Noctua NF-A14 ULN, NF-A14 FLX and NF-A15 PWM Fan Reviews
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
Like I mentioned in the introduction I am trying something new with the fan testing process. To explain in more detail here is a detailed methodology.
Test System
- ASUS P8Z77-V
- Intel Core i5 3570K at 4.5GHz (1.3v) with Gelid GC Extreme Thermal Paste (the best thermal paste we have ever tested)
- 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3
- AMD Radeon HD 5870
- 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage)
- Antec High Current Gamer 620W
- Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0
Testing Methodology
- All fans were individually tested on the Thermalright Macho Rev.A (BW) CPU cooler to determine cooling performance. We understand using a CPU heatsink performance can only ever be a proxy for performance/airflow, and that the performance figures will vary between different types of heatsinks, BUT this is the best method we are able to conduct.
- Temperatures were taken at a consistent room temperature of 22 degrees
- Delta temperatures have been used to account for small fluctuations in room temperature between 21.5-22.5
- Prime 95 was run for 15 minutes and the average maximum CPU temperature was recorded as noted by CPUID HW Monitor
- The acoustic measurements were taken 2 inches/ 5cm away from the tested fans with the power supply fan and GPU fan isolated/turned off
- The ambient noise level as recorded by our sound meter was 37 dBA and delta noise levels have been used in our graphs
- There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software
- There is approximately a 1dBA margin of error with our decibel meter
Software Used
