Thermalright Silver Arrow or Noctua NH-D14

sithlord

sithlord

sithlord

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Been wanting to replace my i7 920 cooler and have narrowed it down either a Thermalright Silver Arrow or Noctua NH-D14.

My i7 920 stepping C0 doesn't go much above 4Ghz and to cool it I would prefer a quiet cooler.

Does anyone have experience of both of these coolers ? How quiet are they at a 4ghz OC ?
 
It's a coin toss IMO, go with whichever gives you the warmest fuzzies. I have the D14 myself, which according to reports may run up to a degree higher in temps, and may be quieter, but you have to be professional and/or anal to pick them apart they're both awesome high-end air coolers bottomline. Mine runs at sub-whisper quietness regardless of having one fan @ 1250rpm or both @ 1250, it's ever so marginally noisier but I could only tell this by adjusting the fan speed so I can hear the change occur. I run my 2600k @ 4.6GHz with it.
 
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Could you not attach a 3rd fan to both of these coolers to improve performance as it has one wedged in the middle? Dont know if it would be better to go for three 120mm fans of three 140mm fans if indeed its possible, Im also looking to upgrade from my megahalems but cant decide.
 
wont make that much of a difference as ur back fan is almost touching it anyway, it would only add noise tbh. both great cooler but check out TTL vid on the two and make up your mind :)
 
Get the silver arrow it's much better value at £50 compared to d14 £65 ish it comes with 2 better fans than the noctua as well, the thermalright archon is up there with them both too and is cheaper still and quieter only uses 1x fan and competes with both but the catch is you need 170mm cpu height clearance in your case.
 
C64 said:
Get the silver arrow it's much better value at £50 compared to d14 £65 ish it comes with 2 better fans than the noctua as well, the thermalright archon is up there with them both too and is cheaper still and quieter only uses 1x fan and competes with both but the catch is you need 170mm cpu height clearance in your case.
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Yeah I can't do 170mm. As I only have an average sized case built for quietness.

In that Youtube video its the only case where Ive seen the Noctua beat the Silver Arrow. But this review

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/thermalright-silver-arrow_5.html

Has the Silver Arrow beating the Noctua at 4.4Ghz.
 
smeaney said:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TimeToLiveCustoms#p/search/6/07XTN0Qll2o

That video might be just what you are looking for. I personally would go for the ND14, but I wouldnt turn my nose up at the silver arrow either.
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Tom made a big fuss in his video as usual. I remember him telling me he had some issues with his one and several months later decided to make a video of the two coolers knowing full well it would attract attention. This is all fine except for the fact that in his written review, the Silver Arrow beat the Noctua NH-D14 in most cases and yet he slated undeservedly... He certainly knows how to draw a crowd

sithlord said:
Thanks, found another review here and In passive mode the Silver Arrow seems to beat all air coolers.

http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/thermalright_silver_arrow_cpu_cooler_review,1.html
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:)

C64 said:
Get the silver arrow it's much better value at £50 compared to d14 £65 ish it comes with 2 better fans than the noctua as well, the thermalright archon is up there with them both too and is cheaper still and quieter only uses 1x fan and competes with both but the catch is you need 170mm cpu height clearance in your case.
Click to expand...

The Silver Arrow is definitely very good value for money. I finally got round to testing the Archon but I'm a bit disappointed with the results. It seems to slot in between the Venomous X (another very good cooler) and the HR-02, but tending towards the latter.

Between the two, both are the top air coolers for the moment and perform between a degree of each other (except passively when the Silver Arrow takes the crown). With the Noctua, you'll get unmatched customer service should something ever go wrong, such as broken fan blades etc, but the Silver Arrow is cheaper. The NH-D14 is a bit more flexible with taller memory modules but you always have the possibility of moving the front fan on the Silver Arrow to the back.

Go by the reviews you found, i.e the Vortez and xbitlabs one.
 
if i could turn back the clock a week i'd have gone for the silver arrow, sorry noctua but the fans that come with the D14 are pants. i've replaced mine with some 1300rpm apache camos, instantly shaved 4 degrees off the load temps. the 120mm noctua fan is very quite but that 140mm fan that fits in the middle is so bloody noisy,

i do love the mounting hardware tho, very simple to take off and put back on.
 
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Helios1234 said:
Between the two, both are the top air coolers for the moment and perform between a degree of each other (except passively when the Silver Arrow takes the crown). With the Noctua, you'll get unmatched customer service should something ever go wrong, such as broken fan blades etc, but the Silver Arrow is cheaper. The NH-D14 is a bit more flexible with taller memory modules but you always have the possibility of moving the front fan on the Silver Arrow to the back.

Go by the reviews you found, i.e the Vortez and xbitlabs one.
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BTW, Did you test the Silver Arrow in the Lian Li PC-B25 case... and any issues at all ?
 
Silver arrow - quieter, cheaper, better performance up to extreme Overclocks where the heatpipes get overloaded
Cons : Not the easiest mounting system, very poor ram clearance.

Noctua - Better performance at extreme Overclocks because the 6 heatpipes spread the heat to the fins better than the 4 heatpipes of the silver arrow. Good ram clearance. Drops NB temps rather well becasue of the 140mm fan overhang.
Cons : Noctua 140mm fans are rather poor.
 
Interesting archon findings seems to go against other results ?
Of course, we are particularly interested in comparison the obtained results against those of the today’s best air-coolers. With one default 140 mm fan the new Thermalright Archon didn’t yield even 1 degree to Thermalright Silver Arrow super-cooler in its default configuration with two such fans! This is a pretty impressive result for a single-array tower cooler, don’t you think so? But Archon looks even more impressive with two fans: it simply cools an overclocked six-core processor better than Silver Arrow by 3°C in quiet mode at 810 RPM and by 2°C at maximum 1310 RPM speed of two TY-140 fans. The difference is small, but if you have been reading our reviews, you should remember that Silver Arrow had about the same advantage over Noctua NH-D14, which remained the best of the best for almost 9 months! I believe I don’t have to tell you that ThermoLab Baram 2010, which used to be the most effective single-array cooler out there is no far behind Archon.
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Do you think xbit labs are telling porkies here ? not being funny at all just don't get why they would find these results or make them up
 
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I generally trust xbitlabs so it does seem strange that they get better results than I did. In "quiet mode", I did find the Archon to keep up with the Silver Arrow but with both fans at full speed, the Silver Arrow took the lead. I was personally surprised that the Archon wasn't performing better but at the same time I wasn't expecting it to compete with the Silver Arrow. The latter has a much larger surface area afterall.

It could be that they were using a hex-core but I can't see how that would change results. I tested the different setups several times to make sure everything was fine and I got similar results each time and I couldn't see anything wrong with the mounting. So I really don't know why we observed different results.
 
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