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Having assessed the coolers at full fan speed, we see clear separation between the AIO cooler performance with their high-speed, loud fans and the competing lower-speed fan air coolers. As such, we have a look at some test results with the noise levels locked to 40dBA on each CPU cooler.
This noise-normalised test is perhaps a little unfair towards AIO liquid coolers and air CPU coolers with dense fin arrays. Those designs need high pressure fans to penetrate the dense arrays and this usually comes in the form of high-speed and loud fans.
With that said, noise is noise when it comes to user tolerance, so the way in which a cooler is designed and optimised is not necessarily a concern to a user simply wanting low-noise, 40dBA-type operation.
A single 4-pin cable controls the radiator fans, pump, and VRM fan – all of which operate under PWM conditions. That means that each of those components was reduced in terms of its operating speed when we targeted the 40dBA noise output.
We managed to hit 40dBA when using 75% PWM speed. This resulted in a radiator fan speed reading of around 1460 RPM in software.
Maintaining 75% of the full fan, pump, and VRM fan speeds whilst hitting 40dBA noise levels is superb performance for an AIO. Once again, Arctic’s Liquid Freezer II 360 A-RGB proves to be an excellent option for users want low-noise AIO operation (ignoring thermal performance data for now).
