The processor cooling market is divided into two broad classes: air coolers and liquid coolers. Air coolers are the most common kind found in retail desktops; these are essentially metal heatsinks with fans that push air through their fins, accelerating the cooling process. Some of these are what are dubbed "stock coolers," cooling heatsink and fan assemblies provided by the two big chip makers (AMD and Intel) to complement their mainstream processors. (Most of AMD's stock line are dubbed Wraith coolers, while Intel's very newest stock coolers, on its 12th Generation "Alder Lake" chips, are dubbed the Laminar line.) Note: Stock air coolers are the coolers that will come in the box with an AMD or Intel CPU, though not all CPUs bundle one. Also, sometimes, if you buy a prebuilt desktop PC, the system maker may use a cooler of its own design or sourcing, and not the AMD or Intel stock model. More exotic are water coolers, also known as closed-loop liquid coolers or all-in-one (AIO) CPU coolers. (An even more elite class of liquid coolers is custom-designed by each tube and joint rather than being a prefilled, premade system; we won't be covering that kind of advanced custom cooling hardware here.) AIO coolers, too, feature large metal constructs with fans, but those are actually radiators, mounted to the PC's case, through which the liquid flows in a circuit. The whole works differs significantly from an air cooler by using liquid-filled tubes and a pump to convey heat away from the CPU's "water block" (the assembly that sits atop the CPU and draws heat away), through the radiator for cooling, and back again in a loop flow. It's a common mistake to assume that any water cooler is inherently better than any air cooler. Liquid coolers do have some undeniable advantages, but a specific cooler's design is critically important, and some air coolers perform better than some water coolers. Generally speaking, you can expect bigger coolers of either design to outperform smaller ones, simply because larger coolers generally have more metal within to spread out absorbed heat and can typically mount more or bigger fans. Both of these factors contribute to more efficient cooling.\\