Very quiet, low performance – Joe
SUMMARY: A good noise/performance tradeoff for those seeking quiet P4 cooling.

The good guys at Arctic Cooling were nice enough to send their Super Silent 4Pro L for a test spin. This is an all-aluminum P4 heatsink which features a 3 position switch to power the fan at High, Medium and Low speeds. I used a digital tachometer and measured speeds of 2931, 2380 and 1946 rpm during testing.
The fan is an 80 x 37 mm unit rated at 25 cfm, 16 dBA @ 2000 rpm, 32 cfm, 19 dBA @ 2500 rpm and 38.5 cfm, 25 dBA @ 3000 rpm. I found it to vary from moderately quiet to almost inaudible – I measured noise at High at 51 dBA¹ with a Radio Shack sound meter 8″ from the fan’s intake – I could not get a reading at lower rpms. It’s also safe to use a motherboard fan header – 3.4 watts.
The aluminum base is not particularly well finished:

When I ran my nail over it, I could feel ridges. With such a low powered fan, improving the base finish would help performance.
One nice thing about this heatsink – there are four LEDs to light it up:

I tested the Super Silent 4Pro L on an Acorp 4S845A motherboard with a modified P4 1500 to read CPU case temps.
Motherboard | CPU Case Temp | Ambient Temp | Delta | C/W | MBM Temp |
Super Silent 4Pro L, 2931 rpm, 51 dBA | 37.0 C | 24.8 C | 12.2 | 0.21 | 35 C¹ |
Super Silent 4Pro L, 2380 rpm, <50 dBA | 39.0 C | 26.4 C | 12.6 | 0.22 | 36 C¹ |
Super Silent 4Pro L, 1946 rpm, <50 dBA | 42.0 C | 25.9 C | 16.1 | 0.28 | 39 C¹ |
C/W = Delta / CPU Watts
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