Acoustic Samples: Listen to this Heatsink!

The noise signature of the Tocools S1 hovers around 55dB in our real-world tests. Overall, that is fairly average for a Pentium 4 heatsink as we have seen thus far. To listen to this heatsink for yourself just click on the headphones and download the MP3 recording.

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		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
	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
	Tocools	S1	55.5 dB
	Vantec	VP4C7040	55.6 dB
	ChoLiang	CB0309Z17	55.7 dB
	AVC	117140	56.1 dB
	Tocools	Regal	56.5 dB
	NengTyi	NW6700	58.0 dB
	Coolermaster	IHC-H71	64.4 dB
	Thermalright	AX-478	66.5 dB	louder

The Tocools Regal and the Tocools S1 are very similar in size and cooling shape, but the S1 gets the upper hand in regards to noise production, coming in at around 55.5dB. The stock Intel heatsink produces just 42.5dB of noise in our tests, and is very hard to outperform acoustically.