Modern air coolers are extremely performant. The popular Noctua NH-D15 can handle these TDPs and more without problem, and has been available for years.

Wait, what? I've been researching this lately, and have been coming to the conclusion that the NH-D15 can NOT handle peak head from intel's 12700k.

The NH-D15's max cooling ability is slightly beneath the 12700k's max thermal output. So if you're running a 12700k, you can get away with it, because the liklihood that you're running the 12700k at max thermal output for long periods of time are pretty slim, and if you're running under max, then you're covered.

I don't remember TDP numbers off the top of my head, but if the 13700 is a significantly higher thermal output, and its going to be in the same case as the next gen video cards with their higher output? That doesn't seem feasible for the NH-D15 anymore

Heck, I have a cheap Coolermaster air cooler (I think it was $30) on my i9-9900K. I've run Prime95's max heat torture test on all 8 cores and my CPU will hover around 65 C, well below the thermal throttle threshold.

Either you mean 65C above ambient or something's wrong with your machine, unless you're running liquid nitrogen there's no way that chip's only at 65C under max heat torture. Here's Tom's Hardware getting 90C on the blend test (MUCH less heat than max heat) with a 240mm AIO. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9900k-9th...

Hmm...you might be right...

I just tried the test again, and with the max heat test, I was in the 95-100 C range and it was throttling to 4.3 Ghz.

Now I'm wondering exactly what I did. It was years ago when I did this, right after I got my CPU.

Best guess, maybe you unintentionally only ran it on 1 thread?

Doubtful.

I did find an old message on Discord though where I talked about it:

> Ran the CPU torture tests in Prime95 on my new i9 with this Cooler Master Hyper 212 air cooler. When doing the Small FFTs test which generates maximum heat, yeah, it does suffer some thermal throttling. It'll run for about 30 seconds at full speed, then it'll enter a pattern where it throttles down to 3.6 Ghz for about 1/2 second, then jumps back up to 4.5 Ghz for 2 seconds, then throttles again. For the other two tests, it happily just hums without throttling at about 60 C. But even when suffering from thermal throttling, it's still faster than my old i7-3770k.

Thing is, right now, if I do the "Large FFTs" test, it's hitting 90C, whereas before it was only 60C.

I've had this CPU now for 4 years, and I have 3 cats and my computer is only a few inches off the floor. I wonder if I just need to dust out the cooler.

Fwiw 90C on Large FFTs is much more in line with what I'd expect. Curious if you can actually get it down in the 60s somehow

I'm sure a big air cooler like the Noctua NH-D15 would be enough to stop throttling.

Maybe Intel will include a beefier stock cooler in the box?

Intel's stock coolers were always a joke and people usually switched it out for something else. It might be good for them to bring some decent stock coolers to the entry-mid level models like what AMD does.

But really doesn't make sense including a stock cooler for the i9 lineup though, since that monster of a CPU will defeat probably every mid-level air cooler and would require a beefy Noctua or something similar...