Intel Core i7 / LGA1366 CPU Cooler Roundup

Sound Level Testing

While everyone "hears" noise differently there is one easy way to remove all subjectivness and easily compare different fans: use a sound level meter. This way you can easily compare the various fans noise envelopes without us colouring the results and see what fans fit within your personal comfort level. Of course, we will endeavor to try and explain the various results (which are taken at a 30 inch distance) to help you our readers get an even better understanding of how loud a cooler's stock fan is, but even if you discount our personal opinions, the fact remains numbers don't lie. All fans are tested with both voltage regulation / PWM turned off.


To our way of thinking, the Scythe S-Flex G 1900RPM fan (when on a 212+) is about as loud as we would want in a system, and anything above this level is not only going to be noticeable but has pretty good chance of being annoying. It is with this reasoning that we have very few qualms saying that the Kingwin is loud and while 9.4 decibels does not sound like much (pardon the pun) the decibel scale is logarithmic. This means about every three additional decibels is a doubling of the power or intensity (i.e. doubles perceived noise levels). This fan is easily the “standout” of this graph and we don't mean that in a good way.

To our way of thinking the real standout of this graph is the ZeroTherm Nirvana’s fan which rotates over 2.5 times faster than the NF-P12 with ULNA adapter but doesn't put out too much more noise. This amazing fan is going faster than the ones on the Zalman, Cogage, Spire or Tuniq products which are all significantly louder.

Even though both the Tuniq and Scythe S-Flex G fans are fluid dynamic bearing units there is a massive difference between the two. High noise is simply the cost of doing business when you need high performance and can’t increase the size of the fan nor thickness like we see with the confined space between the Extreme 120's cooling fins.

The Zalman fan is loud, there is no denying it but the noise it does produce is easier to ignore than most and given the speed at which it rotates, we were actually impressed with it when going full speed. It is also interesting to note the amazing range the Zalman fan has, with everything from whisper quiet (a match for the Noctua NF-P12-1300 fan at 900RPM) at the low range to loud when the performance is needed.

On first glance, the Cogage fan produces fairly decent numbers. However, when you realize how slow it is moving in comparison to the Scythe S-Flex 1900RPM, it is not exactly all that impressive. All in all, fairly mediocre results is the best way we would describe it.

There is no getting around the fact that the Spire fan is loud and unlike some others in the chart, it has a pretty good excuse for being so: it’s damn fast. As we said before; Spire needed to get a 120mm fan up to speeds exceeding 2000RPM in order to push air through its oddball fin layout and increased noise is the cost of doing so. The only saving grace of this fan is the sleeve bearing it uses. Sleeve bearings are fairly quiet and the noise this one makes is not bad considering the levels it is running at. More importantly, the kind of noise it creates is fairly easy to ignore, no matter what the chart says.