I've not done a side by side comparison with each of them in the same system. It's been a variety of different CPUs in different cases over the years.
The AR06 I've tested with CPUs ranging from Skylake i3's up to non K Kaby Lake i7's. Usually inside the Silverstone ML08 and ML03 cases, they work really well in these, you can't hear the fan when idle with any CPU. With i3's it barely breaks a sweat and remains almost silent when stressed, i7s however do push the fan close to it's full rpm under stress load.
The AXP-100 I used in an ML08 as well I think with an i5-6500, it was reviewed really well so I expected it to perform better than the AR06. But the fan can be heard at its lowest rpm in free air, this was for a HTPC which needed to be silent for whilst carrying out light duty tasks. I had to use a fan resistor in the end to slow the fan down and bring the noise levels to near silent. The good thing about the cooler though was that it kept the CPU temps low with low rpms so it remained fairly quiet.
The Big Shuriken I tested with an i5-6500 in the LZ7, with the fan swapped to an Akasa AK-FN078. Under full prime95 and Unigine valley stress testing the CPU topped out at 50C, which is pretty incredible, the best part though was that this was achieved with a silent fan curve, the fan was only spinning at 900 rpm to achieve this temp under full stress which was extremely quiet. When the fan curve was changed to auto the rpm increased and the fan became audible, but the CPU temp dropped to under 45C under full stress conditions. I understand that the i5-6500 is probably not utilising its full 65w yep as the i7-6700 is also rated at 65 tdp. But I still think this is a great result.
The Noctua NH-L12 was tested with an i7-7700 again in the LZ7, it's not ideal conditions for it as the PSU covers around half of the top of the heatsink, it would perform better in a case with a vent directly above the cooler. But even so, it kept the 7700 at 80C during Prime95 8x thread testing with a fan speed of 1400rpm, at this speed the fan can be heard as a low level humming, the fan a much more pleasant tone than coolers which tend to use slim 92mm fans for instance.
Good point, forgot about that!
