I'm having similar doubts, using the stock wraith prism on my 3700X, it's barely adequate (42ºC idle, and it's cold here) and between noticeable to unpleasant in regards of noise. Using headphones is not a solution, I prefer to use speakers when gaming or editing sound and video.
Load temps are OK (70-ish at full load like cinebench or video production) if you can accept the vaccum-cleaner like noise. The noise pitch is not annoying, just the sound level.
I'm not interested in overclocking, new chips auto-overclock themselves enough to be worth it.
Also not interested in watercoolng when $60-$100 air coolers outperform many 240mm AIOs that cost twice as much.
And I don't care if my CPU boosts to 4.375 instead of 4.4 GHz. The difference is only discernible if benchmarking, but not in real world usage.
After asking here in the forums, I chose one of this 3:
- Scythe Ninja 5 (expensive, super silent, big and heavy);
- Scythe Fuma 2 (almost as good as the Ninja, but a bit better performer at the expense of noise, much cheaper);
- Noctua NH-U12S (good performer, realtively good price compared to other Noctua coolers);
- As last resort, Arctic 34 Esports (this one is a bit controversial, some revirews say it's not good at all, others say it's the best you can get in its price range.) My old Arctic i30 was same price as the Hyper 212 and outperformed it both in noise and cooling).
Sadly, the importer for Scythe in my country (Portugal, and probably in Spain because in can't find Scythe coolers from spanish e-tailers) closed doors. As you see, not all coolers are available here, in a small peripheric country.
Edit: amazon.es has the Fuma 2 listed, with delivery between 1 and 3 months ... but the Mugen 5 Rev B is in stock listed at €66. Then again, Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 is listed at €58,90.
Second edit: The NH-U12S is readily available in many e-tail and retail shops (even in the small town where I live) at prices between €57+€4 shipping and €66.
Opinions?