We tested some of the most popular slim 120mm fans, including those from Noctua, SilverStone, DeepCool and IDCOOLING.
TESTING
Testing was carried out using Cinebench R23 multicore (stability test), for period of 30 minutes. This provides worse case scenario and thermals overtime data. Our fan testing data is only applicable to the AM5 platform.
| CASE | Streacom DA6 |
| MOTHERBOARD | Rog Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi (paid link) |
| CPU | R7 7800X3D (paid link) |
| CPU COOLER | DeepCool AN600 (paid link) |
| GPU | RTX 4080 Super FE (paid link) |
| RISER CABLE | RZ4 – PCIe Gen4 |
| PSU | Extreme 850R (paid link) |
| RAM | 32GB Gskill S5 DDR5, 6000MHz, CL30 (paid link) |
BENCHMARKS
CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of these tests was to determine if swapping fans or slight changes in fan RPM’s have meaningful impact in practice. We’ll be adding Intel platform testing, additional fan sizes and speeds at later date. We included the NF-A12x25 for reference purposes only. All slim fans tested achieved near indistinguishable results at 50% fan speed, when paired with Ryzen 7 7800X3D and low profile cooler. We chose the 7800X3D CPU for testing, due to its popularity, and gaming performance. The data indicates that most modern slim fans perform very similarly, when paired with air cooler. The real differentiating factors being noise-profile at certain speed ranges, build quality and pricing. Disclaimer: This is not medical advice and only one users observations.