At 80% fan RPM we can slightly hear the fan. We measured  roughly 39~40 DBa at 75 cm distance, but still, that's close to nothing for a PC of this caliber. Hugely impressive.

So in the BIOS we are now forcing the fan to spin at an RPM of 80%

When we hit 3600 MHz with 1.4 volts on the four CPU cores (100% stressed)  we see a fairly okay temperature of up-to 65 C / 149 F. Considering the noise level we have, this is nice enough.

We added another 0.2 Volts more into the CPU core and hit a 4000 MHz clock frequency (1600 FSB : 4 x 10 Multiplier). We reached 1.6 Volts. And there's where we pass a threshold for the cooler, even IDLE temperatures reached 70 degrees C. So for the uber high-end overclocks, the cooler will not be sufficient enough.

By the way, it is not a fact whatsoever that you need 1.6 volts for a 4000 MHz clock frequency OC, some of you might need 1,4 or 1,5 Volts. It differs a little per motherboard and per processor. But let's compare the cooler towards some other brands.
 

Competitive charts

Once we start comparing the OCZ Gladiator MAX cooler (all cooler set to 60% RPM / temperatures shown in Degrees C) we see that it is doing an okay job. These results are all taken (mildly) overclocked at 3600 MHz / 1.4 Volts. It is interesting to see that the OCZ Vendetta 2 is simply better and costs something like 35 USD. The Gladiator MAX will cost you ~43 USD.

The Vendetta 2 is definitely noisier at this fan rotation to be honest. The bottom line therefore is simple .. silence or performance, whatever your preference has will be your product to opt.

Let's head onwards to the conclusion.