Thermalright Assassin X120 Refined SE CPU Air Cooler, 4 Heat Pipes, TL-C12C PWM Fan, Aluminium Heatsink Cover, AGHP Technology, for AMD AM4/AM5/Intel LGA 1150/1151/1155/1200/1700/1851(AX120 R SE)

It does the job and looks good. For only $20 it was not as cheap feeling or looking as expected. I was very surprised. Very quiet at 40% (using fan control) and keeps temp around 30c at idle (stock cooler at idle was 45c). I am running a ryzen 5 5600XT 65w cpu. When boosting the cpu can pull 95w. Even keeping the fan at 40% my temps are around 50c at 100% load. Keep in mind that I have 5 intake and 3 exhaust case fans, so tons of airflow around it. I would recommend. Setup was straight forward. It used the stock AM4 backplate so there was no need to pull the motherboard. On initial setup the display just stayed static on the temp it read during startup. I had to go into the program and set it to one of the cores to have a real-time readout displayed. The fan is argb so of course that was just connected to my hub so it worked with signal rgb. The display was not picked up by signal rgb but is customizable through the downloaded software.

This is without a doubt the BEST budget cpu cooler you can get. It SIGNIFICANTLY reduces temps compared to the factory wraith cooler. It just plain works. My temps are much more regulated, the fan is surprisingly quiet (BeQuiet! is still quieter). Looks great, actually matches my stock case fans almost perfectly. Very easy to install, just torque down the bolts in a cross pattern. Overall, fit and quality is great. Love this thing.

Mister Twiggly is an ardent gamer, and his home-built gaming rig, while ancient, is capable. However, the stock cooler was getting a little noisy at times, so it was time for a replacement. Enter the Thermalright Assassin X120 Refined SE. Installation was fairly straightforward, though he had to pull out the motherboard to attach the backplate. From then on it was plain sailing. Testing showed that the CPU temperature is 10-15°C cooler at rest and 20-25°C cooler under load than the stock cooler, which he is holding in his right paw. Moreover, fan noise is barely noticeable - hardly surprising, since the fan is huge and runs far more slowly than its predecessor to cool that monster heatsink. This is music to Mister Twiggly's fluffy but sensitive ears. A very good solution at a modest price. Mister Twiggly says "Hurrah for Thermalright!", and gives this product his highest recommendation.

I am not a gamer, or CAD user. Because my old MSI 760GM P34 FX AM3+ (MB) motherboard was dying (NIC Port dead, intermittent USB port functioning) I decided to rebuild my computer "from the ground up" (I did keep several SSD's ). My build is unique in that it is a negative pressure build but the case is very well sealed. I cut out the left panel and attached a big, washable filter (see pic), sealed any holes and, put filters on any larger cutouts in the case. I have a 2 fans on the right side of the case to pull cool air through the case, one inline with the drive bays, and another just behind the CPU (incase there is some heat from the CPU on the bottom of the MB. There is another fan on the back, inline with the inside CPU cooler to help the cooler do its job. In addition to providing clean fresh air for the guts, I get little to no dust build on any components. The cooler I had for the old build (FX 8320 8-Core BE CPU) on the above mentioned MB, was awesome (CRYORIG H7 Tower Cooler), but it would not fit an AM4 CPU's, my choice for the new build, as AM3+ was fairly dead in terms of current CPU sockets. After extensive research, I landed on the Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 MB, and an AMD Ryzen 3 4100 4-Core, 8-Thread Unlocked Processor. The CPU included a Wraith Stealth Cooler. I employed Silicon Power DDR4 RAM 16GB (2x8GB) Turbine 3200MHz (PC4 25600) memory. I've never been happy with stock coolers. They JUST get the job done, often with VERY noisy fans. For this reason I bypassed the stock Wraith CPU cooler in favor of this one. As noted above, I am not a gamer, or CAD user, so did not even contemplate a liquid cooling system. Instead I relied on this Thermalright Assassin X120. I am no fan of RGB because I prefer all power used goes to do the tasks. I don't need a bunch of colored LED's lighting up the room, wasting juice and making heat. This fan has NO LED's! I must say, with the MUCH lower power demand and heat generation of the new CPU (and concomitant reduced heat generation), this cooler is amazing. I can't hear it ramp up based on CPU demand. With custom CPU Fan settings in the Gigabyte Control Center which aims for 100% CPU fan speed at 50C. Helped by the case fan powered to about 80% inline with the inside Thermalright fan, I ran the "Torture Test" in Prime95 to test my CPU, the CPU never exceeded 71C, well below the CPU's 95°C Tjmax. With the Thermalright CPU Fan running @100% during the test, I could barely hear the fan. You can spend a ton more on a CPU cooler. If you game hard or super engage the CPU, another cooler might be warranted. For me, this cooler hit the spot!

I can’t believe how much performance you get for the price of this cooler. I had an old Intel i5-4460 CPU (released around 2014) that had been sitting unused for years. I decided to repurpose the system as a retro gaming PC for my kids, but the CPU kept overheating with the stock Intel E97378-001 aluminum/copper heatsink. That cooler came bundled with the CPU and worked fine for over a decade, but it was clearly showing its age—I kept getting overheating warnings during boot. I started looking for an affordable replacement and came across this cooler. I wasn’t looking to spend much, so I tried this one along with the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE. Unfortunately, the Peerless Assassin was too large for the old motherboard layout and interfered with the RAM sticks, leaving no clearance. I returned it and went with this smaller cooler instead, which turned out to be a perfect fit. Installation took a bit of effort. I had to remove the motherboard from the case to install the rear mounting bracket, which is required so the front heatsink mount has something to secure to. After that, installing the front mount was a little tricky—the four spacers don’t lock into place until the screws are inserted, so keeping everything aligned required some patience. The most challenging part was mounting the aluminum heatsink block itself. The two screws must line up precisely with the mounting rails, and it was frustrating at first. What finally worked was using my fingers to feel and align the screws by hand before tightening them. Once everything was installed, I connected the fan to the motherboard and booted up. I entered the BIOS and let the system sit idle for about two hours while monitoring temperatures. The CPU never went above 30°C at idle. For comparison, with the old Intel stock cooler, temperatures would steadily climb to around 85°C. The difference is massive. Overall, this cooler delivered an incredible improvement at a very low cost. I highly recommend it to anyone with an older PC who needs better CPU cooling without spending a lot of money. Thanks to Thermalright for making such a budget-friendly and effective CPU cooler—I’m a very happy customer.

The mounting hardware was really cheap feeling and easy to break. I broke one of the mounting screws just by turning it regularly. I went ahead and just installed it with 3 out of 4 threads functional. I have to say, it works quite well for a 65 watt CPU. Went from thermal throttling during normal use to staying silent and never breaking 62 degrees. If you buy this, make sure and use two fingers worth of torque when installing the mounting screws.

Excellent cooler for lower end CPUs Keeps a 10th gen i5 under 50°c even while playing GTA and similar. Nice and quiet, fits well, and installed easily! Exceeded my expectations!

For the cost and for setting up a budget AM4 build it worked great, keeping the CPU nice and cool while also being fairly quiet. Very easy to install.