supports everything from lj775 to LJ 1700 and fm1 to am2 up to am5 so they do that with a simple bracket and an at times uncomfortable clamp system which Mike will talk about later to be fair we're actually incredibly impressed with the cost for the size even if it's seven dollars when you find it it's still pretty good pricing but that doesn't mean anything without some numbers so time to get into some thermal testing we'll link the CPU Cooler testing methodology in the description below if you want to learn about it hasn't changed much since we posted that for this cooler we are only running one heat load and that's going to be about 68 Watts because anything more than that like say the 120 watt heat load is just not going to be able to do that's the end of the story for that this would be comparable to lower price CPUs like an R5 5600 most I3 CPUs some I5 non-k CPUs depending on generation and given the wide compatibility for this cooler which again includes a socket type that dates back to 2006 one caveat here is we have not tested all of those socket types with this so it's possible that this doesn't work well with some of the sockets it dates back to 2006. we cannot possibly find the time to test that many sockets you're talking sockets that probably a lot of people in the audience have never heard of or at least never built with so uh just some context there but we've got some newer stuff so let's get started our first chart uses a 68 watt heat load with noise normalized fan speeds and reusing the fans included with the coolers this is the chart that we ended up with and we'll look at the max fan speed next the Jones Bose CR 1200 cooler held 35 DBA at 20 inches distance in our standard environment when running at 1870 RPM or about 9.7 volts under DC control it kept the CPU at 48 degrees delta T over ambient for T die and that means that it's the same in both idle and load temperatures as the AMD wraith prism cooler at the same noise level it's not a great start but if you buy a CPU that doesn't include one of those coolers which is most of them at this point it'd be one of the cheapest alternatives to go with the cr1200 the cr1200 outperforms the raised Spire though the aspire's 52 degree result creates a four degree gap which is relatively large for the price and spending an extra 13 to 17 depending on timing would get you the thermal right assassin Spirit which is now commonly sold as the Assassin x120 that cooler runs an impressive 10 degrees cooler which is massive when talking thermals that's enough to support a higher power CPU like 125 watt heat load and is a big jump in the quality of cooler the cr1200 fits the bill of minimum viable for something like this which is a valid category that's a product that needs to exist just be aware that it is in fact minimally viable and it has limitations we'll also briefly look at vrm Thermals that's because the closest competition is Andy's downdraft prism which should have an advantage for vrm cooling due to its top down flow the CR 1200 did fine for the vrm it's not like the CPU Cooler is solely responsible for the mosfets but our hypothesis was otherwise proven here the prism held the vrms at 22.9 degrees Celsius over Ambience up to 25.1 depends on which fat you looked at the CR 1200 ran about four degrees warmer so it's not terrible but it is proof of concept that the downdraft is beneficial here and if it's otherwise the same it's just not a good position for the CR 1200 to be in fully unlocking the fan speed and loosening that control we land at 38.6 DBA for the CR 1200 which when tested equally to the others makes it significantly quieter than the prism's 100 noise level at 47.2 DBA for reference a 10 DBA difference is approximately a two times increase in perceived volume to the human ear now we're not talking about acoustic power here that scale is closer to say 3 DB but rather the perceptible change the prism is about two times louder than to the ear when at 100 speed and for that increase it climbs the charge to 42 and a half degrees Celsius over ambient this CR 1200 landed at 46.6 so that's a four degree increase for significantly less noise it's not bad it's actually one of the better qualities here but it's still less scalable and there's less room to pump the RPM if you really needed to this makes the 1200 better outright than the Spire but worse than just about everything else and the passive coolers are kind of a different thing once again the 19 thermal right Spirit dominates for its price at 37.9 degrees and of course that's the one that's been renamed so you look for the Assassin X now it's time to look at installation and hear from Mike about some of his thoughts on how the cooler installs so as is becoming tradition we're going to start with am4 then we're going to cover the differences with the Intel installation and then we'll close out with some critiques and criticisms so the installation on aim4 here is completely toolless you don't need any tools there's there's there's no screws to install we're going to utilize the stock am4 brackets here so I'm already got my CPU socketed so I'm just going to go ahead and put some thermal paste down so if you've ever installed a stock am4 or am5 cooler this process is going to look very familiar and you probably don't love it I certainly don't love it so I'm just going to hook one side here get that pushed down hold some pressure and push down our other clip until it is latched and uh that's it well I guess that's not totally it I haven't installed the fan yet this fan is actually it's a it's pretty nice for a cheapo cooler it's got some foam on the back here we're going to want that facing the cooler and that's just going to cut down on some vibration and dampen any noise that would occur otherwise without those foam pads there this cooler uses some traditional fan Clips so nothing terribly complex about this and that wraps up the am4 AMD installation so let's take a look at the Intel installation you are going to need to install your CPU first before you put this bracket down because as you can see it's going to prevent you from lifting that Levering arm for the ilm this is not a new approach to installing this style of cooler onto the Intel sockets we're going to drop so we're going to put a bracket into place then we're going to drop down these plastic plugs or clips that are actually going to go through the holes here and you're going to push those down and they're going to clip into place and then you're going to follow it up with this plastic plug and that just keeps it from coming back out we're not going to go to all four corners because then the rest of the installation is the same as am4 critiques and criticisms um it's a cheap cooler these latching style coolers are kind of a pain they hurt your fingers they're even more difficult to get off than they are to put on I'm not a fan of them but I mean we're we're at a super duper budget class cooler here I thought the vibration dampening foam on the back of the fan was kind of a nice touch at this price point Everything You Touch on the cooler feels very cheap it's just it's a budget product so I guess that's to be expected but beyond that it worked fine we didn't have any problems with the fan all the components were there so that wraps up the installation segment uh back to you Steve pressure testing is up next this looks at the pressure applied by the coolers mounting hardware to the CPU and it's the same bracket used for everything for all of those sockets that were listed earlier that includes am5 LJ 1700 and 4 and all the older stuff too we are sponsoring this section of the video with our own project and soldering mat which you can grab on store.gamersaccess.net for a really Hefty surface for all kinds of hobbyists or Enthusiast projects and a massive thanks to everyone who's bought one of these we're thrilled to see all the tweets coming in for various uses ranging once again from things like models and hobbies to electronics repair the these help fund our testing efforts in lab directly and allow us to continue pushing high quality content without sacrifice the team here is proud of the work we put out and we're able to take our time on it thanks to those of you who support us on store.gamersex.net or via patreon.com Gamers Nexus here's the results tested on the first ryzen CPU we got a terrible pressure map this is closer to the Amazon Basics cooler and we'll show that again briefly than anything else we've looked at it's not a surprise though given the price and some of the mounting considerations that Mike had like the fact that it's just a clamp but that doesn't make it less bad as a result we can clearly see two heat Pipes making solid contacts just the rest of the coolers under minimal pressure and it relies more heavily on good paced spread we see that Trend continue in the next scan although the pressure on this one increased on those two heat pipes and the left Edge for the next CPU we saw basically the same results between the two pressure scans this is the week weakest points of the cooler the pressure itself and it's what contributes to that lower ranking positioning on the charts compared to say the AMD stock coolers the final test is for cold plate flatness although this isn't the most important metric Standalone it can be coupled with the pressure test to have a full understanding of how a cooler might conform to a CPU the CR 1200 had a good result for the median flatness that's the Box on the charge with a couple of spiky craters to maximally 121 microns of depth point to point that's a large Delta but the important thing is the context of it in this case it's a single deep point in the Contours and we can find this along the heat pipes for the direct contact and the plate the pipes could use some more fill and material around them to improve this contact further but that would make this more than three dollars or seven or whatever it is right now so that's not viable for something that is in fact minimally viable because this passes the bar of it works I guess so let's ship it and it's not as bad as we'd expect though for such a cheap cooler so it gets some credit for at least being better than the Corsair A500 which was like a hundred dollar mainstream brand cooler back when it launched this video is pretty simple really it's fun it's fun to look at stuff like this that is either just miraculously cheap or weird or way too expensive and in this case it's certainly not what we would call good but it probably qualifies for fine uh and that's fine it's not really meant to be a high power cooler this is okay for a low power CPU so something like 65 Watts something like an R5 3000 Series an R5 5600 non-x especially that's really efficient chip with pretty low power consumption those would make sense for this i3s stuff like that if you haven't included wraith prism uh if you're using any of these probably just use The Wraith prism maybe there's some kind of specific use case that applied to year I think I cut my skin a little bit earlier when I was scratching the fins they are very thin so it may apply to you for something like a specific compact Tower maybe you have a really just again specific build in mind of some kind of front to back gonna be a small case but still large enough to accommodate 92 millimeters and some reason you don't want downdrafts maybe it's right up against the glass panel something like that but although I need to have the height problem for this one so uh this we basically what we're getting at here is this is better than nothing uh and there are coolers that are worse than nothing A coolers that would only throttle on basically anything those are worse than nothing because it leads you to believe that it's functional when it's not this is functional at low heat loads it's better than the older Spire it's not better than the prism the prism is about the same in the 35 DBA noise normalized results and it's better for vrm cooling if that matters too much and it's definitely better at the top and 100 speed because it has more room to boost that fan the thermal right Spirit here or the Assassin X's they call it now it's like 18 bucks and this one is probably it's the best in class that we've tested at the moment in terms of cheap coolers but once again very different price category from this however if you want something that's a little bit more real in that it can support higher wattage CPUs this is where we'd send you extremely competitive at the price point for something like 125 watt CPU somewhere in there mounting for the Jones boat cooler is also fine it's a little bit annoying to dismount on am4 just because you'll need to kind of keep that pressure loaded as evenly as you can so it doesn't rip the CPU out of the socket at an angle this is a little more prone to that than a four-point design but you can work around it and then the price range is three dollars to seven dollars on AliExpress and it's 15 or so from Amazon in the US so that's it for this one a pretty interesting it's fun if you have any other unique coolers you'd like us to look at let us know what they're called the comments and upvote each other so we can see the most interesting ones float up to the top and we'll buy those and we'll review them in our next one or maybe do a Roundup or something but uh the whole team enjoys working on these because they're simple they're straightforward and they're interesting that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more go to store.gamersaccess.net to grab a solder mat or patreon.com Gamer's Nexus to help us out directly and get a couple of extra behind the scenes videos thanks for watching we'll see you all next timewe bought this cooler originally for 2.77 on AliExpress it's been as much as seven dollars and this is one of the cheapest possible aftermarket cooling solutions available on the market the name for this is the jonesbow CR 1200 CPU Cooler fan RGB three pin two heat pipe Tower automatic lighting cooling Fan's heat sink so the name could use a little bit of work but we're going to go with cr1200 this is actually the first two heat pipe cooler we'll have on our test bench it's a compact 92 millimeter Tower with a pretty dense fin stack surprisingly they've gone as far as including an RGB LED light in the top and miraculously it was under three dollars when we bought it now uh the realistic I'm on new not even cynical might say there's no way they're profiting on three dollars for a cooler how are they being subsidized and we don't know before that this video is brought to you by Squarespace we use Squarespace for our own GN store and juggle complex multi-piece orders all the time with it Squarespace makes it fast for us to roll out new products with detailed Pages full of galleries videos and descriptors it's also useful for your own resume sites for a photographer or project portfolios or for starting your new small business idea there's never been a better time to try and start your new business than right now and we can vouch that Squarespace makes it easy visit squarespace.com Gamers Nexus to get 10 off your first purchase with Squarespace what we can tell you is that johnsbo often oems for other companies so they either own the factories or they have very good relationships with those factories and that probably helps them a little bit on the pricing the closest competition to this is probably going to be amd's included wraith heat sink so like the prism or the spire and then next would be thermal rights Spirit the Assassin Spirit now renamed to the Assassin X which is about 19 and therefore hundreds of percent more expensive than the three dollar Jones boat cooler so uh it seems like AliExpress has about a thousand of these literally left in stock after we bought the two that we bought and we're gonna take a look at it so first off jonesbow is actually a real company it's not just some fly-by-night sticker Factory where all they do is buy things from someone else and put a sticker on it and ship it out the door again so this is a company it's been around a long time Jonesboro made the Rose Bowl cullinan we reviewed it many years ago it's an old case Rosewell is a house brand keeps doing that it's like a it's like a store brand of Newegg and uh jonesbow has been the supplier for Brands like that for a long time where they'll make some tweaks to the supply but for the most part the business is kind of you want one of our cases okay here's the price we'll put your logo on it deal done may we add a fan if you want to pay extra or whatever so they're kind of real which maybe explains part of why it's so cheap the price range on this is extremely variable as a percentage because 2.77 ranging up to seven dollars is over a hundred percent increase in price so uh that affects I guess the value judgment of the review but nonetheless it's it's a sub 10 thing the AliExpress page works actually really hard to try and sell this cooler they highlight it's quote nine centimeter color lamp effect with soft light fan blade to find different beautiful fan blade detachable design for later cleaning and maintenance I will give it to them that's pretty convincing and is in fact why we bought it the page also accidentally copies and pays marketing from an entirely different product page when it says four or six millimeter heat pipes which is actually just not true it's two heat pipes like they already said but it's 2.77 so you can't expect them to be honest with their marketing at that price I look at Corsair Nvidia AMD Intel everyone at some point has fudged the numbers a little bit for far more expensive products we think what they're trying to say is that it's two heat pipes and if you multiply it by two it becomes four because when you look through it it looks like four but it's two because that's how a pipe works but Jonesborough has some brand credibility and as long as it's better than free coolers that are included in the CPU you pay for them of course that's really all it has to be better then and if it stands as a viable alternative for CPUs that don't include a cooler then fair enough from Amazon the competition is the Amazon Basics cooler reviewed several weeks ago and this is just a Cooler Master basically Rebrand with some uh slight modification like to the labeling but the most obvious difference is the thin thickness and some of the fin density where these fins are much flimsier and they make a particular sound when you interact with them that kind of makes clear how flimsy they are but as long as it performs it's all that really matters uh so this thing this thing has measurements of 93 millimeters wide it has a 92 millimeter fan it's 128 millimeters tall and it's 67 millimeters deep clearance is not an issue for Ram with this because it's about the same depth as the CPU socket itself it is a very small cooler and the height is beneficial to it as well the cooler supports everything from lj775 to LJ 1700 and fm1 to am2 up to am5 so they do that with a simple bracket and an at times uncomfortable clamp system which Mike will talk about later to be fair we're actually incredibly impressed with the cost for the size even if it's seven dollars when you find it it's still pretty good pricing but that doesn't mean anything without some numbers so time to get into some thermal testing we'll link the CPU Cooler testing methodology in the description below if you want to learn about it hasn't changed much since we posted that for this cooler we are only running one heat load and that's going to be about 68 Watts because anything more than that like say the 120 watt heat load is just not going to be able to do that's the end of the story for that this would be comparable to lower price CPUs like an R5 5600 most I3 CPUs some I5 non-k CPUs depending on generation and given the wide compatibility for this cooler which again includes a socket type that dates back to 2006 one caveat here is we have not tested all of those socket types with this so it's possible that this doesn't work well with some of the sockets it dates back to 2006. we cannot possibly find the time to test that many sockets you're talking sockets that probably a lot of people in the audience have never heard of or at least never built with so uh just some context there but we've got some newer stuff so let's get started our first chart uses a 68 watt heat load with noise normalized fan speeds and reusing the fans included with the coolers this is the chart that we ended up with and we'll look at the max fan speed next the Jones Bose CR 1200 cooler held 35 DBA at 20 inches distance in our standard environment when running at 1870 RPM or about 9.7 volts under DC control it kept the CPU at 48 degrees delta T over ambient for T die and that means that it's the same in both idle and load temperatures as the AMD wraith prism cooler at the same noise level it's not a great start but if you buy a CPU that doesn't include one of those coolers which is most of them at this point it'd be one of the cheapest alternatives to go with the cr1200 the cr1200 outperforms the raised Spire though the aspire's 52 degree result creates a four degree gap which is relatively large for the price and spending an extra 13 to 17 depending on timing would get you the thermal right assassin Spirit which is now commonly sold as the Assassin x120 that cooler runs an impressive 10 degrees cooler which is massive when talking thermals that's enough to support a higher power CPU like 125 watt heat load and is a big jump in the quality of cooler the cr1200 fits the bill of minimum viable for something like this which is a valid category that's a product that needs to exist just be aware that it is in fact minimally viable and it has limitations we'll also briefly look at vrm Thermals that's because the closest competition is Andy's downdraft prism which should have an advantage for vrm cooling due to its top down flow the CR 1200 did fine for the vrm it's not like the CPU Cooler is solely responsible for the mosfets but our hypothesis was otherwise proven here the prism held the vrms at 22.9 degrees Celsius over Ambience up to 25.1 depends on which fat you looked at the CR 1200 ran about four degrees warmer so it's not terrible but it is proof of concept that the downdraft is beneficial here and if it's otherwise the same it's just not a good position for the CR 1200 to be in fully unlocking the fan speed and loosening that control we land at 38.6 DBA for the CR 1200 which when tested equally to the others makes it significantly quieter than the prism's 100 noise level at 47.2 DBA for reference a 10 DBA difference is approximately a two times increase in perceived volume to the human ear now we're not talking about acoustic power here that scale is closer to say 3 DB but rather the perceptible change the prism is about two times louder than to the ear when at 100 speed and for that increase it climbs the charge to 42 and a half degrees Celsius over ambient this CR 1200 landed at 46.6 so that's a four degree increase for significantly less noise it's not bad it's actually one of the better qualities here but it's still less scalable and there's less room to pump the RPM if you really needed to this makes the 1200 better outright than the Spire but worse than just about everything else and the passive coolers are kind of a different thing once again the 19 thermal right Spirit dominates for its price at 37.9 degrees and of course that's the one that's been renamed so you look for the Assassin X now it's time to look at installation and hear from Mike about some of his thoughts on how the cooler installs so as is becoming tradition we're going to start with am4 then we're going to cover the differences with the Intel installation and then we'll close out with some critiques and criticisms so the installation on aim4 here is completely toolless you don't need any tools there's there's there's no screws to install we're going to utilize the stock am4 brackets here so I'm already got my CPU socketed so I'm just going to go ahead and put some thermal paste down so if you've ever installed a stock am4 or am5 cooler this process is going to look very familiar and you probably don't love it I certainly don't love it so I'm just going to hook one side here get that pushed down hold some pressure and push down our other clip until it is latched and uh that's it well I guess that's not totally it I haven't installed the fan yet this fan is actually it's a it's pretty nice for a cheapo cooler it's got some foam on the back here we're going to want that facing the cooler and that's just going to cut down on some vibration and dampen any noise that would occur otherwise without those foam pads there this cooler uses some traditional fan Clips so nothing terribly complex about this and that wraps up the am4 AMD installation so let's take a look at the Intel installation you are going to need to install your CPU first before you put this bracket down because as you can see it's going to prevent you from lifting that Levering arm for the ilm this is not a new approach to installing this style of cooler onto the Intel sockets we're going to drop so we're going to put a bracket into place then we're going to drop down these plastic plugs or clips that are actually going to go through the holes here and you're going to push those down and they're going to clip into place and then you're going to follow it up with this plastic plug and that just keeps it from coming back out we're not going to go to all four corners because then the rest of the installation is the same as am4 critiques and criticisms um it's a cheap cooler these latching style coolers are kind of a pain they hurt your fingers they're even more difficult to get off than they are to put on I'm not a fan of them but I mean we're we're at a super duper budget class cooler here I thought the vibration dampening foam on the back of the fan was kind of a nice touch at this price point Everything You Touch on the cooler feels very cheap it's just it's a budget product so I guess that's to be expected but beyond that it worked fine we didn't have any problems with the fan all the components were there so that wraps up the installation segment uh back to you Steve pressure testing is up next this looks at the pressure applied by the coolers mounting hardware to the CPU and it's the same bracket used for everything for all of those sockets that were listed earlier that includes am5 LJ 1700 and 4 and all the older stuff too we are sponsoring this section of the video with our own project and soldering mat which you can grab on store.gamersaccess.net for a really Hefty surface for all kinds of hobbyists or Enthusiast projects and a massive thanks to everyone who's bought one of these we're thrilled to see all the tweets coming in for various uses ranging once again from things like models and hobbies to electronics repair the these help fund our testing efforts in lab directly and allow us to continue pushing high quality content without sacrifice the team here is proud of the work we put out and we're able to take our time on it thanks to those of you who support us on store.gamersex.net or via patreon.com Gamers Nexus here's the results tested on the first ryzen CPU we got a terrible pressure map this is closer to the Amazon Basics cooler and we'll show that again briefly than anything else we've looked at it's not a surprise though given the price and some of the mounting considerations that Mike had like the fact that it's just a clamp but that doesn't make it less bad as a result we can clearly see two heat Pipes making solid contacts just the rest of the coolers under minimal pressure and it relies more heavily on good paced spread we see that Trend continue in the next scan although the pressure on this one increased on those two heat pipes and the left Edge for the next CPU we saw basically the same results between the two pressure scans this is the week weakest points of the cooler the pressure itself and it's what contributes to that lower ranking positioning on the charts compared to say the AMD stock coolers the final test is for cold plate flatness although this isn't the most important metric Standalone it can be coupled with the pressure test to have a full understanding of how a cooler might conform to a CPU the CR 1200 had a good result for the median flatness that's the Box on the charge with a couple of spiky craters to maximally 121 microns of depth point to point that's a large Delta but the important thing is the context of it in this case it's a single deep point in the Contours and we can find this along the heat pipes for the direct contact and the plate the pipes could use some more fill and material around them to improve this contact further but that would make this more than three dollars or seven or whatever it is right now so that's not viable for something that is in fact minimally viable because this passes the bar of it works I guess so let's ship it and it's not as bad as we'd expect though for such a cheap cooler so it gets some credit for at least being better than the Corsair A500 which was like a hundred dollar mainstream brand cooler back when it launched this video is pretty simple really it's fun it's fun to look at stuff like this that is either just miraculously cheap or weird or way too expensive and in this case it's certainly not what we would call good but it probably qualifies for fine uh and that's fine it's not really meant to be a high power cooler this is okay for a low power CPU so something like 65 Watts something like an R5 3000 Series an R5 5600 non-x especially that's really efficient chip with pretty low power consumption those would make sense for this i3s stuff like that if you haven't included wraith prism uh if you're using any of these probably just use The Wraith prism maybe there's some kind of specific use case that applied to year I think I cut my skin a little bit earlier when I was scratching the fins they are very thin so it may apply to you for something like a specific compact Tower maybe you have a really just again specific build in mind of some kind of front to back gonna be a small case but still large enough to accommodate 92 millimeters and some reason you don't want downdrafts maybe it's right up against the glass panel something like that but although I need to have the height problem for this one so uh this we basically what we're getting at here is this is better than nothing uh and there are coolers that are worse than nothing A coolers that would only throttle on basically anything those are worse than nothing because it leads you to believe that it's functional when it's not this is functional at low heat loads it's better than the older Spire it's not better than the prism the prism is about the same in the 35 DBA noise normalized results and it's better for vrm cooling if that matters too much and it's definitely better at the top and 100 speed because it has more room to boost that fan the thermal right Spirit here or the Assassin X's they call it now it's like 18 bucks and this one is probably it's the best in class that we've tested at the moment in terms of cheap coolers but once again very different price category from this however if you want something that's a little bit more real in that it can support higher wattage CPUs this is where we'd send you extremely competitive at the price point for something like 125 watt CPU somewhere in there mounting for the Jones boat cooler is also fine it's a little bit annoying to dismount on am4 just because you'll need to kind of keep that pressure loaded as evenly as you can so it doesn't rip the CPU out of the socket at an angle this is a little more prone to that than a four-point design but you can work around it and then the price range is three dollars to seven dollars on AliExpress and it's 15 or so from Amazon in the US so that's it for this one a pretty interesting it's fun if you have any other unique coolers you'd like us to look at let us know what they're called the comments and upvote each other so we can see the most interesting ones float up to the top and we'll buy those and we'll review them in our next one or maybe do a Roundup or something but uh the whole team enjoys working on these because they're simple they're straightforward and they're interesting that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more go to store.gamersaccess.net to grab a solder mat or patreon.com Gamer's Nexus to help us out directly and get a couple of extra behind the scenes videos thanks for watching we'll see you all next time\n"