3RSystem iCEAGE: A New Cooling Company Tackles the Heatpipe Tower

Noise

For many enthusiasts upgrading cooling the goal is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if that increases system noise levels.

There are very few power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one that would be used for seriously overclocking a system. With that in mind the noise level of the system with all fans turned off except the PSU was measured. The power supply used for the cooling test bed is the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is one of the quieter of the high performance power supplies.

We have also measured the Corsair 620W and Mushkin 650W power supplies which are reported to be quieter than the OCZ. Both the Corsair and Mushkin are indeed quieter at idle or start up speed. However as soon as load testing begins and the PSU fan speed kicks up the measured noise level is almost exactly the same as the OCZ PowerStream 520W.

We are currently in the process of reevaluating our cooler test bed and planning some updates. The new configuration will include a "quieter" power supply with variable speed and noise levels. We will also update to a P35 chipset motherboard with all passive cooling to the chipset. Changes to the test bed will appear as part of a future roundup with the motherboard, PSU, and CPU all upgraded to more current configurations. We are also investigating a change to a quad-core processor as a further challenge to CPU cooling.

The noise level of the power supply was 38.3 dB from 24" (61cm) and 47 dB from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4 dB, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.

Noise levels were measured with the 3RSystem iCEAGE fan at both low 1000rpm and high 2200rpm speeds. Both low and high measurements were taken at both the 6" and 24" distances above the cooling fan on an open case side. Results were then compared to the other coolers/fans tested in this category. Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with an open side of a mid tower case 6" and 24" from the HSF. Real world would be a completely closed case with a further reduction in noise. Please look for both low and high speed results in the noise graphs.



The measured noise levels at 6" and 24" are all below the system noise floor at the low 1000rpm speeds. However noise goes up appreciably as the fan speed is increased to 2200rpm - at both distances. The iCEAGE actually specifies a 19dbA to 32dbA noise range for the included fan, but we do not know the test conditions used for measuring noise. Our noise measurements are higher, but our measurement procedure is more demanding than many noise measurement tests. This is another way of saying the specified noise results may be accurate if we had used the same measurement procedures used by 3RSystem.

The iCEAGE fan is definitely audible at high speed, but the noise is not particularly irritating in frequency. The noise audibly disappeared in a fully closed case, but it still will bother those very sensitive to system noise. If you are very sensitive to noise you should definitely run the iCEAGE in a closed case, and reduce the fan to a level about 25% or more down from the maximum speed.