The stock fans of the Phantom Spirit 120 SE perform really well compared to the Arctic P12 Max, and are close to silent. What silent fans do you guys use?
I use the fans that came with the PS120SE. It's got a high pitch noise tho at high RPM. Thinking of replacing them, but that defeats the whole point of getting this cooler which is the fact that it's very cheap for what it offers. I also wonder how your 7800X3D reaches 4.9ghz all-core. I run the same PBO CO settings as you (-15) and even get the same temps, but my chip maxes out at 4.85ghz all-core in R23. On stock settings, it won't even reach 4.8ghz all-core. Very weird behavior as I'm not hitting any thermal/power limit and my chipset/BIOS are all up-to-date (1616 ASUS).
@@mio2540 I set FLCK to 2066. But this will not help, I guess. I think it depends on the CPU. Maybe silicon lottery? I like the sound of the stock fans more than the Noctuas and the Arctic P12 Max. I hate the sound of the Peerless Assassin 120 SE stock fans.
I'm using stock fans of PS120 SE with a custom curve similar to yours. They run at 60% below 79 C and at 79C they ramp up to 100% to keep away the tuned 5800x3D lowering clocks under high load. They never need to run 100% in games/daily usage so it is still very quiet. And in Cinebench R23 I'm hitting 15500 points and all cores can keep their clocks at maximum.
Awesome review! exactly what i needded.. seems like the cooler is made fot that fans.. also seems like more airflow has better impact than stattic preassure in the custom fan.
I put a single P12max on a Noctua UH12S, and I had 6C° less on cinebench than the stock 1700RPM fan. Even with a double stock fan configuration I have worst results. My thoughts are that the most important part of an air cooler is how the pipes manage the heat and how fast they drive the heat from the base to the top, where the fan could help to cool. If the heat transfer is not enough rapid giving more pressure with a faster fan is useless. Definetly showing the difference between a 40$ cooler and a more expensive one. Not always the difference are visible, and apart for the brand name, I think the difference in these products is "under the wood". You could observe a massive increase of performance also in an Artic Freezer 36, swapping the original fans for a pair of P12max or Phanteks T30.
Thank you very much for this video. I have plenty of Arctic coolers (p12 ARGB and P14 both regular and ARGB) And I was considering getting the Ps120 for a 9800x3d build (currently I have a 5900 with a custom 360mm radiator cooling it). I knew temperature improvements wouldn't be that much better but I was hoping for at least a 3c. Thanks for the test regardless, a shame you couldn't add a noise comparison. Higher end smartphones have pretty accurate decibel estimations, and even recording the tonal profile of the coolers would have given an idea of which is less annoying to have around. Thanks regardless.
As I test in a PC case, the noise will not be accurate as noise from the other fans will interfere. Also, it depends a lot of the noise profile, as I prefer low pitch in contrast to high pitch sounds, but this is me. It is not silent, but not loud, if you don't put the A12 Max to the highest fan speed. Sorry for not putting the noise, but thanks for the suggestion, I will keep it in mind.
Thanks for review. Review's numerical results: Stock fan Highest 81.9, P12 Max Highest 81.3, Noctua Highest 83. But noise? Noctua will have the advantage when the sound issue comes into play.
I tested the Noctua and I hate the sound profile. I think those fans are overrated. I loke the sound profile more of the stock fans. But this is my preference. I tried a few and even though the decibel levels are lower for Noctua on papaer, it doesn't mean that the sound profile is pleasing. I don't mind the Arctic sound, others hate it and think that the Noctua profile is the best. My advice is to try and see.
@@casuallygamin9 thanks bro for your reply. Actually, I am already using both noctua and bionix p120. I also use be quite. I had the opportunity to compare them all one to one. Noctua is more efficient at low speeds. It is really important to offer sound and cooling at the same time. But of course, it is definitely debatable whether it deserves its price.
Noctuas aren’t meant for best max speed performance they’re meant for noise to performance and around 60% fans speed and longevity. If you’re going to replace the fans for something that expensive go for the t30 they’re a bit louder but by very little while having some of the best max speed performance and the same longevity as noctua
Considering the fans on the Phantom Spirit look like case fans, do you think the results may change with a higher flow case fan versus a high static pressure fan like the P12 Max??
I actually tried the P12 Max and they perform a bit better but at the cost of noise. If you have great airflow, maybe some high flow fans can do better then the stock ones, but I don't think it worth it considering the extra cost.
I tried them on my phantom spirit 120se and there was a buzzing sound coming from them, a very strange vibration in all rpm range, my theory is that the vibration come from the fact that they are loose when fitted... Swapped them with thermalright tl b12w, no more annoying sound, p12max are very good but only for case and aio, i strongly do not recommend them for this air cooler at least.
I use artic 2 P14 as intake fans and one p12 underneath them. 2 arctic f12 underneath the GPU and 3 p12 as exhaust. The one at the back is always running at 100% and the two above I have defined a custom fan curve based on the GPU temps. The hotter the gpu is the faster they spin to exhaust the temperature from yhe GPU
I hope you bought them from a place that, if you don't like the sound profile, you can return. Make sure to buy all your components from a shop that has good return policy, because now days we are doing the QC. Most companies skip this step unfortunately. Good luck with your build and I'm happy to hear that I was helpful with these videos.
So 3300 vs 1500 RPM lowers the average by 1 degree? This means that the P12 Max is a fail in my book. I wonder how other high speed fans will perform. Great video.
It depends. Some will perform better then other. But don't think that if a fan has 3000RPM or more it will reduce the temperature of a CPU by 5 or more degrees, if the sotck fans are decent.
@@casuallygamin9 Decent, how is "decent" damn people must be crazy to justify such statement. PS 120SE cost 39 USD P12 Max cost 11 USD each one How is better than "decent" to make a cooler have a 56% price increase over 1°C? Such pointless statement. Nobody buying a 40 bucks cooler is gonna spend more than half the price for new fans to get a 1°C improvement, that is just dumb. Peerless Assassin to Phantom Spirit already offer that kind of improvement and people get a whole new tower, 2 fans, assembling accesories, thermalpaste and a box for 10USD increase. YEAH THOSE STOCK FANS ARE "DECENT" What a joke conclusion.
What I said is that there is no need to upgrade a CPU fan if it has decent performance. It is more of a general statment for all CPU coolers out there. If what you get in the box has decent performance, enough that your CPU is not throttleing, then, in my opinion, is not worth chasing for a better fan.
@@jevc900423 Chill out my dude. Upgrading fans makes a LOT of sense because you can still repurpose the fans that came with the PS120 as case fans and the P12 are already quite cheap a know to have one of the best noise to performance ratio in all marketing. This swap makes sense to make the cooler overall quieter but still allow you for a high performance extra boost in hot summer days or when realy stressing all of the cpu. Regardless of how cheap the PS120 is, it is also THE ABSOLUTELY BEST 120MM tower cooler available on the market, so if you want the best performance of what a cooler of that size can give, then you won't mind paying a little more on a fan upgrade. The only coolers that surpass it are all 165mm+ tall and 140mm fan.... Price is not the issue here. However I do agree a 2c improvement even at 3300rpm is not really worth it. I was expecting a little bit more, like 3c. OP's video gave plenty of information I wanted, a shame he didn't test the noise level and recorded the sound even with a rough estimation with a smartphone decibelimeter.
I love my thermalright PS , But it works a lot better whit Noctua fans ,you choses the wrong model, you need a Noctua whit High Static Pressure level like Noctua NF-P12 Redux-1700PWM, i have an 10 year old version of this fan ,swapped one off my PS original and got 3-4 cooler temps on my 14600k
Hear me out: P12 max push in the front above the memory LianLi P28 conveyor fan P12 max pull in the rear chipset area I've modded my PS120 that way and it's a monster
@@casuallygamin9 top noise can get loud but there is a huge buffer of temperature to get there as the normal range of dT 7ºC over ambient to around dT 40ºC over ambient I can handle with very little push of 30% fan speeds, which is, mostly up to 100% load on 14/16 threads. Only loading up to the last couple threads kicks in fan speeds
@@casuallygamin9 The real test will be next week when I plan to handle 5950X with this setup, and probably give it a little more room of up to dT 55ºC over ambient for fans to kick in to max
@@casuallygamin9 Reporting back. It really didn't warm much higher than the previous CPU. I only raised to around 50ºC over ambient fans to kick 100% for true blend tests. If I target my good CCD with ALL core and SMT prime95 load then it reaches 58ºC over ambient maximum, any other situation is never getting that hot. It's an amazing chip, very worthwhile PBO2 tuning carefully, it had like 5 cores only that could reach originally the maximum 5.08Ghz boost, but after negative offset PBO2 it can reach the maximum boost on 14/16 cores, and the 2 remaining weak cores reach 110mhz lower. Therefore, after tuning, it doesn't matter where load hits randomly, it's processing 4.93+ Ghz, while at stock it could fluctuate even single-core loads from 4.75-5.05 Ghz. And lighter multi-core loads are even super impressive, 32 threads memory access after PBO2 tuning can work at 4.8Ghz 32 threads at 28ºC over ambient. Prime95 torture test does 4.25Ghz 32 threads. I am very certain there is no game that utilizes cores heavily enough to game at any speed below the 4.65Ghz all-core that I was getting in all 16 threads in my previous 5700g, except maybe a heavy TWW3 scenario or CIv 6 with loads of PC civs.
It performs a bit better, but it's not worth the extra noise. Also, the extra money that you spend, not worth changing the stock fans, at least from my point of view as I find the sound profile to my liking.
@@casuallygamin9 the main reason people recommend them as upgrades for the TR coolers is that their fans have crap bearings that will fail very early. Arctics are reasonably cheap, perform well and last very long/are reliable. You wouldn't have to get an Arctic when you buy the cooler, but can consider it in a year or two.
The stock fans of the Phantom Spirit 120 SE perform really well compared to the Arctic P12 Max, and are close to silent. What silent fans do you guys use?
I use the fans that came with the PS120SE. It's got a high pitch noise tho at high RPM. Thinking of replacing them, but that defeats the whole point of getting this cooler which is the fact that it's very cheap for what it offers.
I also wonder how your 7800X3D reaches 4.9ghz all-core. I run the same PBO CO settings as you (-15) and even get the same temps, but my chip maxes out at 4.85ghz all-core in R23. On stock settings, it won't even reach 4.8ghz all-core. Very weird behavior as I'm not hitting any thermal/power limit and my chipset/BIOS are all up-to-date (1616 ASUS).
@@mio2540 I set FLCK to 2066. But this will not help, I guess. I think it depends on the CPU. Maybe silicon lottery? I like the sound of the stock fans more than the Noctuas and the Arctic P12 Max. I hate the sound of the Peerless Assassin 120 SE stock fans.
@@casuallygamin9 Yeah maybe its silicon lottery. Oh well, I guess I applying -15 CO makes it the same as the "stock" chips from reviewers.
I'm using stock fans of PS120 SE with a custom curve similar to yours. They run at 60% below 79 C and at 79C they ramp up to 100% to keep away the tuned 5800x3D lowering clocks under high load. They never need to run 100% in games/daily usage so it is still very quiet. And in Cinebench R23 I'm hitting 15500 points and all cores can keep their clocks at maximum.
P12's are over rated. They make an annoying resonance noise in my experience.
Awesome review! exactly what i needded.. seems like the cooler is made fot that fans.. also seems like more airflow has better impact than stattic preassure in the custom fan.
I put a single P12max on a Noctua UH12S, and I had 6C° less on cinebench than the stock 1700RPM fan. Even with a double stock fan configuration I have worst results. My thoughts are that the most important part of an air cooler is how the pipes manage the heat and how fast they drive the heat from the base to the top, where the fan could help to cool. If the heat transfer is not enough rapid giving more pressure with a faster fan is useless. Definetly showing the difference between a 40$ cooler and a more expensive one. Not always the difference are visible, and apart for the brand name, I think the difference in these products is "under the wood". You could observe a massive increase of performance also in an Artic Freezer 36, swapping the original fans for a pair of P12max or Phanteks T30.
Thank you very much for this video. I have plenty of Arctic coolers (p12 ARGB and P14 both regular and ARGB) And I was considering getting the Ps120 for a 9800x3d build (currently I have a 5900 with a custom 360mm radiator cooling it).
I knew temperature improvements wouldn't be that much better but I was hoping for at least a 3c. Thanks for the test regardless, a shame you couldn't add a noise comparison. Higher end smartphones have pretty accurate decibel estimations, and even recording the tonal profile of the coolers would have given an idea of which is less annoying to have around.
Thanks regardless.
As I test in a PC case, the noise will not be accurate as noise from the other fans will interfere. Also, it depends a lot of the noise profile, as I prefer low pitch in contrast to high pitch sounds, but this is me. It is not silent, but not loud, if you don't put the A12 Max to the highest fan speed. Sorry for not putting the noise, but thanks for the suggestion, I will keep it in mind.
Thanks for review. Review's numerical results: Stock fan Highest 81.9, P12 Max Highest 81.3, Noctua Highest 83. But noise? Noctua will have the advantage when the sound issue comes into play.
I tested the Noctua and I hate the sound profile. I think those fans are overrated. I loke the sound profile more of the stock fans. But this is my preference. I tried a few and even though the decibel levels are lower for Noctua on papaer, it doesn't mean that the sound profile is pleasing. I don't mind the Arctic sound, others hate it and think that the Noctua profile is the best. My advice is to try and see.
@@casuallygamin9 thanks bro for your reply. Actually, I am already using both noctua and bionix p120. I also use be quite. I had the opportunity to compare them all one to one. Noctua is more efficient at low speeds. It is really important to offer sound and cooling at the same time. But of course, it is definitely debatable whether it deserves its price.
True, sound and cooling, but at high speeds as CPUs now scale clocks based on thermals.
saw the other video of thermalright pe test such a great work
Thanks.
Noctuas aren’t meant for best max speed performance they’re meant for noise to performance and around 60% fans speed and longevity. If you’re going to replace the fans for something that expensive go for the t30 they’re a bit louder but by very little while having some of the best max speed performance and the same longevity as noctua
I'm not sure that these can fit as the clips that the cooler comes with are not suitable for 30mm thick fans
Considering the fans on the Phantom Spirit look like case fans, do you think the results may change with a higher flow case fan versus a high static pressure fan like the P12 Max??
I actually tried the P12 Max and they perform a bit better but at the cost of noise. If you have great airflow, maybe some high flow fans can do better then the stock ones, but I don't think it worth it considering the extra cost.
Unbelievable 😮 how could it be more rpm more static pressure but almost there is no difference between two of them. Why?
Well, it is notmal for a low power CPU. It will do better for high power CPUs, 150w+
I tried them on my phantom spirit 120se and there was a buzzing sound coming from them, a very strange vibration in all rpm range, my theory is that the vibration come from the fact that they are loose when fitted... Swapped them with thermalright tl b12w, no more annoying sound, p12max are very good but only for case and aio, i strongly do not recommend them for this air cooler at least.
That sound is specific to Arctic fans, as most have that sound at a given RPM
Thanks for your review. I was planning to get the p12max for my ps120se. Aint buying it anymore.
Anyhow, what pc case fans do you use?
I use artic 2 P14 as intake fans and one p12 underneath them. 2 arctic f12 underneath the GPU and 3 p12 as exhaust. The one at the back is always running at 100% and the two above I have defined a custom fan curve based on the GPU temps. The hotter the gpu is the faster they spin to exhaust the temperature from yhe GPU
@@casuallygamin9 thank you! Im learning alot from you. Coz im building my pc right now from scratch. I bought arctic p12 5 pack. Will use them soon :)
I hope you bought them from a place that, if you don't like the sound profile, you can return. Make sure to buy all your components from a shop that has good return policy, because now days we are doing the QC. Most companies skip this step unfortunately. Good luck with your build and I'm happy to hear that I was helpful with these videos.
So 3300 vs 1500 RPM lowers the average by 1 degree? This means that the P12 Max is a fail in my book. I wonder how other high speed fans will perform. Great video.
It depends. Some will perform better then other. But don't think that if a fan has 3000RPM or more it will reduce the temperature of a CPU by 5 or more degrees, if the sotck fans are decent.
@@casuallygamin9 Decent, how is "decent" damn people must be crazy to justify such statement.
PS 120SE cost 39 USD
P12 Max cost 11 USD each one
How is better than "decent" to make a cooler have a 56% price increase over 1°C?
Such pointless statement. Nobody buying a 40 bucks cooler is gonna spend more than half the price for new fans to get a 1°C improvement, that is just dumb.
Peerless Assassin to Phantom Spirit already offer that kind of improvement and people get a whole new tower, 2 fans, assembling accesories, thermalpaste and a box for 10USD increase.
YEAH THOSE STOCK FANS ARE "DECENT"
What a joke conclusion.
What I said is that there is no need to upgrade a CPU fan if it has decent performance. It is more of a general statment for all CPU coolers out there. If what you get in the box has decent performance, enough that your CPU is not throttleing, then, in my opinion, is not worth chasing for a better fan.
@@jevc900423 Chill out my dude. Upgrading fans makes a LOT of sense because you can still repurpose the fans that came with the PS120 as case fans and the P12 are already quite cheap a know to have one of the best noise to performance ratio in all marketing. This swap makes sense to make the cooler overall quieter but still allow you for a high performance extra boost in hot summer days or when realy stressing all of the cpu.
Regardless of how cheap the PS120 is, it is also THE ABSOLUTELY BEST 120MM tower cooler available on the market, so if you want the best performance of what a cooler of that size can give, then you won't mind paying a little more on a fan upgrade. The only coolers that surpass it are all 165mm+ tall and 140mm fan.... Price is not the issue here.
However I do agree a 2c improvement even at 3300rpm is not really worth it. I was expecting a little bit more, like 3c. OP's video gave plenty of information I wanted, a shame he didn't test the noise level and recorded the sound even with a rough estimation with a smartphone decibelimeter.
P12 max at 3000+ rpm barely beats the stock fan at 1500rpm? Seems like a big win for the stock fan.
Well, the stock fans are ok
Hello sir, what software are you using to show the CPU clock speed please
I'm using MSI Afterburner with Riva Tuner Statistics
@@casuallygamin9 Thank you sir
nice
I love my thermalright PS , But it works a lot better whit Noctua fans ,you choses the wrong model, you need a Noctua whit High Static Pressure level like Noctua NF-P12 Redux-1700PWM, i have an 10 year old version of this fan ,swapped one off my PS original and got 3-4 cooler temps on my 14600k
Both fans at full speed?
Hear me out:
P12 max push in the front above the memory
LianLi P28 conveyor fan
P12 max pull in the rear chipset area
I've modded my PS120 that way and it's a monster
How's the noise? is it barrable?
@@casuallygamin9 top noise can get loud but there is a huge buffer of temperature to get there as the normal range of dT 7ºC over ambient to around dT 40ºC over ambient I can handle with very little push of 30% fan speeds, which is, mostly up to 100% load on 14/16 threads. Only loading up to the last couple threads kicks in fan speeds
@@casuallygamin9 The real test will be next week when I plan to handle 5950X with this setup, and probably give it a little more room of up to dT 55ºC over ambient for fans to kick in to max
I'm curious of the outcome
@@casuallygamin9 Reporting back. It really didn't warm much higher than the previous CPU. I only raised to around 50ºC over ambient fans to kick 100% for true blend tests. If I target my good CCD with ALL core and SMT prime95 load then it reaches 58ºC over ambient maximum, any other situation is never getting that hot. It's an amazing chip, very worthwhile PBO2 tuning carefully, it had like 5 cores only that could reach originally the maximum 5.08Ghz boost, but after negative offset PBO2 it can reach the maximum boost on 14/16 cores, and the 2 remaining weak cores reach 110mhz lower. Therefore, after tuning, it doesn't matter where load hits randomly, it's processing 4.93+ Ghz, while at stock it could fluctuate even single-core loads from 4.75-5.05 Ghz. And lighter multi-core loads are even super impressive, 32 threads memory access after PBO2 tuning can work at 4.8Ghz 32 threads at 28ºC over ambient. Prime95 torture test does 4.25Ghz 32 threads. I am very certain there is no game that utilizes cores heavily enough to game at any speed below the 4.65Ghz all-core that I was getting in all 16 threads in my previous 5700g, except maybe a heavy TWW3 scenario or CIv 6 with loads of PC civs.
waste of time... the thermalright fan comes with the cooler is good enough. Arctic P12 won't beat it.
It performs a bit better, but it's not worth the extra noise. Also, the extra money that you spend, not worth changing the stock fans, at least from my point of view as I find the sound profile to my liking.
@@casuallygamin9 the main reason people recommend them as upgrades for the TR coolers is that their fans have crap bearings that will fail very early. Arctics are reasonably cheap, perform well and last very long/are reliable. You wouldn't have to get an Arctic when you buy the cooler, but can consider it in a year or two.
I totally agree, arctic fans are good