3-Way Low Profile CPU Cooling Shoot-Out: Reeven, Phanteks, & Noctua
by E. Fylladitakis on January 18, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Noctua
- Phanteks
- Cooler
- Reeven
Testing Results, Low Fan Speed (7 Volts)
Switching things up, let's take a look at cooling performance with the fans brought down to 7 Volts, for a look at performance with quieter operation.
As you'd expect, the average thermal resistance rises with the reduced airflow. The Noctua is still in a league of its own here due to its size. Meanwhile the Phanteks struggles some, as it comes in at the bottom of this chart.
| Core Temperature, Constant Thermal Load (Low Fan Speed) |
Core temperatures still look good, though. With the Noctua well in the lead, the other two coolers are only about 19C over ambient at 60W, which bodes particularly well for quiet computing at stock clocks.
While we had to skip two of our highest wattage tests here - these low profile coolers simply aren't meant for highly overclocked & overvolted processors - ultimately the results from our tests show that all of the coolers are sufficient for their jobs. Though smaller, neither the Phanteks or Reeven coolers would have any issue cooling a modern processor running at stock speed, even in low airflow environments. Again, the Reeven Steropes has the advantage over the Phanteks TC12LS in terms of raw thermal performance, but the latter is significantly quieter, reaching virtually inaudible noise levels.
As for the Noctua NH-C14S, with its fans running at low speed, the performance gap between the NH-C14S and the other horizontal coolers widened greatly, to the point that it would be unfair to make any comparisons at all. The NH-C14S is only comparable to large tower coolers, thermally outperforming even very large coolers with much greater mass. The noise output of the NF-A14 fan under these conditions is very low and should be barely noticeable in a very quiet room.
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mm0zct - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Came to the comments to say just this. I've been running my Phenom-II 1055t (95W) in a mini-ITX system with the Shuriken Big for almost 6 years now, very happily and quietly.edzieba - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
For a low-profile cooler roundup, it seems odd to include the NH-C14S (at double the Z-height of the other coolers tested) but not the NH-L9i or even the NH-L9x65.80-wattHamster - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
One works with the samples one has, presumably.jabber - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Yeah I always love folks that seem to think sites have every cooler, ram module, case, CPU, GPU under the sun to test against each other. If you have an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters...jtd871 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
These may not be tall coolers, but they're not all super low-profile either. I'd be interested in seeing reviews of the Cryorig C7 and Silverstone AR-05.jtd871 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Could you guys please update Bench with all these results?!Great_Scott - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
It should happen pretty soon. Hey, Bench was updated with the new Core i3 results and there isn't even a review out yet!dreamcat4 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Its worth noting that while this review doesn't seem to mention the Raijintek Pallas or the CRYORIG C1... shouldn't assume those are unworthy of pretty serious consideration also.creed3020 - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Yeah the review is not apples to apples. In the world of SFF coolers there are the very tiny and larger solutions. The Noctua should be compared to coolers like the ones you mentioned.b4bblefish - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
I'm really confused why the Noctua L9 or L9x65 wasn't used here since those would have been more relevant to this shootout?Basically instead of 3 comparable fans it's just 2 low profile ones and a large cooler which really shouldn't be compared to the other 2...