out of interest tonight i tried something similar, i was OCing the CPU in my new PC and noticed unusualy low CPU temps of 59-61 running both CPU and GPU benchmarks at the same time with the CPU fans sitting at about 30%, so i decided to try and see what would happen if i turned the fan's down, and then eventually off, with the CPU fans off it only got to 78C, funny thing is if i went from 30% to 100% not only do my ear's bleed from fan noise, but it only drop's the temp's down by 4-5 degree's, this is at 20 degree's ambiant.
I'm running one 140mm fan in the back of my case at about 800rpm, and a 120mm in the front at 800 with the radiator in the front as well (with seperate fans for the rad), i suspect in my case, the extra air movment capacity of the 140 exhaust fan in the back over the 120mm intake in the front was enough to draw just enough air through the CPU cooler to keep the emps under control with my cooler, i'm thinking that if you can configure your's case so it draw's air in through the rad on the top (maybe setup and front and rear case fan to, rather then one intake and one exhaust to encourage airflow through the rad and get crative with some tape sealing it up to encourage it some more) but i think you may need a 240 rather then 120mm rad for it to work.
This is with a corsair hydro series H105 (240mm radiator with two 120mm fans) and an i7 6700k at 4.4 Ghz OC.