Performance
Test setup and Testing Methodology
The system used for testing is listed in the table below. Ambient temperatures were kept at 24 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. The thermal paste used was Cooler Master thermal fusion (for testing consistency). For the overclocked results I upped the voltage to 1.30v and attained a clock speed of 4.2GHz. The cool and quite mode was disabled to prevent the CPU idling at lower voltages to attain accurate temperatures at idle. The fan speed was set to auto. The idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes of idle and max temperatures were recorded after a 5 minute torture test using Prime95. The software used to monitor temperatures was HWMonitor courtesy of CPUID.
Now that we covered the testing methodology, let us get to the results in the tables below!
In the graph above we see the idle temperatures for both stock and overclock. Now the PH-TC12LS is holding down the bottom by a small margin and actually beat the NH- D9L by one degree on stock settings but remember these are idle temperatures and the fan on the PH-TC12LS is merely spinning at 856 rpm and the noise is hardly noticeable at that RPM.
Now you can see that when we turned up the heat the cooling capabilites of the PH-TC12LS. As the cooler may not be on top of the list 59 degrees is adequate for a low profile cooler. One thing to note that other cooler types do not accomplish and that is the amount of air circulated over the Northbridge and the motherboard. The fan is directly over the Northbridge and supplies that area with a decent amount of air. The dB level of the Phanteks PH-TC12LS was barely noticeable compared to the ambient room sound. The fans spun up to 1470 RPM at full load on overclock and at idle the fans spun around 983 RPM.
The noise a cooler produces can be important factor to a purchaser. To help, dBs are recorded using a meter that records sound pressure levels not actual acoustic levels. With that being said the TH-PC12LS was not acoutically loud at all only producing a small consistant air hum.
There we have it! The PH-TC12LS brought to us by Phanteks! Let us cover a few final thoughts and conclusion of our review.
