CPU Air Cooler Roundup: Six Coolers from Noctua, SilverStone, be quiet!, and Cooler Master
by Dustin Sklavos on March 14, 2013 2:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Cooler Master
- SilverStone
- cooling
- Noctua
- be
Conclusions, Part 1
While the Deepcool coolers were unique in their own ways, the conclusions I came to with them were basically the same. Most of them were fairly underwhelming with little to really recommend them, and today's testing pretty much puts the final nail in that coffin. None of them really stand up particularly well to the already widely available Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. The Deepcool Frostwin continues to be the highlight of their lineup, but if you need to go lower clearance than that, Noctua certainly has you covered.
I'm drawing conclusions on the individual coolers because each one arguably has something to offer in its own right that goes beyond absolute performance.
Noctua NH-D14
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The Noctua NH-D14 performed admirably, and if for whatever reason a closed loop cooler isn't on your list, the D14 is about as good as it gets on American shores (at least until we get hardware from Prolimatech or Thermalright in for review.) SilverStone's Heligon HE01 can hit the same performance levels, but it produces much higher noise in the process. You'll pay a pretty penny for the NH-D14, but it definitely feels like a quality cooler. Installation is sturdy, and performance and acoustics are very good.
Noctua NH-L12
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The Noctua NH-L12's performance isn't exceptional, but it has one very important ace in the hole: it has a fairly low profile. In situations where a tower cooler simply isn't going to be an option, Noctua's NH-L12 offers decent performance and excellent acoustics. With the 120mm fan installed, the cooler's height is 93mm; remove it, and it's down to just 66mm. I also experienced no clearance issues with the NH-L12, even on the fairly crowded mITX board used for testing.
Noctua NH-L9i
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While the other coolers definitely have something to offer above and beyond the Intel stock cooler in every way but clearance, the Noctua NH-L9i is a tougher sell. Essentially what you're paying for with this cooler is maximum compatibility and superior acoustics to the stock cooler. For many users that may very well be enough, but I suspect for a lot of people the price tag is going to make it a hard sell. At that point you may very well be better off looking to spend up on the NH-L12 if cooling performance and clearance are going to be sticking points.
SilverStone Heligon HE01
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As a longtime fan of SilverStone's stuff, I approached the Heligon HE01 with some trepidation. Reviews for it elsewhere are generally favorable, but none are effusive. That typically means that the reviewer is being diplomatic. SilverStone's entrant doesn't perform poorly, but unfortunately runs into one major problem: nothing about it really recommends it over any of the other options available. If you're going to spend this much on an air cooler, you might as well go whole hog and grab Noctua's solution.
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stennan - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Hey Dustin, great review!Some friendly feedback: could you show some more pictures of the coolers tested earlier in review/roundup? It wasn't until the last page that the coolers were shown, also pictures of the cooler on the motherboard or in the case would be nice.
Keep up the work!
cbrownx88 - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
I'd buy a Noctua cooler in a heartbeat if they didtn have those god awful colored fans.cmdrdredd - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
You can use any 140mm fans you wantmapesdhs - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
Thoroughly agree! I bought a Noctua NF-A15 140mm to replace the stock rear fan in a
Coolermaster HAF 932 case. The Noctua fan performs fantastically well, but the colour
scheme is horrible. Having said that, Noctua's packaging and presentation is very good.
Opening the fan pack feels like a special event, it all has a certain luxury sheen which at
least makes one feel the high price is going to be worth it.
Ian.
K1wi - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
I'd love the NH-L12 for a compact build as I'm a huge Noctua fan (best post-purchase support I've ever encountered), but it looks like it blocks the top PCI-e slot, so its a no-go for me. Its a pity because it looks like it only barely does... I wonder why they didn't choose to offset it to stay out of the PCI-e area and rather more over the top of the board where most ITX boards place their chipset stuff etc.That only leaves the NH-L9i, which is more about reducing noise than improving thermals :(
seven2nine - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
underEase of installation
first paragraph "surrounding all the coolers here but but...."
Lord 666 - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
After happily winning a z77 Sabertooth on Anandtech, was bummed my existing Zalman would not fit over the armor.Without a doubt, will the NH-D14 fit?
garadante - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Honestly, these closed loop liquid cooler results aren't necessarily valid, as fifteen minutes of load testing probably isn't enough to thermally saturate the coolant. As soon as the coolant is thermally saturated, shouldn't the performance be based purely on the heat transfer of the radiators between the cooling medium, intake air, and the heat transfer medium, the coolant? At this point, I imagine a high end air cooler would perform more consistently in the long run.Liquid cooling really shines with actual cooling loops, built yourself, with high end components, large radiator surface area, and more coolant to thermally saturate than is present in these closed loop coolers. There's only so much heat a 120mm closed loop cooler can dissipate, once the coolant reaches it's thermal saturation point.
These closed loop coolers are better for bursts of activity, but I have my doubts with them in extended torture testing. Anyway, I'd rather use a 480mm radiatior, or even a 480 paired with a 240/360, so I can run the fans at nothing/almost nothing overnight, with the heat capacity of the coolant taking care of the cooling, the only sound coming from the pump.
ShieTar - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
Potentially good point, but lets throw some numbers in to test it:Heat Capacity of water is about 4 J/g/K, so if the closed-loop system come with 1/4l of water (I doubt it is more than that), they can take 1 kJ/K. The overclocked 2700K can possibly touch 100W when overclocked and stressed, so it puts out enough power to heat up the water by 1K every 10 seconds, or 90K over 15 minutes if you ignore the cooling effect of its radiator.
With this amount of power I would guess that this small, closed-loop systems are already relatively saturated and stable. Of course if you have a big system with 4 liters of water and a few Kg of radiator metal, you are looking at a much higher heat capacity of more than 20kJ/K, and if you just use normal loads (~50W) instead of a torture test, you could indeed cool for an hour or two on heat capacity alone. If you add an overclocked 680 or 7970 to the loop though, even this big system should hit saturation within much less than one hour.
mapesdhs - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
I talked to a German company which specialises in water cooling. They told me that to achieve
cooling performance "significantly better" than a high-end air cooler would require one to spend
at least 200 UKP ($300+). Otherwise, unless there are other considerations, a water cooler is
not going to beat a good air cooler.
This is why I keep bagging used TRUEs, etc. off eBay when I can, typically get them with
fans included for around 10 to 17 UKP. Also just bought a Venomous-X for only 25 UKP total.
Ian.