Thermalright Phantom Spirit Review - Wrecking the Peerless Assassin

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enshould Peerless assassin owners have buyers what the that's the quality you get for 35 bucks hey all right so the Peerless assassin this guy this is arguably one of the best and most popular CPU coolers on the market right now if you can actually find it it is amazing from every single perspective but what if I told you that thermal right they've just come out not too long ago with a brand new version of the Peerless assassin called The Phantom Spirit it is supposed to get actually more performers than the Peerless assassin because it has one additional heat pipe and some other really minor changes and it actually at some points cost less than the PA 120. now is it time for people who bought the Peerless assassin to have a little bit of buyer's remorse well that's what I wanted to find out in this video because I actually bought this for 42 bucks which at the time on Amazon was less than the Peerless assassin here in Canada so anyways I want to get into all of that but first a message from our sponsor I mean this new fan is something else with regular and reverse models available to create that clean look without compromising the airflow Direction like these bottom fans are set to intake but look like the rest of the fans on the enclosure it's brilliant they cleverly dated chain with Snap-On Bridges and all these bits cover up the Uglies so you never have to worry about the looks or the cable management as is just one cable this is what the premium dirge 30 millimeter performance fan should look like the new phantix D30 so first things first and I'm sure that some people have noticed this is that thermal rate is busy pressing that F5 button over and over again and literally spamming the high-end CPU Cooler Market with like an endless string of products and the Phantom Spirit that's sort of like indicative of the way they approach things so this was actually announced last year but only made its way to North America in about April of this year there's also three different models of the Phantom Spirit the ps120se which I have here the 120 SE argb and finally a slightly more expensive Phantom Spirit 120 which is a clone of the other two the only difference is its finished top plate that's used to cover the exposed heat pipe termination points and a metal instead of plastic back plate I'm sure there's going to be a white and Matte Black Version too at some point but they haven't been announced on the flip side of that coin thermal rights CPU Cooler spamming causes some issues since there's a log Jam of dual Tower high performance coolers sitting right between the 30 dollar and 50 price points there's the Peerless assassin Frost Spirit 140 sometimes the frost Commander hits these prices and now the Phantom Spirit but I guess the biggest question in all of this is what are the fundamental differences between the spirit and the Assassin because 99.9 of the time when you're looking for a new CPU Cooler and thermal right pops up both of these guys are going to be there and they're very very similar in size in price and availability but they are actually two very very different CPU coolers I mean sure they're identical in every Dimension except the spirit is a millimeter shorter so it'll have the same memory clearance issues as the Assassin if you use higher modules you'll need to push up the front fan and that could result in some cooling capacity being lost past that from a side-by-side profile these are identical as well with some minor changes in the fin Arrangement switched to a top view and you'll notice the fin array is vastly different whereas the Assassin has a shark tooth look to it Spirit uses thermal rights newer version with a sectioned step back profile that's meant to improve airflow channeling through the fins and reduce back pressure then there's the increase from six six millimeter heat pipes to seven and I'm really on the fence about this one on one hand the more is better mentality is there but on Modern CPUs more heat pipes doesn't necessarily mean better performance we actually saw that in the last Roundup with the frost Spirit just destroying the more expensive Frost Commander despite having one less heat pipe like I said in that video placement of heat pipes is more critical than just throwing more quantity at the problem you can actually see how the Assassin's heat pipes are all concentrated towards the center of the cpu's IHS whereas the Phantoms aren't quite as bad as some of the coolers in that last video but two only make partial contact I also need to talk about the installation kit because it's very well done with color-coded spacers for both Intel and AMD but I'm not a huge fan of that plastic back plate they also don't include clips for a third fan then again this is a value oriented cooler so I can't ding it too much for those things and there's also a little bit of a plot twist when it comes to the fans that thermal rate is actually equipping the Phantom spirit with because if you look at the technical specifications on thermal rights website for both the Peerless assassin and the Phantom spirit it's like a copy paste of the fans but that's actually not what's going on here so the fans on the Phantom Spirit actually have a revised bearing design and a new and updated motor so they're going to produce a little bit of a different acoustical profile from the ones that are on the Peerless assassin so actually let's have a listen to these right now thank you so the Phantom Spirit it is extremely quiet across its entire RPM range even when you get up to 1500 RPM but I also need to have a very Frank discussion with you guys about the Peerless assassin and the way it appeared in previous videos because as we started retesting and validating its results for this video because it's so close to the Phantom Spirit well there was a couple of red flags that came up basically one of our original samples fans was exhibiting a grinding noise above 1300 RPM listening back to the acoustic samples from the original review it was there but almost inaudible so it wasn't red flagged though it wasn't necessarily detectable to the human ear Our concern was that our decibel meter was sensitive enough to pick it up so of course I needed to validate those findings and I ordered another two Peerless assassins from Amazon and luckily neither of them in any way shape or form exhibited that grinding noise that we were hearing so what does that mean well overall the results will be pretty much identical to the old ones that you saw at lower decibel levels but at the top end the Assassin is much much quieter than our original results would have you believe so instead of hitting 46 decibels 45.7 to be exact it actually maxes out at 43.4 decibels so it's actually better than we'd originally said it was these new results will be used in all reviews going forward getting the most accurate results is so very important to us and I wanted to set the record straight without just updating results and not telling you guys about it but at the same time I do want to have a very Frank discussion here because this is not the first time that I've had some issues with thermal rights fans it's the first time that we've had issues with the fans on the Peerless assassin but some of their other fans that we're testing right now are starting to exhibit a little bit of I guess you would call it long-term wear that is Raising some red flags when it comes to overall longevity sure the price on these coolers is absolutely amazing amazing but this is something that we're gonna have to take into account going forward so with that out of the way I wanted to start talking about the performance of The Phantom Spirit can it actually beat the Peerless assassin starting with gaming and I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna come as a surprise to anyone the Phantom spirit is one of the best coolers we've ever tested at every single decibel level but it's also a literal clone of the Peerless assassin overall these are better numbers than the Assassin but only by a small amount at 41 decibels and lower though it does pull a bit further ahead at 42 and 43 decibels and by normalizing things down to 38 decibels you can really start to see how similar these two coolers really are regardless of which one you end up picking overall performance for the price is absolutely incredible now starting with the full CPU load tests and the situation is a bit flipped with the Phantom Spirit getting slightly better temperatures at lower RPM and noise levels meanwhile it ends up being functionally tied with the Peerless assassin above that that also places it within a degree or two of the D15 though it still can't come close to matching the frost Spirit or Assassin 3 in this test it's interesting because what we're seeing is a literal Log Jam of thermal right coolers in our charts where four of the top eight heat sinks end up coming from the same company and yet if you really want the best of the best for 13th gen CPUs look towards the frost Spirit since it offers better cooling while also being within a few bucks of the Phantom Spirit every now and then switching over to the clock speeds and despite getting higher temperatures than some of the other coolers here the Phantom Spirit ends up with fractionally better results but then again the top 10 coolers are all well within the margin of error moving on to a higher heat load of 253 Watts shows this cooler getting some of the absolute best results we've ever seen Scene It basically mirrors the d15s and frost spirit's numbers while also being about a degree or two better than the Peerless assassin the Assassin does close the gap at higher noise levels again but if you're after the quietest Computing experience at an affordable price it's hard to argue against the frost commander and the Phantom Spirit here you can probably see that a lot clearer once we narrow this down to a normalized 38 decibels there's a pretty serious gap between the best of the best air coolers and all the others and once again the Phantom Spirit tops our clock speed chart in a dead heat with the frost Spirit but like I said before the top coolers here are all within our margin of error for clock speeds so you can consider everything from the new fuma 3 to the frost Spirit to have identical frequencies and removing Intel's limits maxes out all of these coolers from a temperature standpoint but dialing down a lot further into clock speeds and we can see a pretty clear pattern emerging smaller 120 millimeter designs with less heat pipes like the Peerless assassin ak-620 have pretty much flatlined that's a clear indication they've reached a thermal saturation Point whereas the coolers with more heat pipes like the Phantom Spirit D15 Assassin 3 and frost Commander do much better as a matter of fact at lower decibel levels the Phantom is the best cooler we've ever reviewed in this test and this also goes to prove that thermal rate might have found an optimal combination of heat pipe density thin stack size and fan performance for the 13900k because it really does feel like this cooler loves higher heat loads okay so the Phantom Spirit now that we know how it performs I think it's pretty clear this is absolutely one of the best CPU coolers I've ever tested I just feel like I'm saying that in in every single video but as I review these things and as you guys suggest new coolers they just keep on getting better and better and better now the big question here is do people who bought the Peerless assassin need to have some buyers remorse and I'm going to say absolutely not because this thing while it is an amazing CPU Cooler in the grand scheme of things it is not appreciably better than the Peerless assassin in addition for the time being it doesn't come in that matte black and matte white finish that a lot of people are looking for so should you basically sell your Peerless assassin and buy the phantom Spirit the answer to that is absolutely not it excels though in higher heat loads where that additional heat pipe can really start to flex its muscles I think regardless of the fact that there might be just a little bit too many of these thermal right products I'll cluster around the same area of the market we do have to give these guys some credit because I took a step back and I looked back two years ago what we paid for all of those coolers in that budget CPU Cooler Roundup and those are some like entry-level coolers well the price I paid for the Phantom spirit is actually less then a lot of those coolers here in Canada so what you're getting is basically high-end performance for entry level pricing and for me that means that the thermal right Frost Spirit gets our damn good value award I do still have some of those lingering concerns about their fan quality and its longevity but right now as it stands with this sample in front of me this is one hell of a good cooler for an even better price so anyways I'm Mike with Hardware Canucks I hope you enjoyed this video and I'm going to see you in the next one have a good day guys you thank Godshould Peerless assassin owners have buyers what the that's the quality you get for 35 bucks hey all right so the Peerless assassin this guy this is arguably one of the best and most popular CPU coolers on the market right now if you can actually find it it is amazing from every single perspective but what if I told you that thermal right they've just come out not too long ago with a brand new version of the Peerless assassin called The Phantom Spirit it is supposed to get actually more performers than the Peerless assassin because it has one additional heat pipe and some other really minor changes and it actually at some points cost less than the PA 120. now is it time for people who bought the Peerless assassin to have a little bit of buyer's remorse well that's what I wanted to find out in this video because I actually bought this for 42 bucks which at the time on Amazon was less than the Peerless assassin here in Canada so anyways I want to get into all of that but first a message from our sponsor I mean this new fan is something else with regular and reverse models available to create that clean look without compromising the airflow Direction like these bottom fans are set to intake but look like the rest of the fans on the enclosure it's brilliant they cleverly dated chain with Snap-On Bridges and all these bits cover up the Uglies so you never have to worry about the looks or the cable management as is just one cable this is what the premium dirge 30 millimeter performance fan should look like the new phantix D30 so first things first and I'm sure that some people have noticed this is that thermal rate is busy pressing that F5 button over and over again and literally spamming the high-end CPU Cooler Market with like an endless string of products and the Phantom Spirit that's sort of like indicative of the way they approach things so this was actually announced last year but only made its way to North America in about April of this year there's also three different models of the Phantom Spirit the ps120se which I have here the 120 SE argb and finally a slightly more expensive Phantom Spirit 120 which is a clone of the other two the only difference is its finished top plate that's used to cover the exposed heat pipe termination points and a metal instead of plastic back plate I'm sure there's going to be a white and Matte Black Version too at some point but they haven't been announced on the flip side of that coin thermal rights CPU Cooler spamming causes some issues since there's a log Jam of dual Tower high performance coolers sitting right between the 30 dollar and 50 price points there's the Peerless assassin Frost Spirit 140 sometimes the frost Commander hits these prices and now the Phantom Spirit but I guess the biggest question in all of this is what are the fundamental differences between the spirit and the Assassin because 99.9 of the time when you're looking for a new CPU Cooler and thermal right pops up both of these guys are going to be there and they're very very similar in size in price and availability but they are actually two very very different CPU coolers I mean sure they're identical in every Dimension except the spirit is a millimeter shorter so it'll have the same memory clearance issues as the Assassin if you use higher modules you'll need to push up the front fan and that could result in some cooling capacity being lost past that from a side-by-side profile these are identical as well with some minor changes in the fin Arrangement switched to a top view and you'll notice the fin array is vastly different whereas the Assassin has a shark tooth look to it Spirit uses thermal rights newer version with a sectioned step back profile that's meant to improve airflow channeling through the fins and reduce back pressure then there's the increase from six six millimeter heat pipes to seven and I'm really on the fence about this one on one hand the more is better mentality is there but on Modern CPUs more heat pipes doesn't necessarily mean better performance we actually saw that in the last Roundup with the frost Spirit just destroying the more expensive Frost Commander despite having one less heat pipe like I said in that video placement of heat pipes is more critical than just throwing more quantity at the problem you can actually see how the Assassin's heat pipes are all concentrated towards the center of the cpu's IHS whereas the Phantoms aren't quite as bad as some of the coolers in that last video but two only make partial contact I also need to talk about the installation kit because it's very well done with color-coded spacers for both Intel and AMD but I'm not a huge fan of that plastic back plate they also don't include clips for a third fan then again this is a value oriented cooler so I can't ding it too much for those things and there's also a little bit of a plot twist when it comes to the fans that thermal rate is actually equipping the Phantom spirit with because if you look at the technical specifications on thermal rights website for both the Peerless assassin and the Phantom spirit it's like a copy paste of the fans but that's actually not what's going on here so the fans on the Phantom Spirit actually have a revised bearing design and a new and updated motor so they're going to produce a little bit of a different acoustical profile from the ones that are on the Peerless assassin so actually let's have a listen to these right now thank you so the Phantom Spirit it is extremely quiet across its entire RPM range even when you get up to 1500 RPM but I also need to have a very Frank discussion with you guys about the Peerless assassin and the way it appeared in previous videos because as we started retesting and validating its results for this video because it's so close to the Phantom Spirit well there was a couple of red flags that came up basically one of our original samples fans was exhibiting a grinding noise above 1300 RPM listening back to the acoustic samples from the original review it was there but almost inaudible so it wasn't red flagged though it wasn't necessarily detectable to the human ear Our concern was that our decibel meter was sensitive enough to pick it up so of course I needed to validate those findings and I ordered another two Peerless assassins from Amazon and luckily neither of them in any way shape or form exhibited that grinding noise that we were hearing so what does that mean well overall the results will be pretty much identical to the old ones that you saw at lower decibel levels but at the top end the Assassin is much much quieter than our original results would have you believe so instead of hitting 46 decibels 45.7 to be exact it actually maxes out at 43.4 decibels so it's actually better than we'd originally said it was these new results will be used in all reviews going forward getting the most accurate results is so very important to us and I wanted to set the record straight without just updating results and not telling you guys about it but at the same time I do want to have a very Frank discussion here because this is not the first time that I've had some issues with thermal rights fans it's the first time that we've had issues with the fans on the Peerless assassin but some of their other fans that we're testing right now are starting to exhibit a little bit of I guess you would call it long-term wear that is Raising some red flags when it comes to overall longevity sure the price on these coolers is absolutely amazing amazing but this is something that we're gonna have to take into account going forward so with that out of the way I wanted to start talking about the performance of The Phantom Spirit can it actually beat the Peerless assassin starting with gaming and I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna come as a surprise to anyone the Phantom spirit is one of the best coolers we've ever tested at every single decibel level but it's also a literal clone of the Peerless assassin overall these are better numbers than the Assassin but only by a small amount at 41 decibels and lower though it does pull a bit further ahead at 42 and 43 decibels and by normalizing things down to 38 decibels you can really start to see how similar these two coolers really are regardless of which one you end up picking overall performance for the price is absolutely incredible now starting with the full CPU load tests and the situation is a bit flipped with the Phantom Spirit getting slightly better temperatures at lower RPM and noise levels meanwhile it ends up being functionally tied with the Peerless assassin above that that also places it within a degree or two of the D15 though it still can't come close to matching the frost Spirit or Assassin 3 in this test it's interesting because what we're seeing is a literal Log Jam of thermal right coolers in our charts where four of the top eight heat sinks end up coming from the same company and yet if you really want the best of the best for 13th gen CPUs look towards the frost Spirit since it offers better cooling while also being within a few bucks of the Phantom Spirit every now and then switching over to the clock speeds and despite getting higher temperatures than some of the other coolers here the Phantom Spirit ends up with fractionally better results but then again the top 10 coolers are all well within the margin of error moving on to a higher heat load of 253 Watts shows this cooler getting some of the absolute best results we've ever seen Scene It basically mirrors the d15s and frost spirit's numbers while also being about a degree or two better than the Peerless assassin the Assassin does close the gap at higher noise levels again but if you're after the quietest Computing experience at an affordable price it's hard to argue against the frost commander and the Phantom Spirit here you can probably see that a lot clearer once we narrow this down to a normalized 38 decibels there's a pretty serious gap between the best of the best air coolers and all the others and once again the Phantom Spirit tops our clock speed chart in a dead heat with the frost Spirit but like I said before the top coolers here are all within our margin of error for clock speeds so you can consider everything from the new fuma 3 to the frost Spirit to have identical frequencies and removing Intel's limits maxes out all of these coolers from a temperature standpoint but dialing down a lot further into clock speeds and we can see a pretty clear pattern emerging smaller 120 millimeter designs with less heat pipes like the Peerless assassin ak-620 have pretty much flatlined that's a clear indication they've reached a thermal saturation Point whereas the coolers with more heat pipes like the Phantom Spirit D15 Assassin 3 and frost Commander do much better as a matter of fact at lower decibel levels the Phantom is the best cooler we've ever reviewed in this test and this also goes to prove that thermal rate might have found an optimal combination of heat pipe density thin stack size and fan performance for the 13900k because it really does feel like this cooler loves higher heat loads okay so the Phantom Spirit now that we know how it performs I think it's pretty clear this is absolutely one of the best CPU coolers I've ever tested I just feel like I'm saying that in in every single video but as I review these things and as you guys suggest new coolers they just keep on getting better and better and better now the big question here is do people who bought the Peerless assassin need to have some buyers remorse and I'm going to say absolutely not because this thing while it is an amazing CPU Cooler in the grand scheme of things it is not appreciably better than the Peerless assassin in addition for the time being it doesn't come in that matte black and matte white finish that a lot of people are looking for so should you basically sell your Peerless assassin and buy the phantom Spirit the answer to that is absolutely not it excels though in higher heat loads where that additional heat pipe can really start to flex its muscles I think regardless of the fact that there might be just a little bit too many of these thermal right products I'll cluster around the same area of the market we do have to give these guys some credit because I took a step back and I looked back two years ago what we paid for all of those coolers in that budget CPU Cooler Roundup and those are some like entry-level coolers well the price I paid for the Phantom spirit is actually less then a lot of those coolers here in Canada so what you're getting is basically high-end performance for entry level pricing and for me that means that the thermal right Frost Spirit gets our damn good value award I do still have some of those lingering concerns about their fan quality and its longevity but right now as it stands with this sample in front of me this is one hell of a good cooler for an even better price so anyways I'm Mike with Hardware Canucks I hope you enjoyed this video and I'm going to see you in the next one have a good day guys you thank Godshould Peerless assassin owners have buyers what the that's the quality you get for 35 bucks hey all right so the Peerless assassin this guy this is arguably one of the best and most popular CPU coolers on the market right now if you can actually find it it is amazing from every single perspective but what if I told you that thermal right they've just come out not too long ago with a brand new version of the Peerless assassin called The Phantom Spirit it is supposed to get actually more performers than the Peerless assassin because it has one additional heat pipe and some other really minor changes and it actually at some points cost less than the PA 120. now is it time for people who bought the Peerless assassin to have a little bit of buyer's remorse well that's what I wanted to find out in this video because I actually bought this for 42 bucks which at the time on Amazon was less than the Peerless assassin here in Canada so anyways I want to get into all of that but first a message from our sponsor I mean this new fan is something else with regular and reverse models available to create that clean look without compromising the airflow Direction like these bottom fans are set to intake but look like the rest of the fans on the enclosure it's brilliant they cleverly dated chain with Snap-On Bridges and all these bits cover up the Uglies so you never have to worry about the looks or the cable management as is just one cable this is what the premium dirge 30 millimeter performance fan should look like the new phantix D30 so first things first and I'm sure that some people have noticed this is that thermal rate is busy pressing that F5 button over and over again and literally spamming the high-end CPU Cooler Market with like an endless string of products and the Phantom Spirit that's sort of like indicative of the way they approach things so this was actually announced last year but only made its way to North America in about April of this year there's also three different models of the Phantom Spirit the ps120se which I have here the 120 SE argb and finally a slightly more expensive Phantom Spirit 120 which is a clone of the other two the only difference is its finished top plate that's used to cover the exposed heat pipe termination points and a metal instead of plastic back plate I'm sure there's going to be a white and Matte Black Version too at some point but they haven't been announced on the flip side of that coin thermal rights CPU Cooler spamming causes some issues since there's a log Jam of dual Tower high performance coolers sitting right between the 30 dollar and 50 price points there's the Peerless assassin Frost Spirit 140 sometimes the frost Commander hits these prices and now the Phantom Spirit but I guess the biggest question in all of this is what are the fundamental differences between the spirit and the Assassin because 99.9 of the time when you're looking for a new CPU Cooler and thermal right pops up both of these guys are going to be there and they're very very similar in size in price and availability but they are actually two very very different CPU coolers I mean sure they're identical in every Dimension except the spirit is a millimeter shorter so it'll have the same memory clearance issues as the Assassin if you use higher modules you'll need to push up the front fan and that could result in some cooling capacity being lost past that from a side-by-side profile these are identical as well with some minor changes in the fin Arrangement switched to a top view and you'll notice the fin array is vastly different whereas the Assassin has a shark tooth look to it Spirit uses thermal rights newer version with a sectioned step back profile that's meant to improve airflow channeling through the fins and reduce back pressure then there's the increase from six six millimeter heat pipes to seven and I'm really on the fence about this one on one hand the more is better mentality is there but on Modern CPUs more heat pipes doesn't necessarily mean better performance we actually saw that in the last Roundup with the frost Spirit just destroying the more expensive Frost Commander despite having one less heat pipe like I said in that video placement of heat pipes is more critical than just throwing more quantity at the problem you can actually see how the Assassin's heat pipes are all concentrated towards the center of the cpu's IHS whereas the Phantoms aren't quite as bad as some of the coolers in that last video but two only make partial contact I also need to talk about the installation kit because it's very well done with color-coded spacers for both Intel and AMD but I'm not a huge fan of that plastic back plate they also don't include clips for a third fan then again this is a value oriented cooler so I can't ding it too much for those things and there's also a little bit of a plot twist when it comes to the fans that thermal rate is actually equipping the Phantom spirit with because if you look at the technical specifications on thermal rights website for both the Peerless assassin and the Phantom spirit it's like a copy paste of the fans but that's actually not what's going on here so the fans on the Phantom Spirit actually have a revised bearing design and a new and updated motor so they're going to produce a little bit of a different acoustical profile from the ones that are on the Peerless assassin so actually let's have a listen to these right now thank you so the Phantom Spirit it is extremely quiet across its entire RPM range even when you get up to 1500 RPM but I also need to have a very Frank discussion with you guys about the Peerless assassin and the way it appeared in previous videos because as we started retesting and validating its results for this video because it's so close to the Phantom Spirit well there was a couple of red flags that came up basically one of our original samples fans was exhibiting a grinding noise above 1300 RPM listening back to the acoustic samples from the original review it was there but almost inaudible so it wasn't red flagged though it wasn't necessarily detectable to the human ear Our concern was that our decibel meter was sensitive enough to pick it up so of course I needed to validate those findings and I ordered another two Peerless assassins from Amazon and luckily neither of them in any way shape or form exhibited that grinding noise that we were hearing so what does that mean well overall the results will be pretty much identical to the old ones that you saw at lower decibel levels but at the top end the Assassin is much much quieter than our original results would have you believe so instead of hitting 46 decibels 45.7 to be exact it actually maxes out at 43.4 decibels so it's actually better than we'd originally said it was these new results will be used in all reviews going forward getting the most accurate results is so very important to us and I wanted to set the record straight without just updating results and not telling you guys about it but at the same time I do want to have a very Frank discussion here because this is not the first time that I've had some issues with thermal rights fans it's the first time that we've had issues with the fans on the Peerless assassin but some of their other fans that we're testing right now are starting to exhibit a little bit of I guess you would call it long-term wear that is Raising some red flags when it comes to overall longevity sure the price on these coolers is absolutely amazing amazing but this is something that we're gonna have to take into account going forward so with that out of the way I wanted to start talking about the performance of The Phantom Spirit can it actually beat the Peerless assassin starting with gaming and I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna come as a surprise to anyone the Phantom spirit is one of the best coolers we've ever tested at every single decibel level but it's also a literal clone of the Peerless assassin overall these are better numbers than the Assassin but only by a small amount at 41 decibels and lower though it does pull a bit further ahead at 42 and 43 decibels and by normalizing things down to 38 decibels you can really start to see how similar these two coolers really are regardless of which one you end up picking overall performance for the price is absolutely incredible now starting with the full CPU load tests and the situation is a bit flipped with the Phantom Spirit getting slightly better temperatures at lower RPM and noise levels meanwhile it ends up being functionally tied with the Peerless assassin above that that also places it within a degree or two of the D15 though it still can't come close to matching the frost Spirit or Assassin 3 in this test it's interesting because what we're seeing is a literal Log Jam of thermal right coolers in our charts where four of the top eight heat sinks end up coming from the same company and yet if you really want the best of the best for 13th gen CPUs look towards the frost Spirit since it offers better cooling while also being within a few bucks of the Phantom Spirit every now and then switching over to the clock speeds and despite getting higher temperatures than some of the other coolers here the Phantom Spirit ends up with fractionally better results but then again the top 10 coolers are all well within the margin of error moving on to a higher heat load of 253 Watts shows this cooler getting some of the absolute best results we've ever seen Scene It basically mirrors the d15s and frost spirit's numbers while also being about a degree or two better than the Peerless assassin the Assassin does close the gap at higher noise levels again but if you're after the quietest Computing experience at an affordable price it's hard to argue against the frost commander and the Phantom Spirit here you can probably see that a lot clearer once we narrow this down to a normalized 38 decibels there's a pretty serious gap between the best of the best air coolers and all the others and once again the Phantom Spirit tops our clock speed chart in a dead heat with the frost Spirit but like I said before the top coolers here are all within our margin of error for clock speeds so you can consider everything from the new fuma 3 to the frost Spirit to have identical frequencies and removing Intel's limits maxes out all of these coolers from a temperature standpoint but dialing down a lot further into clock speeds and we can see a pretty clear pattern emerging smaller 120 millimeter designs with less heat pipes like the Peerless assassin ak-620 have pretty much flatlined that's a clear indication they've reached a thermal saturation Point whereas the coolers with more heat pipes like the Phantom Spirit D15 Assassin 3 and frost Commander do much better as a matter of fact at lower decibel levels the Phantom is the best cooler we've ever reviewed in this test and this also goes to prove that thermal rate might have found an optimal combination of heat pipe density thin stack size and fan performance for the 13900k because it really does feel like this cooler loves higher heat loads okay so the Phantom Spirit now that we know how it performs I think it's pretty clear this is absolutely one of the best CPU coolers I've ever tested I just feel like I'm saying that in in every single video but as I review these things and as you guys suggest new coolers they just keep on getting better and better and better now the big question here is do people who bought the Peerless assassin need to have some buyers remorse and I'm going to say absolutely not because this thing while it is an amazing CPU Cooler in the grand scheme of things it is not appreciably better than the Peerless assassin in addition for the time being it doesn't come in that matte black and matte white finish that a lot of people are looking for so should you basically sell your Peerless assassin and buy the phantom Spirit the answer to that is absolutely not it excels though in higher heat loads where that additional heat pipe can really start to flex its muscles I think regardless of the fact that there might be just a little bit too many of these thermal right products I'll cluster around the same area of the market we do have to give these guys some credit because I took a step back and I looked back two years ago what we paid for all of those coolers in that budget CPU Cooler Roundup and those are some like entry-level coolers well the price I paid for the Phantom spirit is actually less then a lot of those coolers here in Canada so what you're getting is basically high-end performance for entry level pricing and for me that means that the thermal right Frost Spirit gets our damn good value award I do still have some of those lingering concerns about their fan quality and its longevity but right now as it stands with this sample in front of me this is one hell of a good cooler for an even better price so anyways I'm Mike with Hardware Canucks I hope you enjoyed this video and I'm going to see you in the next one have a good day guys you thank God\n"