3-Way Low Profile CPU Cooling Shoot-Out: Reeven, Phanteks, & Noctua

Testing Results, Maximum Fan Speed (12 Volts)

We'll start things off with a look at cooling performance with each cooler's fan running at their maxiumum 12V fan speed.

Right off the bat, when it comes to thermal resistance we can see that Noctua's NH-C14S cooler is well ahead of the rest of the pack. Which isn't too surprising given just how much larger it is than the other coolers we're looking at today.

At a 60 watt load - roughly the TDP of most desktop CPUs these days - the results roughly mirror thermal resistance. That said, even the weakest cooler is only 13C over ambient, which is a good result here.

Ultimately with every cooler’s fan running at its maximum speed, the Reeven Steropes and the Phanteks TC12LS perform similarly, with the former showing a little better thermal performance despite its low profile 120 mm fan. This small advantage of the Reeven Steropes is being achieved via brute force, as its low profile fan is faster and disproportionally louder than Phanteks’ PH-F120MP. Comparatively, when compared to other advanced coolers that we have reviewed to this date, both the Reeven Steropes and the Phanteks PH-TC12LS can only be compared to the stock AMD Wraith cooler, and even then the Wraith outperforms them both. However, they do significantly outperform standard stock coolers.

Noctua’s NH-C14S is in an entirely different league. The comparatively huge mass of the cooler and the excellent NF-A14 fan offer the NH-C14S a tremendous performance advantage. As a matter of fact, the NH-C14S is a threat to many large tower coolers, outperforming the Cooler Master EVO 212 by a significant margin and touching the performance of the Grandis and the Dark Rock Pro 3, all while maintaining reasonably low noise levels.