SilentiumPC Fera 3 RGB HE1224 CPU Air Cooler Review

Introduction SilentiumPC Fera 3 RGB HE1224 SilentiumPC is not one of the best-known brands when it comes to system components. They have, however, over the years released a very solid range of products. The company clearly has a strong emphasis on cooling as the vast majority of their components are either system chassis designs or cooling solutions (be it fans or CPU coolers). As such, concentrating on one are you would hope that they are looking to specialise and by proxy, get some impressively good products onto the market. With this in mind, we take a closer look at the SilentiumPC Fera 3 RGB HE1224. Their latest offering for inexpensive CPU air coolers offering some impressive RGB effects as well as strong performance. Given that the market is flooded with inexpensive air coolers though, you might wonder what this does to stand out from the pack. Well, let's take a closer look! Features ADVANCED RGB ILLUMINATION FOR THE FAN AND THE TOP PLATE SILENT AND EFFICIENT SIGMA HP RGB 120 MM NANO RGB CONTROLLER INCLUDED COMPATIBLE WITH ASUS AURA, ASROCK RGB LED, EVGA RGB AND MSI MYSTIC LIGHT COMPATIBLE WITH SILENTIUMPC ARMIS CASE RGB CONTROLLERS ANTI-VIBRATION RUBBER GROMMETS REMOVABLE ROTOR FOR EASY MAINTENANCE DOESN’T INTERFERE WITH RAM MODULES AND OTHER COMPONENTS ONLY 146 MM TALL – FITS NARROW CASES PACTUM PT-2 (5.0W/M.K) THERMAL COMPOUND INCLUDED What SilentiumPC Had To Say "Fera 3 RGB HE1224 brings highly anticipated RGB illumination while still providing the ultimate blend of compact dimensions, high efficiency and price. In other words, the versatility that Fera users praised so much. Illumination system lights up the fan and the top plate with stunning yet discreet colours and effects. Supporting all major motherboard RGB systems such as Asus Aura as well as manual control via included Nano RGB controller the Fera RGB is a ready-to-go RGB solution on a budget." - SilentiumPC Technical Information For more in-depth technical specification, please visit the official product page in the link here! Exterior Packaging In terms of the packaging, SilentiumPC has gone for a nice clean, crisp style of presentation. You're not flooded with information, but what is there is bold and strong. On the front of the packaging, you will note that particularly. Other than an image of the product and it's name, the only other factor of note is the prominent 'RGB' branding. It's a small touch as well, but I do like how SilentiumPC has carried the image of the cooler onto the other side of the box. This means you get a nice, full and clear image of the entire cooler rather than just that seem on the front. The rear of the packaging contains all of the products key features. These are, again, nice and clear to read with a good colour choice making it very easy on the eye. Finally, the side of the box contains all of the technical details. It is a little unusual to see this in 2 languages, particularly since a 2nd language (other than English) is found nowhere else on the packaging. The way in which this information has been laid out isn't entirely easy to understand unless you're paying close attention which is unlikely everything else on the box work. A Closer Look Out of the box you are provided with the cooler and the fan in a separate boxed unit. Everything is solidly packaged meaning that unboxing is a rather pleasant experience. You will note, however, in the image below that the fan box does get rather scuffed due to it being located immediately next to the radiator vents. The Silentium Fera 3 cooler has a nice presentation. With 8 copper pipes leading up to the vents, this should provide excellent heat dissipation through a large portion of the radiator. The vents themselves are nice and large, but also with an impressively significant number. This is particularly so given that the cooler itself stands no taller than 150mm With the fan attached, the Silentium Fera 3 has a surprisingly good aesthetic. The silver of the radiator contrasts really well with the black of the fan and makes this stand out even when the RGB isn't on yet! The top of the cooler has a nice solid black colouring with insets. These areas are part of the RGB set-up and light up in coordination with the fan, when the cooler is turned on. Overall, we found the Silentium Fera 3 to have a very strong design aesthetic to it. As above, this looks surprisingly good in terms of the presentation. Cooling Fan The fan, in itself, looks on the surface to be a fairly standard 120mm cooling design. A closer look, however, will reveal more than a few little unique design choices. Notice how the edges to the circular fan are slightly angled and that very subtle SilentiumPC logo to the centre. As you can see below, when fitted to the cooler, the fan provides excellent coverage of (almost) the entire radiator. This should really help promote a good, solid, airflow through those nice large vents on the radiator. Contact Plate The contact plate is nice and large and as such should provide excellent coverage for most processors. You will note that the 8 copper pipes run on the surface which, again, should provide excellent heat disappation. You may also know the low-key, but nice SilentiumPC branding to the underside. It's not necessary as unless you're fitting it, you'll never see it again. It is, however, another nice touch in the design aesthetic. RGB Lighting The RGB lighting effects to the SilentiumPC are, with the best will in the world, a little hit and miss. While some colours are nice and bright, others are a little disappointingly dull. Don't forget though that this cooler is fully-sync capable with all major motherboard manufacturers. As such, if colour coordination is a key factor in your build, this ticks all the right boxes. To try and give you an idea of how this cooler operated when fitted to a system, we have included a brief video below. In it, we cycle through a number of the patterns available. This should, hopefully, give you a good idea as to how the RGB works and how the colours are presented on this cooling system. Installation Fitting a cooler to a system can be a mixed bag of difficulty depending on the mounting design. Generally speaking, air coolers fan can often be more straightforward and in this regard, the SilentiumPC Fera 3 certainly fits into that remit. All components are well packages and the manual is pleasantly easy to understand. As such, on the whole, users shouldn't have any difficulties getting this installed. Although this cooler is sync-compatible, you are given a manual controller should you wish to set the lighting effects up manually. The controller is, for a low-cost cooler, surprisingly good. The options (as to how to use it) are clearly labelled and it feels surprisingly durable in a market area where these often feel cheap and flimsy. If I was going to level a criticism at the SilentiumPC Fera 3 installation, it would (perhaps surprisingly) be at the fan mounting system. The bracket to fit the fan to the radiator is amazingly awkward. In addition, it's strange design means that it's not entirely intuitive either. I'll fully confess I had to refer to the box and manual before I fully understood how this went on correctly. Even then, I wasn't entirely convinced about it. In all honesty, I spend nearly as long trying to mount this fan as I did attaching the cooler to the CPU. If you figure it out fairly quickly though, installation should take no more than 20-minutes even for a beginner. Test System and Methodology Please note that our testing system was completely revised in September 2017. That means all previous results have been scrapped, and a new set of benchmarks introduced. For a look at our previous reviews, please consult our most recent review that used that system. Please note that we re-tested the Noctua NH-D15S as our base benchmark for cooling results. Test system: Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 9 Z270 Intel Core i7-7700K Delidded w/ NT-H1 under IHS Radeon R7 Passive GPU with 2GB VRAM 16GB Crucial DDR4 2400 MHz 512GB OCZ SSD be quiet! Dark Power Pro 800W Lian Li T80 Test Bench All testing conducted using NT-H1 thermal paste We’d like to say a big thank you to Gigabyte, Noctua, Crucial, Intel, OCZ, be quiet!, and Lian Li for providing us with the above testing equipment and their on-going support. Testing Methodology We always use Noctua Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste Prime 95 is run for 10 minutes to calculate "load" results Unigine Superposition is run for 10 minutes to calculate "gaming" results The average temperature across all cores is taken Fans are left to operate at default PWM profile speeds unless otherwise stated For water cooling tests, all pumps have been operated at 12 volts unless otherwise stated Ambient temperatures should be between 21-23 degrees in all our tests unless otherwise stated Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm horizontally and 10cm vertically away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled Stock tests are performed using "out of the box" settings for the CPU Overclocking tests are performed with the CPU set to 5 GHz and 1.345v All coolers were tested under identical settings unless otherwise stated. There is approximately a 1-degree Celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software CPUID HW Monitor There is approximately a 1.5dBA margin of error with our Benetech GM1351 decibel meter In all these graphs we may have a few "reference" results of particular products that do not fit within that category for comparative purposes. Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Prime 95 Unigine Superposition (1080 Extreme) Performance Despite this being, or at least appearing to be, a rather basic air CPU cooler, the SilentiumPC Fera 3 is remarkably good. Across all of our tests, this cooler finds itself continually floating around the top 10 which is exceptionally impressive and, if we're being honest, far better than we expected from this cooler. Achieving 63c as a maximum overclocked temperature is exceptionally impressive and as you can see in the comparative results, it beats off many other coolers. Particularly AIO liquid coolers which should, in theory, generally do much better. In terms of noise levels, the SilentiumPC Fera 3 is again exceptionally impressive. In terms of performance and quiet running levels, this cooler is very impressive. Stock Temperatures Overclocked Temperatures Stock Acoustics Overclocked Acoustics Final Thoughts Price The SilentiumPC Fera 3 HE1224 air CPU cooler retails for a price in the region of £35. Now, in terms of what on the surface appears to be a rather basic air cooler, this is a little more expensive than your average. We know this as a fact as we have reviewed more than a few models which you could consider similar. When you compare the performance figures for the Fera 3 though, this is definitely a step apart. It performs massively better than it should for the price and that's a huge plus for it! Design and Ease Of Use Many people feel that it's hard to make a good looking air cooler. In fairness, they often have a point. They're large, bulky and generally eat up a lot of eye space in a system build. I do, however, really (and I mean really like the SilentiumPC Fera 3). Whether the RGB lights are on or off, as an air cooler, this looks fantastic. It's crammed full of little touches that just make this stand out aesthetically. In terms of ease of use, while the fan is tricky to attach to the radiator, it's otherwise pleasantly straightforward and, as you can see from the testing above, clearly packs a lot of wallop for performance and noise reduction levels! Overview The SilentiumPC Fera 3 falls into a bracket that makes it appear like a budget entry-level air cooler and in fairness, such a description does have some merit. In terms of performance though, this blows pretty much all of the competition away. I would honestly struggle to name an air-cooler at the moment within this price range that as a whole package is anywhere near as good as this. If you need a cooler and don't have a lot of money to spend, avoid a lot of the junk in this price bracket and get the Fera 3 HE1224. For the price, it's one of the best bang for buck performers out there! So good in fact that we're giving it our Editor's Choice award! Pros Excellent performance levels for what on the surface would appear to be a budget cooler. Good RGB effects with sync-capable compatibility. Easy to install. Aesthetically fantastic whether the RGB is on or off. Cons None Neutral Fitting the fan to the radiator proved difficult. At least for myself. A strange one, but this may be a little too-cheap in that it will simply get drowned out in a highly competitive market. RGB lighting effects could afford to be a little more bright and vivid in some of the spectra.