Dual tower, single fan, 6 heat pipes and trademark Noctua quality
Includes:
CamelCamelCamel.
It's a tough sell against the ~$30 thermalright assassin 120. When noise normalised at 123 watts it's likely within 1 degree, given how close it is to the nh-d15.
You're talking in US prices in US dollars - Australian price for the PA120 (for the cheaper SE version, at least) seems to be $50-60 when on sale / not being price-gouged.
The PA120 is also not comparable at high heatloads (200W+) (see also the PA120 SE failing when put on a 13900K without power limits), which is where you'd actually want to be considering a D15S in the first place. You're right the PA120 is great, but it's not suitable as a high-end cooler replacement for high thermal loads, and I don't think this is the right context to be bringing it into the comparison.
edit: my original comment stated the wrong cooling scenario under which the PA120 SE failed.
I was referring to the Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120, not the Pearless Assassin, the former of which is around $30 AUD (I have seen it for $25).
In regards to the PA 120 vs AK620, Thermalright is better than Deepcool at lower heat loads (below 165w), but Deepcool is better above 200w. Likely Thermalright has the better heatsinks but fans aren't as efficient in terms of noise vs static pressure, as iirc someone found Thermalright to perform better when using the same fans. Either of them offer much better price/perf than Noctua though, which is somewhat antiquated.
But if you have a 6-8 core processer, or even a low power 12-16 core like the 5900/5950x, you don't need more than a 4 heat piper tower cooler. If you are pushing 250w or higher, I'd honestly think about going for a 360mm AIO as heat pipes have diminishing returns and the CPU is likely being used for productivity purposes.
@iseeyou1312: I'm being personally oppressed by Thermalright having multiple coolers including both "assassin" and "120" in their name - my bad on that.
But Noctua will outlast any other cooler because you can request new platform mounting kits for free from them.
DeepCool also does free mounting upgrades e.g.:
It's not as comprehensive (I doubt you can get LGA 775 mounts for free lol), but for 98% of users I would consider it comparable.
Thanks op, I got two (have a single 13900k that needs cooling)
I have one of these. My 8700k runs at 5Ghz very stable.
Even at this (low) price, it's a tough sell against e.g., the Deepcool AK620 for ~$99 which has comparable* noise-normalized performance for less.
*Some reviews have it higher/lower than the D15 non-S - possibly depends on which CPU is used for testing. Either way it's at least _very_ close.