Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

T Tom's Hardware Article · Nov 2024

Thermalright's Peerless Assassin 120 SE lives up to its name, delivering the best performance from an air cooler that we've tested on Intel's Alder Lake at a price that undercuts the competition. In our tests, it performed so well when cooling our Core i9-12900K that we re-tested it multiple times to be sure the results were correct. The Peerless Assassin 120 SE cooled the CPU when it was drawing over 200 watts better than our tested competition, and at lower thermal/TDP settings, it performed much better than the competition.

S STS STS · 34.5K subscribers · Jan 2024

Although it looks like "nothing" special, or at least without any outstanding features, it proved that you don't need gimmicks and unnecessary buzzwords to kick everybody down on the benchmark chart!

E EveZone NexusNerd · reviewer · May 2026

The Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE remains the best rand-for-rand air cooler under R1,500 in SA, comfortably handling up to a Ryzen 7 9700X or Core i7-14700K at stock. Its closest alternatives, the DeepCool AK620 and the be quiet! Pure Rock Pro 3, trade marginal noise gains for a meaningful price premium that most builders cannot justify.

So, the uh uh Peerless Assassin SE is keeping the 11600K a decent temp at a decent temperature while she's idling.

H Hardware For Gamers chairman67 · owner · Jun 2022

TR produce some really nice quality tower coolers for low price. The Peerless Assassin is no exception. TR's mounting system looks top notch too. The only Con I can see is that low height RAM must be used, which is the case with most dual tower coolers, except for the Scythe Fuma 2 and Fuma 2 Rev.B coolers.

L Loki's Channel Loki's Channel · 2.5K subscribers · Feb 2022

Personally this cooler is not really bad for 33 bucks, compare to buying the cheap liquid cooler, you will have many problem like the pump broken or may

T Thirstybear Article

The Peerless Assassin 120 SE has been a Reddit darling for over two years, and after living with one for 90 days on a Ryzen 7 7700X, I completely understand why. It matched the cooling performance of Noctua’s flagship NH-D15 in my testing, sometimes running 2°C cooler at equivalent noise levels.

M MaxMyBuild Article · Jun 2026

The Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE is the clearest recommendation on this page for most builders. It is a dual-tower design with two 120mm fans, covers 155mm case clearance, and delivers performance that closes most of the gap between budget and premium air coolers.

B Budget Loadout Russ · reviewer · Apr 2026

This is the part of the market where spending a little more pays off hard. Not because the cooler looks premium, but because the performance jump is big enough to matter in real use. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE is the best example of that value sweet spot.

P PC Analytics nathangamble125 · owner · Mar 2023

I love my Peerless Assassin 120 SE. Products that can legitimately be described as "budget high-end" are few and far between, but this is one of them. My SSD (a Netac NV7000) is another.

S STS Megaman-Zero-626 · owner · Jan 2024

Using the non-SE version on my 5800X3D, got the Phantom Spirit 120 SE on my 7800X3D. These are all you need for gaming, bar none.

W Windows Central Article · May 2024

The Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE is still the best value-for-money CPU air cooler I've ever bought.

P PC Analytics PC Analytics · 7.4K subscribers · Aug 2022

This videos compares the Peerless Assassin 120 SE vs the Fuma 2 Rev. B on both qualitative factors and performance.