- Review -

21.03.2010 Overclock3D.net

Now on to the reason why we are here, the Noctua. Even with the fans running at 12v immediately this cooler stands out from the crowd, or rather hides in the shadows, as it is so quiet I even checked to see if the centre fan was actually running. With the fans at 12v the hottest core on the CPU never went above 68 degrees. Yeah that’s right it never even got to 70 degrees! Something that was also very apparent was the sheer amount of heat pouring out the back of the heat sink, just placing your hand near the back of it you could feel the warm air, nothing unusual but the temperature and the amount of air being forced out the back at such an inaudible rate was a massive shock to me. So stage one went very well, but for some reason I didn’t hold out much hope for the fans being run at silent, especially not with our 4ghz over clock… right? Well put your cup of tea down, swallow that mouthful of sandwich because you about to spit it out or choke in shock. With the fans on low, which I might add is about as close to silent as you will ever get with 2x 140mm fans pushing over a heatsink, the CPU’s hottest core never went above 72c! A 4ghz overclock on an i7 920 on air, with silent fans at 72c! Not quite believing this I left the sytem running on the final test for the whole day, a total of 6 hours in the end running at 100% and still even after that it never went above 73c!

"I’m so amazed by this coolers low noise yet class leading performance I will not only recommend it and award it with our coveted gold ‘Best in Class’ award but most importantly for a reviewer I am actually going to continue using it in my own personal rig which is worth more than any award in the real world!" (Tom Logan, Overclock3D.net)