 Every non-K or X processor from Intel comes packed with this little guy right here. And I mean little. Whether it's been by removing fin area or eliminating performance enhancing copper slugs, Intel has been costing down their box cooler for years. Years. I mean, to be clear, it is adequate for default operation, but it would easily be overwhelmed by an overclocked processor. But what if Intel made a stock heatsink specifically for K-series and X-series overclockable chips? Well, it turns out they do. And it looks pretty much like what you'd expect if Intel's cooling engineers, the same ones what brung you this, were terminally unimaginative and were told, well, make something like that, but that performs a bit better. So it looks about like the stock cooler on ROIDs. But did the treatment give it better performance or just mood swings, fatigue, and a deflated sex drive? Let's find out. The Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900's modular design supports a variety of different layouts and configurations. Click on the link in the video description to learn more. Okay, silly intro aside, taking the Intel Thermal Solution TS15A out of the box, it looks pretty much like somebody took three or so regular Intel stock heatsinks and glued them together. The push mounting pins remain for that easy installation, and the fan clips on to the top exactly the same way it normally would. Looking more closely at it though reveals some differences. So the regular heatsink uses an aluminum extrusion process to create the required profile. That's great for keeping costs down, but not so great for having thin, higher performance fins. So for the TS15A, which we'll be calling ROID from now on, each fin here is actually its own bent piece of metal that meets at the center. So you can kind of see it here around a copper slug. This increases performance, but also increases manufacturing costs. But how much additional performance does it actually get you, and can you slap a decent overclock on your processor using it? And then perhaps more importantly, at this price, does it make any sense to actually go and buy this product compared to larger and probably better coolers, like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo that are available for as little as only $2 more? To test this, we first ran a couple of other heatsinks on an Intel Core i7-7700K at both the stock speed of 4.5 GHz turbo and a modest 4.8 GHz overclock that was mostly there to increase its heat output. The stock fan curve was used for these tests, and we also used the thermal compound that comes pre-applied to these things out of the box. And... Yeah, it couldn't quite do it. At the stock speed, the Rhoided cooler was able to pull off a warm 81 degrees Celsius, but with our... that fairly reasonable overclock, it throttled hard, reaching 100 degrees Celsius in about 30 seconds. The only thing in our test table here that performed worse than the Rhoided cooler was actually the regular Intel stock cooler, which immediately throttled so badly that we just canceled the test out of pity for both our board and our chip. You know what? It's not all terrible news, though. I mean, it was able to maintain 4.7 GHz in the 0.1 volt offset test, which wasn't really fair because that makes this chip more like a space heater than a room heater. Get it? Because, like, outer space? Ah ha ha ha! Anyway, and with a bit of tweaking, we were actually able to get this processor up to a stable 4.9 GHz without it thermal throttling. That is to say, upstairs, where the temperatures are about 5 degrees cooler. Here it is definitely thermal throttling, but it's still managing about 4.8 GHz sustained at 100 degrees. Okay, then. So it performs a bit worse than a Hyper 212 Evo. Dumb product. Video over, right? Wrong! If I'm investing 33 of my hard-earned dollars plus shipping, we're gonna dig deep. What about a comparison to AMD's cooler that's sort of a stock cooler, but you also have to buy it separately? Now, the easiest way to see how these stack up would be to use the same heat load or the same CPU. But unfortunately, that isn't possible given that there aren't currently any AM4 to LGA 1151 mounting adapters or vice versa. So we devised a completely over-engineered and clever plan to use an intermediary reference cooler that was compatible with both. Or, because we're thorough like that, we actually used a total of three references. And, looking at the results, AMD is the winner for non-stock stock cooler performance. Although, only by a slim 5% over ROIDI. And at 12% more expensive, it looks like it's pretty much coming down to whether it's worth it to you to pay 7% for that RGB lighting. Although there is one other thing that really differentiates them as well. The noise level. Once the Intel fan kicks in, it reaches about 40 decibels, which isn't overly loud. But the AMD Wraith cooler comes in at 38 decibels. So you'd think, okay, that's pretty similar. Uh-uh. The AMD cooler is at a low frequency, so tuning it out is easy. Kind of like a clothes dryer in the other room. The Intel cooler, on the other hand, is high-pitched and very distracting. Kind of like your boss, which... Hey! Anyway, at this point, you might assume that we aren't big fans of paying aftermarket dollars for OEM design. And that we think buying the Intel Thermal Solution TS15A would be super dumb. And that would be correct. Great work, Detective. This is Omar's Cherry Wood Earbuds. They are, as I mentioned, handcrafted from natural cherry wood with handmade details. And they've got all the normal features you'd expect from headphones as well. Including a built-in microphone with one-button function control, coaxial dual driver speakers, a 45-degree oblique angle design, and... It comes prepackaged with three pairs of ultra-soft silicon earpads in small, medium, and large sizes. These things are 50 bucks on Amazon, and US residents can use code Oearbuds to save 40%, which would make them $30. And these are absolutely... Ignoring the wood, handcraftedness, these things sound killer for 30 bucks. Like, unbelievable. So go check them out at the link below. So thanks for watching. If you guys disliked this video, you can hit that dislike button. But if you liked it, hit the like button, get subscribed, maybe consider checking out where to buy the other stuff we featured, like the Hyper 212 Evo or really any cooler from Noctua at the link in the video description. Also, down there is a link to our merch store where you can get cool shirts like this one, as well as our community forum, which you should totally join. Now I've got to go have a word with our writer, Alex.