the fact of the matter is that the “best” will always be some variation on the dual-tower, two or three 140mm fans design. You just can’t really do much more with air. All the attempts to strap a vapor chamber or some TEC element to them just ends in failure. We are done, seemingly. The physics can only be pushed so much. If you have a need for higher cooling performance to, I dunno, run a current i9 maxed out with no limits - welcome to water, AIO or custom.
The prosiphon would like a word
It's an older example and someone coming up with a way to exploit physics to do a better air cooler doesn't happen every day but innovation can still happen, be it in cpu coolers or anything else. In a way the problem is trying to award a product in every category every year even if there's no advancement. For example the 7800x3d deserves to be cpu of the year but Raptor Lake Refresh doesn't deserve anything so don't award it. Nothing new on SSD's? Don't award them, and so on and on...