Silverstone Permafrost PF240 liquid cooler review

Cooling 189 Page 10 of 12 Published by

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Acoustic performance

Acoustic performance

Processors and graphics cards can produce a lot of heat, and that heat needs to be transferred away from the hot core as quickly as possible. You'll often see massive active fan solutions that can indeed get rid of the heat, yet all the fans these days make the PC a noisy son of a gun. Do remember that the test we do is extremely subjective. We bought a certified dBA meter and will measure how many dBA originate from the PC. Why is this subjective, you might ask? Well, there is always noise in the background, coming from the streets, from the HDD, PSU fan, etc., so this is, by a mile or two, an imprecise measurement. You could only achieve objective measurement in a sound test chamber.   


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 

The human auditory system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. This means that the perception of noise is not at all equal across all frequencies. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as it would be if its energy was 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 1 kHz and above 6 kHz are attenuated, whereas frequencies between 1 kHz and 6 kHz are amplified by the A weighting.  

There are a lot of differences in measurements between websites. We measure noise levels in a completely enclosed and sealed-off room. The lowest dBA level that we can measure without any equipment activated is roughly 30 dBA in this room. We measure the noise at 30cm from the side panel.   

In idle, the Silverstone PERMAFROST is quiet. The pump was almost inaudible. Under stress, it’s still good, especially considering the low temps.


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