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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wolfemane - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
This is from my personal experience only, but the L9i didnt cool much better than a stock Intel cooler. It just did it much quieter. I had one on an i3-6100 in a node 202 build and in a Bitspheonix prodogymitx case. I then swapped the 6100 for a 6600k and that was beyond the l9is capabilities in either case. But that was to be expected. Even noctua doesn't recommend the L9i for anything more than 65w unless in a very well ventilated case.
xenol - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
I would've liked to see the heatsinks installed on a system in order to gauge how it might look on my own builds. Cooling performance is important, but I'm willing to sacrifice that if these coolers make it a pain to work on my computer.bigboxes - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
I've got an AXP-200R in my HTPC. I didn't need to go that low of profile, but the huge fan is super quiet and perfect for my application. At 73mm of height clearance I'd think that the Thermalright model would have been in your review.AXP-200R website: http://thermalright.com/product/axp-200r/
AXP-200R in use: http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh175/bigboxes/...
stlouis1 - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
I've been using AXP-100's as my go to for small form factor builds. It would have actually been nice to see the AXP-100/200 in this review for comparison as the Thermalright options have become hard to acquire in Canada (not sure about elsewhere)genzai - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Can you add a bit more pertinent info? Like full socket compatibility. (2011.3?)Also can you talk about Rack U height as that is another place LP coolers are used. What is the minimum RU these coolers would fit?
Thanks
Ranger1065 - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Good heavens Anandtech, a new article! Don't overdo it now. It seems to me more effort is expended on Tweets these days. Interesting read though.colonelclaw - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
A word of caution to those of you putting together a mini-ITX build - I had to return 3 coolers as they wouldn't fit on an Asus MAXIMUS VIII IMPACT. In all 3 cases, it wasn't because the cooler was too tall (I did measure the height available), but because the cooling pipes or whatnot would hit components on the motherboard.I can't speak for other motherboards, but the components on the Asus are so tightly packed in and all around the CPU socket, that available width is just as important.
zodiacfml - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
awesome performance but too big and pricey. the Reeven seems to be good value here as it is tiny compared to a Hyper 212 evo.Voldenuit - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Any VRM temperature measurements? And comparison to tower coolers? One of the advantages of top down coolers compared to conventional towers is their cooling of motherboard components, so would be interested to see.losonn - Saturday, January 21, 2017 - link
Any chance of updating this roundup with results from the significantly more relevant Noctua NH-L9x65?The NH-L9x65 is a comparable size / weight / height / price to both the Reeven & Phanteks coolers featured here where the NH-C14S is *double* the height and price of the other coolers...