Since it is rather rather difficult to make a direct comparison of all 50 different coolers we have tested until now, we decided to split the result into three categories according to the retail price. After all, we all want to know which is the most affordable product with the highest performance.

The first category represents the budget cpu coolers, which include low priced products that aim to offer better cooling compared to Intel's stock coolers.

At full fan speeds without any overclocking, the Akasa AK-965BL gave a very good performance, with its twin brother AK-965 to follow closely. The Titan TTC-NK35TZ/PW and the Scythe Shukerin gave exactly the same temperature with 62 degrees Celcious, while the Evercool HPH-9525CU did not offer that much, at least compared to the Intel's stock cpu cooler.

At lower fan speeds, the Titan TTC-NK35TZ/PW performed better than the Akasa AK-965BL. The Scythe Shukerin was also more quiet than Intel's stock cooler, while we have several products that actually performed even worse, like the Evercool HPH-9525CU.

In the next test we made things a little harder for the coolers by overclocking the CPU. Both Akasa AK-965BL and Titan TTC-NK35TZ/PW performed equally, while the Evercool HPH-9525CU has the worst thermal dispass with the measurement to show 95 degrees Celcious. The Scythe Shukerin showed a very good performance, for its size, keeping the CPU 5 degrees cooler than the Intel's stock solution.

In the next test we measured the noise levels of each CPU cooler, with their fans spinning at both full and minimum speeds.

The majority of the tested products could not compete with Intel's s stock solution here:

Lowering the rotation speeds of the fan reduces the noise. Both new coolers in this chart, the Evercool HPH-9525CU and the Akasa AK-965BL performed very well.

Last but not least, the retail price of each tested product is presented below. We feel that the Akasa AK-965BL is probably the best choice priced at just $25.