The fans were tested with the quiet fan profile set from the NZXT Kraken software. We were tempted to test with the Extreme profile too, but it was so loud there is no way any person could ever use it in their system. The quiet profile, by our standards at least, is what we would consider “normal” levels of acoustic output.
With stock CPU settings we can see slightly worse acoustic performance than the Kraken X40 because of the inclusion of two fans instead of one. Though relative to its nearest rivals, the Corsair H100i and Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme, we can see it is actually a bit quieter thanks to lower RPM fans and no radiator rattling.
Overclocking added very little noise because the temperatures were so low that the PWM profile hardly needed to ramp up the fan speeds. The NZXT Kraken X60 is proving to us that is capable of handling much more than an i5 3570K at 4.5GHz. Relatively speaking this CPU cooler is total overkill for our CPU, you’d need a 4.8GHz i7 3770K before this CPU cooler even starts breaking into a sweat.
