Cooling Thermalright SI100 vs Noctua L12 Ghost Edition

Mark13

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Sep 5, 2020
168
215
I purchased the Thermalright SI100 CPU cooler and decided to compare its cooling performance against the Noctua L12 Ghost Edition both fitted with a variety of 120x25mm fans.

Without a fan mounted, the Thermalright SI-100 at 74.8mm, is 8.8mm taller than the Noctua L12 GE at 66mm. As a reminder, the Noctua L12S is 70mm in height without a top mounted fan. The Thermalright is both narrower and shorter in length providing more clearance along case sides in tighter cases such as the Sliger S610 or the Lazer 3D LZ7 XTD. The Thermalright includes fan mounting wire brackets for both 25mm and 15mm fans. Noctua will provide upper 25mm fan mounting brackets with proof of purchase. The L12 GE also includes two lengths of mounting bars to allow the cooler to be rotated in 90 degree increments when using AMD CPU’s. Thermalright includes only one length of mounting bars.

The coolers were tested in my MakerBeam proof of concept open chassis with an APU running both the Blender classroom render and Unigine Valley to stress the CPU as much as possible. The graphics card was installed but not connected to reduce the airflow around that side of the CPU cooler. No lower 92mm an was installed on the Noctua.

Thermalright included a 7 blade 2000 RPM rated fan with the cooler that appeared to be of an older design. This fan had a distinct annoying hum at higher RPM. I also installed the 9 blade Thermalright TL-C12 Pro G fan that has the same specifications as the fan included with the Silver Soul 135 cooler. Although this fan measured slightly louder than the included fan, it did not have the distinct hum of the original fan. The SI-100 was able to cool the CPU 6C cooler than the L12 GE when using the Noctua A12x25 fan, and 5C cooler when using the Be Quiet! SW Pro 4 fan both at maximum RPM. With the level on the Be Quiet! fan reduced to 67% PWM, the noise levels on both coolers was was virtually identical to the Noctua A12x25 at similar RPM.

MakerBeam Open Test Bench – Proof of Concept PC Case
Aorus B550 ITX MB; Ryzen 7 4750G with integrated graphics; 32 GB Corsair LPX 3200 RAM;
Evga 3060Ti XC Graphics Card – installed but disconnected
Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste
Blender Classroom Render & Unigine Valley on Ultra Setting
Room Temp 19C;

CPUID HWMonitor & Tech Power Up GPU-Z Readings:

CPU Cooler​
TR SI100​
TR SI100​
TR SI100​
TR SI100​
Noctua L12 GE​
Noctua L12 GE​
CPU Cooler Fan​
TL-E12​
TL-C12 Pro G​
Noctua A12x25​
BQ! SW Pro 4​
Noctua A12x25​
BQ! SW Pro 4​
TZ 10 Temp Sensor Max​
16.8​
16.8​
16.8​
16.8​
16.8​
16.8​
TMPIN0​
37​
37​
39​
35​
38​
36​
TMPIN1​
39​
39​
41​
38​
40​
38​
TMPIN2 CPU​
65​
64​
65​
64​
71​
69​
TMPIN3​
19​
19​
20​
19​
20​
19​
TMPIN4​
39​
39​
40​
37​
40​
38​
TMPIN5​
37​
37​
38​
35​
38​
36​
CPU Fan Max RPM​
2039​
1890​
2027​
2755​
2070​
2755​
Package Temp Max​
65.1​
64.6​
65.9​
64.8​
71.5​
69.5​
Package Wattage Max​
88.73​
88.42​
88.7​
88.59​
89.01​
88.87​
NVMe Top 980 Pro Temp​
39​
38​
40​
37​
40​
39​
APU Max Temp​
50​
50​
50​
50​
54​
53​
Global Max Temp​
55​
54​
55​
54​
61​
60​
SoC Max Temp​
51​
50​
52​
50​
57​
55​
DBA Sound Level @ 100%​
48.7​
49.1​
44.3​
53.2​
43.5​
51.3​
Blender Render Time​
11:44.04​
11:38.57​
11:36.32​
11:36.10​
11:10.07​
11:09.46​
BQ! SW Pro 4​
BQ! SW Pro 4​
BQ! SW Pro 4​
DBA Sound Level @ 67%​
44.3db@2033 RPM​
43.4db@2064 RPM​

 
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