Cooling Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 40 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for cooling. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

A few weeks back I reviewed the SilverStone XE360-SP5 and XE04-SP5 cooling solutions catering to AMD EPYC 9004/9005 Socket SP5 processors. These coolers worked well with 400 Watt EPYC processors and especially the XE360-SP5 all-in-one liquid cooling was very performant and practical with today's server CPU TDPs ever increasing. After that SilverStone mentioned to me they had a new heatsink that could run up to 13 degrees cooler than the XE04-SP5 4U air cooler... Talk about intriguing. Meet the new SilverStone XED120S-WS for high-end air cooling for up to 450 Watt processors while working with multiple Intel and AMD CPU sockets.

With my recent AMD EPYC 9005 1P 4U server build using a Supermicro H13SSL-N motherboard, SilverStone kindly sent over their two Socket SP5 cooling options for AMD EPYC processors: the XE04-SP5 4U-compatible heatsink fan and then the XE360-SP5 AIO liquid cooler with a triple 120mm fan radiator to allow effectively cooling up to the new 400~500 Watt EPYC Turin processors. Here is a look at these two high-end AMD EPYC cooling options for those carrying out 4U EPYC 9004/9005 server builds along with thermal and performance benchmark results.

Last week Noctua announced the NH-L12Sx77 low-profile CPU cooler as effectively an upgraded version of their NH-L12s CPU cooler that is now slightly taller to offer better performance and improved system compatibility.

If you are looking for a CPU heatsink-fan combination that will fit within 4U rackmount server height requirements while being capable of cooling the latest high-end Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC / Threadripper processors while not being too expensive nor noisy, the Arctic Freezer 4U-M is a rare solution that can cross off all those checkboxes.

For those wondering about the air cooling prospects for DIY builds with the new 350 Watt AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series processors, here's a brief look at the new Noctua heatsink options for the Socket sTR5 processors and the results in use with a Threadripper 7980X 64-core / 128-thread workstation.

Ahead of AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series processors becoming available, Noctua recently introduced the new NH-U14S TR5-SP6 and NH-D9 TR5-SP6 heatsinks. In addition to working with the Threadripper 7000 series, these CPUs fit as well for Socket SP6 introduced with the new AMD EPYC 8004 "Siena" processors. Here is a look at the cooling performance of these new Noctua TR5-SP6 heatsinks on AMD EPYC.

Noctua at the end of January announced the NH-L9a-AM5 and the all-black NH-L9a-AM5 chromax.black heatsinks as their new ultra low-profile active CPU coolers for the AMD AM5 socket that support AMD's recently announced Ryzen 7000 series 65 Watt CPUs. The height with fan at only 37 mm makes the new NH-L9a-AM5 heatsinks work out very well for small form factor (SFF) builds and for our case at Phoronix an instant hit for running the new AMD Ryzen processors within 2U rackmount enclosures.

With the dozens of 4U rackmount enclosures used at Phoronix, when it comes to the high-end desktop systems the Noctua NH-U9 series has been the go-to choice for CPU cooling. The Noctua NH-U9 series has been capable of cooling HEDT systems even with Threadripper / EPYC processors using the NH-U9 TR4-SP3 while fitting within 4U height requirements. For the Noctua NH-U9 series and other 4U compatible heatsinks they've tended to be limited to 80~92mm cooling fans due to height requirements. Noctua though recently introduced the NH-D12L as offering a dual tower CPU heatsink design capable of fitting 120mm fans and has been the focus of our recent testing.

Quietly released earlier this year was the Dynatron A39 heatsink that is capable of up to 280 Watts heat dissipation for satisfying even the very latest, high-end AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors. This Dynatron A39 TR4/sTRX4/SP3 heatsink has been working out very well for those needing to cool a Threadripper/EPYC system in a 3U or larger enclosure.

With proper heatsinks becoming all the more important with speedy PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSDs to avoid thermal throttling, SilverStone has been among the vendors offering after-market aluminum heatsinks designed for M.2 2280 drives. The SilverStone TP04 is a simple but effective aluminum alloy SSD cooling kit for about $17 USD.

Announced in March by Dynatron was their A38 CPU cooler for AMD Ryzen Threadripper and EPYC processors. This heatsink fan is rated for cooling up to 280 Watt SP3/sTRX4/TR4 processors making it capable of cooling even the newest high-end EPYC "Milan" processors with the EPYC 75F3 and 7763 processors. Here are some initial benchmarks of this cooler with the AMD EPYC 7763 server processor.

While the Raspberry Pi folks have been making thermal/power improvements to the Raspberry Pi 4 firmware, running this budget-friendly ARM single board computer with a heatsink or some form of cooling is certainly recommended if you want to sure it operates at the optimal clock frequencies. A Phoronix reader devised the CooliPi 4B and it's wound up being one of the best Raspberry Pi 4 cooler we have tested to date.

When looking for a heatsink with a small stature for an AMD APU mini PC build for HTPC / file storage use-cases (more on that build in the next day or two), the Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 fit the criteria and so I went with that given the success with the many Noctua heatsinks we have used over the years. For those potentially interested in the NH-L9a-AM4 for an AMD APU like the new Ryzen 5 3400G or for lower-end Ryzen CPUs, I ran some benchmarks with this cooler.

With the Raspberry Pi 4, a passive heatsink is an absolute minimum for running this new ARM SBC unless you want to deal with potentially drastic performance limitations based upon your operating conditions. However, if you will be enduring the Raspberry Pi 4 with significant load for any measurable length of time, an active cooler is almost warranted or otherwise a very capable passive cooler. In this article we're looking at the Raspberry Pi 4 performance with a Fan SHIM as an active fan designed for running on the Raspberry Pi off the GPIO pins as well as the FLIRC as a metal case that passively cools the device.

The 32-core / 64-thread AMD Threadripper 2990WX carries a 250 Watt TDP rating, thus the cooling performance is quite important especially if you don't want to hit any thermal throttling with this $1799 USD processor. Fortunately, the 2990WX doesn't require water cooling but actually can work quite well with high-end air heatsinks too. For adding some perspective on the cooling requirements of the Threadripper 2990WX, here are benchmarks of five heatsinks and two all-in-one water cooling systems.

Back in March we looked at the cooling performance of Noctua's AMD EPYC heatsinks for cooling these Zen-based server processors. The Noctua heatsinks tested did a wonderful job testing those socket SP3 processors so when the Austrian company announced a few weeks ago their Xeon Scalable heatsink line-up, we decided it would be interesting to see how their latest Intel server heatsinks perform.

While Austrian PC cooling manufacturer Noctua is mostly known for their high-end enthusiast/gamer oriented cooling products, they do offer a line-up of heatsinks for both AMD Ryzen Threadripper and EPYC server processors. In this article we are trying out the NH-U9 TR4-SP3, NH-U12S TR4-SP3, and NH-U14S TR4-SP3 heatsinks on a 32-core / 64-thread AMD EPYC platform for seeing how well these air coolers will do with AMD's promising server platform.

While SilverStone is mostly known for their beautifully crafted computer cases, in addition to their range of power supplies and other enthusiast products they have also offered a number of cooling products over the years. Their latest addition to their cooling product line is the TP02-M2 that is an aluminum alloy heatsink for cooling M.2 solid-state drives.

This past week the fan on my reference Radeon RX 480 graphics card surprisingly died. It's been a number of years since I last had a fan go out on a graphics card heatsink with much better reliability these days, especially with the reference graphics cards. When deciding what cooling solution to use for this RX 480 Polaris card, I decided to try a budget passively-cooled solution.

We recently looked at several Noctua cooler options for Intel's Core X-Series while today the tables have turned and we tried out Noctua's TR4-SP3 heatsink that is capable of cooling the high-Wattage Threadripper and EPYC processors with air cooling.

With the ten-core / 20-thread Core i9 7900X CPU having a 140 Watt TDP, it's a lot to keep cool with air cooling. Even more, with the soon-to-launch new Core i9 models, you really need a beefy heatsink fan if wishing to avoid water cooling. In this article are some tests with different Noctua heatsinks. Besides being able to cool these 2017X processors, the other requirement too is that they fit within 4U space requirements. The heatsinks benchmarked today included the Noctua NH-C14S, NH-U9S, Noctua NH-D9L, NF-A9 PWM fan, and NF-A14 PWM fan.

After months of experimenting with different methods for better cooling the basement server room where 60+ systems are running Linux benchmarks on a daily basis, for less than $100 USD I've found a fan that does an amazing job keeping the temperature suitable for all of the running systems.

For the past several months I've been using a Scythe Mugen Max heatsink on one of my Core i7 5960X Haswell-E systems. That heatsink has been working out great, but the only problem is that it's too big -- particularly if trying to fit it in a 4U chassis. In needing to cool this 140 Watt CPU while moving the system into a 4U rackmount chassis, I ended up trying out the much cheaper and smaller Freezer i11 from Arctic Cooling.

With the basement conversion into a big Linux server room where there's 50~60 systems running daily at full load while running our many open-source benchmarks, cooling has been a challenge with now experiencing summer temperatures. I've already resorted to retro-fitting in extra powered ventilation ducts to keep pushing fresh air into the server room. That did some help, but also of aid is upgrading the cooling systems on some of the more powerful systems rather than using the stock heatsinks and fans. For helping out the cooling situation, Noctua sent out a while ago the NH-U12DX i4 and NF-F12.

When receiving the new Intel Xeon E5-1680 v3 and E5-2687W v3 CPUs, the CPU heatsink I switched to using for cooling the eight and ten core workstation/server processors was the Noctua i4 CPU Cooler (NH-U9DXi4). I've now been using this heatsink for over a month and it's been working out great for my range of LGA-2011 v3 CPUs.

If you plan to buy an Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E or any other high-end processor, a good heatsink is needed especially if you plan to do any overclocking. In looking at a new cooling option today we're trying out the Scythe Mugen MAX.

While not directly Linux related, this afternoon at Phoronix we are looking at the SilverStone Air Penetrator AP123. If you're looking to make your "Tux" powered computer system a bit cooler this summer, the SST-AP123 is a great way to quietly do so.

If you're a Linux desktop user on an open-source graphics driver that lacks proper fan management and power management support, you may want to consider an after-market graphics card cooler that is more efficient and also quieter. One of the high-performance after-market GPU cooling solutions is the ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme Plus II, which boasts three fans but is very quiet and does an incredible job at keeping NVIDIA and ATI/AMD graphics processors operating at quite low temperatures.

Back in February we reviewed the NZXT Cryo LX, which was a massive notebook cooler made of aluminum that packed three 120mm fans and support for up to 19" widescreen notebooks. With not many individuals having 17" and 19" notebooks compared to 15" and smaller, NZXT has now introduced the Cryo S that is better sized for smaller notebooks and netbooks. The Cryo S cooler uses just two 120mm fans that can be run off USB or an AC adapter and there is an integrated two-port USB 2.0 hub.

Quite infrequently do we look at cooling products at Phoronix, but when something interesting comes along, we certainly snatch up the opportunity to look at something new and unique. An example of this is with the Noctua NH-U12DX, which is a heatsink designed for Intel's Xeon processors, but it does not share many traits with most workstation/server heatsinks. This tower heatsink with three heatpipes can also be setup in an air-duct design for dual Xeon systems where a the 120mm fans can push air across two NH-U12DX coolers.