Cryorig M9A AMD Smallest Tower CPU Cooler with Jet Fin Acceleration System - Silver/Black

This is a great budget air cooler. I bought this because I could no longer stand the insane amount of fan noise coming from my wife's desktop computer. It had the stock AMD cooler on it and the thermal paste started to dry up, but the fan was obnoxiously loud. Like so loud that I'd actually curse if the thing woke from sleep. I wanted to find a relatively cheap air cooler that was quiet and cooled well enough to allow for a moderate overclock if I wanted to go down that road. The Cryorig installed relatively easily although the instructions are a bit sparse. It wasn't immediately apparent that there was supposed to be a bunch of slack between the backplate and mounting block, but once I fit it all together I realized the slack was taken up when mounting the heatsink.The performance is exactly what I was expecting. It cools a good 10 degrees cooler on average over the stock AMD heatsink and is by far much quieter, which is really all I was aiming for. It looks great and the build quality seems excellent given the price point. I personally didn't have any clearance issues with the M9A, but the fan is probably only a few millimeters away from the first RAM slot. It's not a problem, but it's a tight fit. If I was in the market for another air cooler I'd definitely look into another Cryorig unit. It also came with some thermal paste which is an unexpected and nice little touch.

This is the best compact air cooler there is! To my knowledge, there is no better 90mm cooler in this price range. This replaced an FX 8320 stock cooler that was being used on a Phenom II 965 BE (C3, 125watt version). The old Phenom II quads are notoriously hot running and have a low thermal ceiling, so this thing has it's work cut out for it. Temps are much lower and this cooler is virtually silent. The case and GPU fans actually drown it out under gaming load. It now idles around 30-32 degrees celcius (All power saving features on in BIOS except C1E), and has yet to break 50 degrees under gaming load. CPU is not currently overclocked, but I would wager a few hundred MHz could be achieved with it. It should be noted I also have 3 120mm case fans, 2 intake and 1 exhaust. I used the included thermal paste, and have plenty left over.As for installation, it was quite simple. RAM clearance was a non issue. The cooler is offset to the rear so the fan does not cover any RAM slots on my Asrcok Killer 990FX board. You will need access to the back of the motherboard. If your case doesn't have the cutout in the back, the board must be removed. The cooler requires a custom bracket (included) so the stock AMD one must be removed. After that the bracket bolts to the board, and the cooler bolts to that bracket. The fan must be removed before the bolt under it in the cooler base can be accessed. Make sure of course to very thoroughly clean the CPU heat spreader (rubbing alcohol works well) and the base of the cooler before applying paste and bolt it on. Check that it's tight and doesn't move, and done!

Took about 3-4 weeks to receive, but was worth it! Keeps my pc cool

I used this temporarily while my corsair H55 was out for repairs, honestly I'm impressed, for a processor that isn't very hot my A8-5600k was kept pretty cool at a stable 48-50c while under load and at a cool 34c when idle. It also relatively quiet however after a month of use it did get a bit noisy when under load, I haven't checked but if the fan comes with a refill hole/cap I should be able to use some machine oil (sewing machine oil works great!) to re-lubricate the fan and reduce the noise while increasing efficiency!It comes with tube of thermal paste if you needed some but I opted to use my tube of Noctua NH1, mounting was really easy to be honest, all it took was a bracket and some screws, the only tricky part was mounting the fan back on with the rubber gaskets properly, other than that installation was a breeze.It also comes with additional fan mounting so if you want to add a second one you can. One thing I really wish was an option was a additional cover in white, the black one it comes with is nice but if you have a white themed build it can stick out, luckily its removable and thanks to that I was able to spray paint the top in flat white and have a nice clean aesthetic while I patiently waited for my liquid cooler to be back.Eventually the liquid cooler came back and I uninstalled this but I was so impressed by the performance that I'm building a mini itx server and the M9a will absolutely be doing the cooling job.