Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 CPU Air Cooler, 6 Heat Pipes, Dual 120mm TL-C12 PWM Fan

First and foremost, I had the top-of-the-line, the best, the myth, the legend - D15 on my other rig and I find it humongous. And considering the price range with lots of competitions around, I thought I would try this product that is backed up with many many positive reviews. Hell, Yes! This product delivers! Quiet fans, almost inaudible (cranks up during POST, but stays silent after), keeps 9900K in ~60F under load and ~25F idle temps. Smaller footprint than the monster of coolers - D15 making the case area circulation bigger, meaning more room for air to circulate and most of all, not as heavy as the monster D15.

Joel Bongat · 2026-01-06 · via amazon

Size: This fits any standard ATX and M-ATX motherboards fine and includes mounting equipment for a variety of sockets, making it easy to pick the right one for you. Just be careful to follow the directions included or it can be overwhelming Performance: Performance wise this cooler is awesome I've had no heating issues like I had before and is really nice paired with a 9800x3d. Configuration options for fan speeds can be tweaked in BIOS so if you want to change the smart curve that's the best place to do so. There aren't any lights so no brightness settings to worry about but I'm sure people could add their own fans as long as they are the right size. Mountability: Super straight forwards and one of the best mounting systems for an air cooler I've seen in a while Build Quality: All high quality materials making me confident it will last a long time, if anything contrary pops up I'll update here. Otherwise I think I'll be happy for a while

David Kayne · 2025-03-22 · via amazon

This thing is a BEAST of a cooler. I went from a water-cooled PC, of which I had for many years. When I upgraded my PC, I was recommended this cooler by a friend of mine and it was genuinely the best idea he's ever had. It's a chonky piece of hardware, so you'll almost definitely need an ATX case to fit it with room, but my goodness does it keep my CPU nice and cool. Mounting it was as simple as you'd expect with an air cooler and it came with pretty in depth instructions. It also connects to your motherboard like a normal fan, so if you have a fan controller you can change the speed to match either power outputs or use a heat sensor to change the speed like I do. Overall, I love this aircooler and would buy it again in a heartbeat if I needed.

Dylan G. · 2026-03-11 · via amazon

This thing is a beast. Keeps my pc cool, great price, and looks great! Love the standard fan size if you ever need to replace one. Also love that it’s compatible with most modern cpu sockets! Best cooler for the price.

Jevan Chamberlain · 2026-02-01 · via amazon

I've mounted hundreds of coolers across all kinds of builds over the years, and I keep coming back to this one. That should say enough right there. The Peerless Assassin 120 genuinely disrupts names like Noctua in the budget space. The dual 120mm fans move serious air and the six heat pipes do a great job spreading heat across the fins evenly. It handles monster CPUs without breaking a sweat. For anything in the range of an AMD 8-core or an Intel i5 through i7 this thing is overkill in the best way. Go up to a 12 to 16 core AMD or an i9 and you might start brushing up against its limits under sustained all-core loads, at which point an AIO starts making more sense. The fans are not quite as whisper quiet as Noctua out of the box, but they are extremely close. The difference feels more like a pitch thing than an actual volume thing, and once you dial in a custom fan curve it becomes basically silent under normal workloads. Size wise it's a large dual tower cooler so check your case clearance before ordering, but mounting was straightforward and fit was solid with no issues. For the price this cooler has no business being this good. I keep buying them for builds and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

spl51285 · 2026-02-25 · via amazon

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VALUE SCORE

Price

$20