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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.
Cranking the fans down to 40dBA required a speed percentage of 55%, which registered as around 1260 RPM according to our motherboard header reading.
This is quite a significant loss in speed percentage compared to some of the other AIOs, including those that were louder at full fan speed.
It looks like the 4000 RPM, non-PWM pump unit in Fractal's AIO is having slightly more influence on the cooler's noise output as fan speeds are reduced.
