Stephen Horne - Posted: 2 Nov 2011 11:01
 (6/10)

When I ordered this, I assumed that since stock coolers seem to all be PWM now, and since there was nothing to say otherwise, this cooler would have a 4-pin connector and support PWM. In fact it has a 3-pin connector, and the *only* way to regulate the speed is manually using the included fan-mate.

I'm not a gamer. I encode some videos occasionally, but not enough to care that much about noise at full load. I have a noise sensitivity issue, but it's mostly only a problem with long-term noise. I wanted to reduce fan noise when idle.

This cooler can keep the my CPU (Athlon 2 X4 645) below 60 degrees with all four cores at 100% load, even with the fan-mate near minimum - and this is certainly *far* quieter than the stock cooler at max. But the minimum speed is about 1300 rpm, and for safety I'm running it at 1500 rpm, whereas my stock cooler spent most of its life around 1000 rpm. At idle, the noise reduction is small.

On the plus side - a *lot* easier to fit than I expected.