The results have been arranged in terms of the fan configuration that yields the best results for each cooler. However, it is important to take into account that many coolers come with their own fans and changing those increases the costs significantly, so the “out of the box” cooler configurations have been highlighted in red each group.

4GHz


The overclocked CPU at 4GHz was easily tamed by the PH-TC14PE. The Phanteks cooler claims some of the most impressive results in our table commanding the best cooler configuration when teamed with three PH-F140TS. A temperature delta of 50.75C makes the Phanteks our new leader and we observe the same results with the two SWiF2-120P fans. In its default configuration, the delta temperature is 51.75C or 51C using Phanteks’ own thermal paste. Using only a single fan increases the delta to 52.75C, still enough to match out top end coolers. Under Q2.S.A, the fan speeds reduce to 780RPM and performance is slightly worse at 55C. We also see that the performance from two Noctua NF-P12s is comparable to a single PH-F140TS. We also observe that the NF-P14s perform slightly better than Phanteks’ own fans here. Passively, the cooler yields a delta of 61C and 60.5C with and without the bundled thermal paste respectively.