Reeven Kelveros (RC-1202) CPU Cooler Review

The fan on the Reeven Kelveros starts at 650 RPM, which is high considering many of the CPU coolers we’ve tested start at 300-500RPM. That said, you can see why the idle noise is slightly higher than some competing solutions with lower RPM fans.

Under load the noise increase is minimal and the noise output is as good as competing solutions. The high/low fan switch makes no difference because the fan is only spinning at 900RPM so the increase in maximum available speed from 1300 to 1900 is irrelevant as the cooler doesn’t need to use it.

As we saw on the previous page, the Kelveros struggled to tame the overclocked Ivy Bridge processor. The noise output reflects this. We were actually surprised at how much difference the low/high switch makes to the noise output. With the switch at low, the fan stopped rising in speed at 1300RPM and the noise output was around 48 dBA – which is noticeable but in a PC case it would be less so, and under realistic CPU load it would never need to spin that fast.

If you activate the “high” switch, you’ll send temperatures down by a degree or 2 at best, the results were mostly hit and miss though. In return for that extra degree you get another 9 dBA of noise output from the 1300 to 1900RPM increase, which takes the cooler from “slightly noticeable” to “noisy”. I am of the opinion that the fan controller switch should never have been included, they should of just limited the fan to 1200RPM from the factory. You don’t buy an after-market CPU cooler just to have it be as noisy as a stock cooler, it defeats the reason for buying it.