First up, some graphs, followed by some comments at the bottom.
Noise level
Noise to performance - synthetic tests
Noise to performance - Metro benchmark
Benchmark (score and median frequency) - Heaven
Benchmark (score and median frequency) - Time Spy
Benchmark (score and median frequency) - Fire Strike Ultra\
You can clearly see a relationship between frequency to score, and a pretty significant relationship at that. You can also see that Noctua by itself is definitely the worse performing fan combination.
Score wise most of the rest of the fan combinations will do the job, so now it comes down to personal preference on noise level. Note in the discussion below I refer to the main fan, but there are usually 2 50mm Scythe fans paired with it.
Looking at the noise to temp graph on synthetics, the Cougar looks VERY attractive, with the Gentle Typhoon (69 CFM model) right behind it. If I then look at the noise to temp graph on Metro benchmark, the Phanteks looks good (I'm ignoring the standalone Noctua given the horrible benchmark scores).
The Gentle Typhoon does better in the benchmarks than the Cougar and the Phanteks, so I'm going to go with the Gentle Typhoon.
Next steps are to now try different thermal paste on the GPU. I have 3 to try out:
- Noctua NT-H1
- IC Diamond
- Themal Grizzley Kyronaut
My prediction is that the Kryonaut will work best, so I am saving that for last.
The testing for the thermal paste will probably start Sunday, although I may take a break Sunday and actually just play some games
** Edited to fix some labels on the graphs