Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2 CPU Cooler, Dual Tower, 6 Heat Pipes

I bought the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2 to upgrade the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition cooler that I had on my Plex server. The Cooler Master was decent, but I had to limit the CPU's power settings to prevent overheating/throttling. This did the trick. When I built my Plex server I opted for the Cooler Master for the price and hadn't considered Thermalright. I am using a Core Ultra 7 265K processor, which has a 250W P2 limit and a 125W base TDP. With the cooler master I had to limit the P2 to about 210W and P1 at stock to keep temps in check for long encodes and benchmarks like Cinebench r23. With the Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2 I was able to up P2 to the full 250W and P1 to about 180W (I probably could go higher) and keep the processor cool during heavy loads. Installation was straightforward - put the backplate on the MP, attach the mounting brackets, apply thermal paste to the CPU, mount the cooler on the brackets, and attach the fans. The cooler comes with a splitter so you can connect both fans to the CPU fan slot without purchasing extra accessories. My only critique is that the fan cables and splitter are a bit short compared to some other coolers I have used, requiring creative cable management to hide them well in my system. I had to offset the front fan by a few mm to clear my memory, but that was easy to adjust and hasn't had an effect on performance. Performance is good. The system idles at 30-32C (about 2 degrees cooler than my old cooler). With the P2 at 250W (TAU of 64 seconds) and the P1 at 180W temps for a Cinebench r23 multi-core test (full 10 minutes) hung around 70-75C on average, with a few cores peaking at slightly over 80C during the P2 time. The noise level is OK. After tuning the fan curve, it is silent at idle. It does get loud at full RPM, but not unexpectedly so. I will note that in the midrange the fans have a whine to them that I liken to how a jet engine sounds when the plane is taxiing. It's not a loud whine, but definitely audible if you are in a quiet space. All said, I would recommend the Peerless Assassin for anyone looking for a budget cooler that performs better than the price would suggest.

Sean G. · 2026-04-23 · via amazon

I think this seems to good to be true. This cooler is less than one-third the cost of a 280mm AIO water cooler, but this cooler is MUCH quieter and much easier to install with far less cabling and complexity. I got the non-RGB version, so that's 3 or 4 less cables to deal with for some pretty lights. I was certain this cooler would not be able to keep my AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D cool on a full Cinebench R23 benchmark and I could not believe the results if I didn't see them with my own eyes. Attached is a screenshot. For an experiment, I removed the second fan and just left the main fan in the middle of the heat sink and the CPU only got 6c hotter and was well below the thermal throttle during the entire benchmark! If you are at the desktop, browsing the web or reading email, the fans are silent. I can't even tell if the computer is on. But when you put a heavy resource load on the computer, you hear the fans ramp up and they are like a loud whisper. This reassures me the CPU is working and was about half the decibels of other coolers and fans I've tried. I put this on a mini ITX board, inside of a standard mid-tower and there are no clearance issues for the case panel or the RAM. The heatsink has an offset that gives as much room as you need to still have access to RAM or to see RGB lights (yawn!) on top of the RAM (if you like that sort of thing.) I tried a different air cooler that was 3x the cost, went over the top of my RAM (meaning I'd have to remove the cooler to change or work on the memory) and if the RAM had any RGB on it, the RAM would be too tall and the cooler would have never gone on unless I replaced the RAM with lower profile RAM. This cooler, on the other hand, doesn't care either way, cools equally (if not better) at half the noise and was super easy to install. I don't understand how the math works regarding value when competitors aren't even anywhere near this kind of price and performance and ease of installation.

Carey Holzman · 2026-02-12 · via amazon

Installed on an I5-14600K, running cool, tight fit in standard case, but it fit. Installation instructions could be a little bigger to make images clearer, but they were OK. No heat issues, a little noisy when fans are on full, but I haven't played with fan curves so that's on me. Clears my RAM just fine, fans could shift even more, but I don't have heat-sinks on my RAM, so I had no issues. Would buy again. MSI motherboard

T_S_H1 · 2026-02-25 · via amazon

This is a great cooler. Quieter and more effective than the old water cooler I had in my 13th generation Intel chip. I was pleasantly surprised.

Tom W · 2026-04-03 · via amazon

This is a great CPU cooler keeps the CPU cool at a low RPM. Most of the time it’s dead silent, but as the RPM increases there’s a noticeable resonance that sounds a bit like a whine. The other issue I have is that it completely covers the RAM slots, so having to take out/install RAM sticks is kind of a pain. Thirdly, it’s MASSIVE, so things are pretty cramped in my case right now, doing any bit of tinkering requires working around the cooler, which can be a hassle when the heat sink scratches you. Over all, it was decently easy to install, and gets the job done. So I’d give it a 4 star review, considering the whining can get a little annoying.

Miguel · 2025-12-03 · via amazon

Best Buy

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MSI

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Newegg (Open Box)

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VALUE SCORE

Price

$20

Price

$23.99