How To Choose a CPU Cooler? [Complete Guide] (2023)

Have you recently heard about the CPU cooler? Do you want to know how it works and how to choose one for your build? You’re at the right place.

A CPU cooler is part of a PC that drives the heat generated by other components away. Many electric components inside your motherboard need temperature control to prevent damage and burnout.

Types of CPU Coolers

There are three types of CPU coolers in general:

1. Air Coolers
2. Liquid Coolers
3. Custom Water Cooling Loop Coolers

Let’s briefly understand each:

1. Air Coolers

Air coolers depend on air circulation within and around the CPU. They are directly in contact with the CPU through a thermal paste.

The heat is transferred to the baseplate of an air cooler which then transfers it into the pipes of the heatsink. The pipes are elevated and act as a maze for the heat.

By the time the heat passes through these pipes, it is cooled down significantly through circulation. The blower then does the rest. A blower is a fan that is attached to the top of the heatsink. It absorbs the heat and blows it outside of the cabin.

2. Liquid Coolers

Liquid coolers, too, have a baseplate attached to the CPU via a thermal paste. The baseplate is attached to a water block which is filled with coolant liquid.

This liquid keeps circulating through the water block through tubes. This coolant water circulation reduces the heat passed through the baseplate via the CPU.

The tubes go through a radiator that exposes this liquid to air, and an adjacent fan blows away all the heat that the coolant liquid would have carried. The coolant recirculates further into the water block from here, and this cycle continues.

3. Custom Water Cooling Loops

With custom loops, you can pick and choose the components you want to cool down. Usually, it is the CPU and the GPU, but you can choose more components and surround them with custom loops of tubes that keep them cool.

The catch though is that you will have to buy and assemble everything by yourself.

Many other components, like memory modules, need cooling as well when you use your computer extensively. There aren’t dedicated coolers for other parts of a PC except for the CPU and GPU.

So what you do is wind all your temperature-sensitive components with cooling tubes and liquid cool them with the help of coolant water, radiator, and blower.

How To Choose a CPU Cooler?

After changing my cooler 4 times due to extensive gaming, I know the parameters you should consider before getting yours. In this section, I’ll elaborate on each criterion so you know what you need while choosing a CPU Cooler.

1. Decide Your Requirements

First things first, decide exactly what you want. This can be made simply by understanding your usage.

If you use the PC for your routine tasks then a regular air cooler will be fine. If you multitask a lot then you have to get one with 2 cooling fans and a bigger heatsink.

If you game a lot like me then opt for liquid cooling systems. If you do complex computing and extensive programming, you might also want to protect your memory modules from the heat. You’d then have to customize a cooling loop.

TL;DR: Understanding your requirements makes a choice easier.

2. Decide Your Budget

Once you start looking for a CPU cooler, you can’t come back. Based on your usage, you should predefine a budget and neither overspend nor underspend.

Just know what is at risk in terms of the components that are heating. For instance, you should get a budget cooler if you only multitask between programs.

But if you are a gamer like me and like to edit videos and graphics then you should spend a little more and get a bigger cooler. If you are a programmer or a miner, go for an expensive setup of custom cooling systems.

3. Ensure Compatibility & Fitting

Many modern-day motherboards come with retaining clips for external coolers. If you want to get one with screws, you will have to get rid of these clips. Similarly, you’ll have to see if you have extra PCIe cables to make the fittings.

Bigger coolers need a dedicated power supply for their blowers & radiators. You need to have a provision of PCIe cable slots in your main PSU (Power Supply Unit). You might also have to change your PSU if you don’t have slots there.

4. Check TDP Rating

Thermal Design Power/Point (TDP) is the maximum amount of heat generated by the CPU that a cooler can dissipate. It is referred to as watts.

Higher the TDP ratings, the better the performance of the cooler. The TDP ratings are mentioned in the CPU manual.

The TDP ratings for the cooler too are mentioned in its manual. These ratings aren’t an accurate representation of the energy these components consume. They rather represent the maximum theoretical load.

P.S. The TDP ratings of your cooler cannot be lower than the combined ratings of your CPU and GPU.

5. Check Sound Levels & Control

The sound from a cooler comes from the fan. If the fan runs at a higher speed, your processor is overloaded.

If it continues to blow at high speed and makes a noise then your CPU is really overwhelmed. This noise can be controlled with the help of a cooler with an additional blower or through BIOS settings.

Press F2 at the boot to open the BIOS (Basic Input Output Settings). Select cooling and choose fan control modes from fixed, custom, cool, balanced, quiet, and fanless.

You can also set the minimum temperature of the processor, the minimum duty cycle, and the duty cycle increment of a fan.

Here is a recommended elaboration of temperature and duty cycle settings:

6. Aesthetics & Appearance

This is the new age criterion among gamers and miners who take it very seriously.

CPUs can become quite cluttered from the inside and boring from the outside. Since the evolution of CPU coolers has been mainly thanks to the gaming community, the aesthetic appeal makes a CPU cooler good for them.

For instance, the fans come with backlit LED settings. These lights are powered through an RGB cable that goes into the PSU. This gives the whole case a unique look when the fans blow and the lighting changes color.

What Does a CPU Cooler Do?

CPU coolers attract the heat, subside it and redistribute them away from the CPU. This keeps the components inside the processor at a safe operating temperature to function at their best.

The transistors inside the components of a CPU convert the electric energy into thermal energy (heat).

Coolers subside that by being directly in contact with the CPU. Circulation of heat is at the core of various methods of cooling systems. Various materials of high thermal conductivity are used to make parts of the cooler.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Know your usage, define your budget, and select the criteria that appeal to you. My concluding tip is to pack the components in a larger CPU case. This is helpful when you upgrade to bigger coolers.