[section_title title=”Performance”]
Performance
Acoustic performance
I don’t own any specialist equipment to test audio so I was reliant on my experience as well as re-using some of the louder and quieter ones as a comparison. All coolers were fitted into a case to maintain a good comparison. The computer was left to idle after startup for five minutes before activating the HDD and taking the ‘quiet reading’ and then with the fans set to maximum speed for the loud reading each at a distance of approximately one meter from the case.
All coolers performed exceptionally well on the quiet test, with the S36 being slightly louder due to its third fan, but I still couldn’t hear it above the sound of my HDD at 1 meter when I searched for a file. With the fans ramped up to the max the S24 and T12 were again on a par with each other, being slightly quieter than a Corsair H105. The S36 was easily the loudest thing in the room and probably the loudest cooler I’ve ever experienced with the three fans set to maximum.
Thermal Performance
To test the thermal dissipation properties of all three coolers in Fractal Design’s Kelvin series I ran all three on the testbench for a prolonged period and took the temperature under different conditions. First the temperature was taken with the CPU running at a constant 3900MHz. I started the computer and let the system idle for 5 minutes before taking the temperature. Next the CPU was placed under maximum load. It was stressed with Prime95 for 5 minutes until the temperature had leveled off then the value was taken. I then repeated this process with the CPU overclocked to 4500MHz to get the next two values.
Starting next year. I will no longer use air cooling for CPU or GPU. This looks like a great buy.