Scythe Ninja 3 CPU cooler review - Noise levels

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/02/2010 01:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

Noise levels

With a certified dBA meter, we measure how many dBA originate from the PC. It's slightly subjective as there is always noise in the background, from the streets, from the HD, PSU fan etc etc, so this is by a mile or two not a precise measurement. You could only achieve objective measurement in a sound test chamber. Take this measurement as an indication, not a precise measurement please.

The human hearing system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. This means that the perception of noise is not at all equal at every frequency. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as it would be when its energy is concentrated in the middle frequencies. In other words, the measured noise levels in dB will not reflect the actual human perception of the loudness of the noise. That's why we measure the dBA level. A specific circuit is added to the sound level meter to correct its reading in regard to this concept. This reading is the noise level in dBA. The letter A is added to indicate the correction that was made in the measurement. Frequencies below 1kHz and above 6kHz are attenuated, whereas frequencies between 1kHz and 6kHz are amplified by the A weighting.

TYPICAL SOUND LEVELS
Jet takeoff (200 feet)	120 dBA
Construction Site	110 dBA	Intolerable
Shout (5 feet)	100 dBA
Heavy truck (50 feet)	90 dBA	Very noisy
Urban street	80 dBA
Automobile interior	70 dBA	Noisy
Normal conversation (3 feet)	60 dBA
Office, classroom	50 dBA	Moderate
Living room	40 dBA
Bedroom at night	30 dBA	Quiet
Broadcast studio	20 dBA
Rustling leaves	10 dBA	Barely audible

But let's have a peek at noise levels. We take a DBa gun and point it at the working PC and take a distance of 75 CM. The PC again, is stressed at 3300 MHz on the CPU with 80% RPM. These as such are noise levels measured under heavy CPU load:

So as you can see, the cooler with it's fan regulated a little reproduces excellent noise levels. Due to the manual fan controller you can obviously adjust noise to completely silent, or somewhat noisy at the cost/benefit of performance, your call.

Fan Regulation LOW-MED-HIGH

There's one more chart I'd like to show you. For this test we remain at an 3800 MHz overclock as that is a sweet spot with this cooler. But now we show you the FAN RPM set at low, medium and high. As such you can observe performance in temperature based on RPM preference of the fan controller and the respective DBa levels. Setting that fan RPM at half/medium seems the sweet spot for good cooling versus low noise levels.

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Scythe Ninja 3 CPU cooler review
We test and review the Scythe Ninja 3 CPU cooler. The new organization of the aluminum fins allows, in cooperation with the eight U-shaped copper heatpipes marketed as M.A.P.S. (Multiple Airflow pass-through structure) guarantees high performance. This will get more clear in the photo-shoot though. According to Scythe is that translates into 7 per cent more heat removal compared to a cooler like the previous Ninja. The cooler is equipped with a 120mm-ventilator that can be regulated with the help of an included fan-controller in RPM from 470 to 1900 RPM with noise levels varying from 7 to 37dBA depending on your preference.

Scythe Ninja Plus CPU Cooler
An old chinese wisemen once told me that a problem that plagues today's computers is the heat produced by the CPU. A little while ago when enthusiasts were on the lookout for a high performance cooler, they had to compromise, and that compromise was to be found in the noise department. Performance and silence didn't belong in the same sentence. If people wanted performance, they usually needed to buy a cooler that would either create a mini cyclone in their case, and most probably, sound like a jet airplane getting ready to take off.