Acoustic Samples: Listen to this Heatsink!

It seems very few manufacturers have been able to meet, or exceed the acoustic performance of the stock Pentium 4 heatsink, and sadly the Kuthtec KTI-2000 is no different. Under power, the small 70mm fan generates about 55 dB of noise in our measurements - enough to make a computer seem just that much more noisy. The pitch is low at least. To listen to the KTI-2000, just click on the headphones and download the MP3 of the fan in operation.

FrostyTech Acoustic Sampling Chamber
Standard Waveform view of a 10 second recording. Click on the headphones to listen to an MP3 recording of this heatsink in operation.

Listening to the actual noise a heatsink makes allows you to hear what pure numbers alone cannot get across. To further emphasize FrostyTech's reliance on cold hard facts when evaluating a heatsink, we also take Decibel readings with a sound level meter. These results may be higher than the manufacturer's listed specs, but then again these are real world measurements.

FrostyTech Sound Level Results
-	Manufacturer	Model	Noise Level	Scale
	Verax	P16	35.3 dB	quiet
	Zalman	CNPS6500B-AlCu	47.4/28.9 dB
	Intel	Socket 478	42.5 dB
	Cho-Liang	CL-CB0094-1A	49.8 dB
	Cho-Liang	CL-CB00881	50.2 dB
	Vantec	VP4C7040	55.6 dB
	Taisol	CEP426151A	50.7 dB
	ChoLiang	CB0307Z17	52.9 dB
	Dynatron	DC1207BMW	53.0 dB
	Globalwin	VA476	54.2 dB
	Dynatron	DC1206BMV	55.1 dB
	Kuthtec	KTI-2000	55.5 dB
	ChoLiang	CB0309Z17	55.7 dB
	AVC	117140	56.1 dB
	NengTyi	NW6700	58.0 dB
	Coolermaster	IHC-H71	64.4 dB	louder

The KTi-2000's fan was measured at 55.4 dB in our tests, well behind the relatively quiet stock Intel 478 heatsink (which is actually quite formidable in and of itself).