Thermalright PS 120 fan setup and review: resolving a high pitch noise
Two weeks ago, I built my first PC and, following online recommendations, decided to go with the Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE ARGB cooler. However, after finishing the build, I was somewhat disappointed with its cooling performance. The fans were quite loud and emitted a noticeable high-pitched noise.
I noticed that other users had encountered similar issues, and some managed to resolve it by adjusting their fan setup. With that in mind, I tested five different fan configurations, measuring the noise levels and Cinebench scores to find the optimal setup.
Relevant PC specs
Cooler: Thermalright PS120Se ARGB (obviously)
CPU: Ryzen 7600x
GPU: Radeon 6950 xt
Case: Fractal north
RAM: corsair vengeance ddr5 2x16gb
Case fans: The 2 standard intake fans from the fractal north. No additional fans were added.
Tested CPU fan configuration
In all the configurations fans are blowing from right to left. I double checked the fans are not blowing against each other in setup 1.
Setup 1: initial loud setup with high pitch noise
Two fans were added such that they pull air through the heat sink. Fans were set up this way because a push configuration interfered with the RAM.
Setup 2
The back fan was removed and the middle fan remains. Following recommendation from previous reddit threads.
Setup 3
Same as setup 2 but the middle fan was attached to the other heatsink such that it “pushes” air.
Setup 4
Full push configuration. The middle fan is the same as in setup 3 but the extra fan is now added to the front and blows slightly over the heatsink.
Setup 5
Same as setup 3. The leftover CPU fan is used as an exhaust fan for the case.
Illustration
Illustration s4 is drawn from the perspective of the GPU to illustrate the height difference between fans. All other illustrations are drawn from the perspective of some looking through the side panel.Thermalright PS120SE ARGB: high pitch fan noise resolved.
Test setup
Procedure
- PC is restarted
- Idle noise level is measured next to the case and at a 1m distance
- Cinebench is started after 2 minutes of running and the noise level is measured again at the same distances.
Measuring the noise level
All noise levels were measured with a phone. As a baseline the sound of the room was measured with the pc turned off. A minimum noise level of 30.6 dB was measured along with an average one of 32.6 dB. Using this as a baseline negates the effect of a poor calibration of the phone.
Performance measure
As a performance measure we use the Cinebench score. For setup only one Cinebench run is performed. The STD of Cinebench runs was determined to be 48.9 the following day by performing 5 Cinebench runs with setup 5.
Results
I decide to only show some results in this post to keep it digestible but the general trend is the same. The table below shows the Cinebench score as well as the difference in average noise level compared to the baseline of 32.6 dB.
subjective experience
Setup 1 was not only louder but also had a high pitch noise which is not present in all other setups. The sound of setup 3 ,4, 5 felt nicer than setup 2.
Conclusion/TLDR
Setup 5 produces the lowest noise levels and is within margin of error of the best performing setup 4. Aesthetically setup 5 is also the most pleasing and it is therefore my preferred setup.
With setup 2 to 5 the cooler perform performs as predicted by other reviews and the noise level are pleasant when idle and tolerable under load. With the exception of setup 1, the dual fan setups 4 & 5 outperform the single fan setups as one would expect.
Photo setup 5
Credit
https://www.reddit.com/r/PcBuildHelp/comments/1b4okns/thermalright_phantom_spirit_fan_noise_damaged/