CPU Scythe Kaze Flex 120 Black vs Noctua A12x25 on Noctua L12 Air Cooler

Mark13

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Sep 5, 2020
180
229
Just got the new Kaze Flex 120 Black 1500 RPM - mine spins up to 1646. Got it as a case fan for a new build but decided to compare it to a Noctua A12x25 as the upper fan on a L12 Ghost Edition dual downdraft with an A9x25 fan under the cooler on an Aorus B550 ITX MB with a 4750G APU build with 32GB Ram in a 5.9 liter Yiluka YLK-01 case with no space for other fans. I ran the Blender classroom render and Unigine Valley to stress the entire CPU/GPU of the processor. The temperatures in CPUID HWMonitor after completing the 10 minute render with Unigine Valley also running were identical on all 5 MB sensors, the pkg temp was 1 degree lower on the Kaze Flex, and both NVMe drives had identical temps. The render with the Kaze Flex took an additional 7 seconds to complete. This dual fan setup has counterrotating fans as in the Scythe Fuma II cooler. I then also tested the cooler with the Noctua A12x15 fan that performed slightly worse overall. Both fans had individual MB fan headers & were set to read the CPU temp & could rotate up to their max speed. Below are actual temps in a 21C room.

Noctua
A12x25​
Kaze Flex 120 Black​
Noctua
A12x15​
Temp Sensor 0​

42​

42​

45​
Temp Sensor 1​

43​

43​

45​
Temp Sensor 2 CPU​

68​

68​

72​
Temp Sensor 3 PCI​

21​

21​

21​
Temp Sensor 4​

42​

42​

45​
Temp Sensor 5​

43​

43​

46​
Pkg Temp​

69​

68​

72​
Wattage​

88.99​

88.96​

89.01​
NVMe Top​

45​

45​

48​
NVMe Bottom​

38​

38​

41​
Render Time​

/ 10:15.21​

/ 10:22.51​

/ 10:20.16​
 
Last edited:

msystems

King of Cable Management
Apr 28, 2017
804
1,405
So this is the 25mm Kaze right? Because they also make a 120×15 which looks pretty nice and I wonder how it compares to the A12×15