Silently cooling an OC i7-4790K - Noctua U12S vs. Silverstone AR01 vs. ThermalRight True Spirit 120M

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alexb75

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Oct 12, 2004
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I am building a silent system, and now debating which *smaller* cooler is best for my system?

System:
- i7-4790K OC to 4.2 GHz
- Asus Z97-Pro mobo
- Lian-Li PC-B12 silent chassis (2 * 140 front, 1 *120 rear)
- R9 270 DirectCU GPU
- 8GB DDR3-2133
- 2*3TB HDD + SSD

Cooler must be smaller to fit under 160mm height, AND to clear my RAM that's larger... so, kinda between these:

- Noctua NH-U12S
- Silverstone Argon AR01
- Thermalright True Spirit 120

Thermalright is hard to find, and the other two are widely available. Question really is if Noctua is worth DOUBLE The cost of Silverstone? From reviews it looks like they both do OK for OC and cooling things down, BUT Noctua has a quieter fan...

Any ideas?
 
Solution
photonboy
I've used the NH-U12S and it runs very quietly. Silent in idle and barely audible under heavy load. Assuming fan control is setup properly of course.

I can't speak for the others though I know the Cooler master Hyper 212 EVO was about half the price of this Noctua, highly recommended, and it is noticeably louder than the Noctua under load and slightly audible in idle.

It actually does have a lot to do with the fan since I swapped an "EVO" fan in my sisters for a spare Noctua I had and it ran a lot quieter.
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photonboy

photonboy

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I've used the NH-U12S and it runs very quietly. Silent in idle and barely audible under heavy load. Assuming fan control is setup properly of course.

I can't speak for the others though I know the Cooler master Hyper 212 EVO was about half the price of this Noctua, highly recommended, and it is noticeably louder than the Noctua under load and slightly audible in idle.

It actually does have a lot to do with the fan since I swapped an "EVO" fan in my sisters for a spare Noctua I had and it ran a lot quieter.
 
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Solution
photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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It's important to note two things with this comparison:

1) The load temperature was 4.8degC apart so the Argon would have been a lot noisier if the the fan had speeded up to get to the same temperature. That may not sound like much gap but for coolers it is.

2) Subjective noise double every 10dB. The Argon is already roughly 40% noisier and hotter. Trying to cool a few more degrees can make the noise easily push towards 70% or higher.

Having said that it's cheaper though I'm not certain if it's any better than the "EVO" from CM which is about the same cost as the Argon.

Still, on an expensive build like this I think the Noctua is well worth it.
 
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