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I'm interested in replacing my stock Haswell CPU cooler with something quieter. After going over reviews, I see that the 212 EVO is fairly quiet, but certainly not the quietest of the aftermarket coolers. However, most of the quieter coolers are significantly more expensive, or they are generally less available for purchase.

Considering that I work in a very quiet environment, and that the CPU cooler is the loudest component of my system, would the 212 EVO be significantly quieter, or should I perhaps look carefully at more expensive models? If I should look elsewhere, are there any in particular that I should look at?

In case you're wondering, I was also considering the Scythe Kotetsu and Scythe Mugen 4, both of which are recommended by silentpcreviews.

The EVO 212 should be much quieter than the stock CPU cooler given the same settings. If you're not happy with the noise still, the cooler itself is still good. Just find another 120mm PWM fan to put in its place (I use noctua and cougar fans for this purpose). The 120mm PWM cougar fans don't cost more than $15 and you can regularly find them on sale for $10.

I have a Hyper 212 EVO, and I wish I would have spent the extra ~$20 or so USD for a better one. They're a PITA to swap once installed and just not worth it after it's all said and done. It's about the same at idle as the intel, maybe a little less. I had to go into my BIOS and make a custom fan speed profile to be satisfied. What is noticable (note I've never had these side by side) is at load. The Evo shouldn't need to work as hard to keep the CPU cool, thus being quieter at load.

If you want quiet, google up those other HSFs and find the dbm's of them. But absolute quiet is what you seek, this is not the HSF for you.

I have an FX-8350 and the stock fan is -- you guessed it -- loud and inadequate. So I decided to go aftermarket and also considered the 212 Evo. Eventually I went with a Deepcool Gammaxx 400. The reviews were good and it sold for a little less than the 212 Evo in my part of the world. The only thing I dislike about it is how tight the clip was for AM3+ boards. The board I'm using now, a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3, is my second AM3+ board; my first one was an MSI 990FXA-GD65 which lasted me a month after the 1-year warranty ran out. I don't know if the Gammaxx 400 had anything to do with it. While it's definitely a fine, inexpensive cooler, I hope it wasn't the reason why my first AM3+ board died, nor would it (also?) kill my current board. I bought the Gammaxx 400 4 months after buying the MSI board, and used it with the MSI board for 9 months.

One thing I forgot to mention -- I'm not really interested in minimizing noise at load. My CPU is rarely stressed, and during the brief times when it is, I can tolerate elevated noise levels. I'm looking for very quiet operation while doing ordinary office tasks (word processing, email, etc.).

I'm also not interested in fanless heatsinks. I would prefer to quickly remove the heat from the case.

Can you adjust your BIOS/UEFI with a custom fan profile?

I put the 212 in my nephews PC and I like it, it is a lot quieter than Intel and AMD stock heatsinks. I found it still made a little bit of an annoying sound but it was unnoticable in almost all scenarios.

The Scythe Mugen 4 is a good choice, so is the Thermalright HR-02 Macho (140mm) but they run about $20 more. If your GPU fan is very loud spending the extra cash on a quieter heatsink might be a waste.

I would echo what Ryhadar said. Get the 212 EVO, if it's too loud even after modifying the fan curve*, you can always buy a quieter high quality fan for $10 on sale. You're still probably ahead price-wise compared to a "more expensive" HSF.

*There have been reports of tower-style heatsinks doing fine with the fan turned off. While I don't recommend running with the fan turned off at full load, it could still be a viable low noise solution at idle or low-stress usage as long as temps are under, say, 50C. Then, when the CPU usage ramps up, the fan turns on when needed. If you've got an exhaust fan on your case's back panel (typically) the heat will still be pulled out of the case.

I'm not terribly impressed with the fan they included with the Evo, but I have a Sickleflow I'm going to put on it when I feel like mucking with it.

There are better CPU coolers than the $31 CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo... but they all cost significantly more. The fan included with the Hyper 212 Evo is decent enough. A Noctua NF-F12 PWM fan is quieter if you decide that you don't like the stock CoolerMaster fan.

With Asus' Thermal Radar software, I'm able to spin the fans down to extraordinarily low levels, making them essentially silent.

If you can get your hands on a Hyper 212X, it has an improved fan.

I have a 212 Evo and i'm happy with it. I had it installed on my AMD PhenomII 1090T then moved it to my new I7 4770K. When it was on my 1090T the fan died at some point and it ran for a while with no issues. When I was doing my I7 build and realized the fan was the dead, the stores were all closed. I was able to steal the 120mm fan from my new case. I was able to run my 1090T at up to 3.75ghz with the 212 EVO.

Silverstone Argon AR01 or AR03. The heatsink itself is pretty much the exact same thing as the 212 Evo -- narrow tower, direct contact heatpipes -- but the fan is tons better for low noise operation. It does amazing things at only 33db, way better than the 212 Evo at the exact same price (for AR01, AR03 is $50).

Put an AR03 in a build for a friend and wanted to steal it, it's the heatsink I wish I had bought for my own pc.

OTOH the install is a bit less good, the instructions for their mounting hardware are terrible. Have a functional computer around so you can look up better info / a youtube video.

So instead of just blindly jumping in with an opinion, I carefully read the OP's posts and followups. The truth is that at basic task low load scenarios, aftermarket coolers won't really be quieter than the stock Intel cooler. Even at full speed stock Intel coolers aren't incredibly loud, and at low load or idle with proper PWM control they are actually pretty quiet. Therefore, for the specific reason the OP stated "I'm looking for very quiet operation while doing ordinary office tasks (word processing, email, etc.)" I would recommend not spending money on an aftermarket cooler. An aftermarket cooler is warranted for overclocking, quieter operation at high load, or extreme silencing.

If the OP falls into the last category, fair enough, but I would also recommend looking at all the fans in your case first, including the GPU and PSU fans. It could be that the other fans are what bother you at low load, and if you are going for extreme silence you will likely want to get quiet case fans as well, either low-moderate (~1000 RPM max) fixed speed or speed-controlled.

More system specs, such as case, case fans and type/speed, and GPU and PSU model would be helpful.

The intel coolers aren't loud, but they do make a fairly annoying sound compared to a cooler with a larger fan spinning at a lower speed. A cooler with a larger fan would seem quieter at the same dB level because there would be less and lower pitch motor hum and more "whoosh" of air. Of course, that applies to all the other fans in the system as well.

MadManOriginal wrote:

So instead of just blindly jumping in with an opinion, I carefully read the OP's posts and followups. The truth is that at basic task low load scenarios, aftermarket coolers won't really be quieter than the stock Intel cooler. Even at full speed stock Intel coolers aren't incredibly loud, and at low load or idle with proper PWM control they are actually pretty quiet. Therefore, for the specific reason the OP stated "I'm looking for very quiet operation while doing ordinary office tasks (word processing, email, etc.)" I would recommend not spending money on an aftermarket cooler. An aftermarket cooler is warranted for overclocking, quieter operation at high load, or extreme silencing.

If the OP falls into the last category, fair enough, but I would also recommend looking at all the fans in your case first, including the GPU and PSU fans. It could be that the other fans are what bother you at low load, and if you are going for extreme silence you will likely want to get quiet case fans as well, either low-moderate (~1000 RPM max) fixed speed or speed-controlled.

The first sentence of his first post "I'm interested in replacing my stock Haswell CPU cooler with something quieter." implies that he's not happy with the noise currently being generated by the stock cooler. It could be that he lives in a hotter climate (Texas, Arizona), and the ambient temperature is enough to cause his stock cooler to ramp up at idle, or with minimal load. Either way, I think the 212 EVO is a very nice cooler for the price, and recommend it.

I am surprised that your stock Haswell cooler is loud; The retail fan is pretty quiet. It's pretty pathetic too, but unless it's running at full tilt it's not something I would ever consider as noisy.
Even under load, stock Haswell (not overclocked) doesn't get hot enough to run the fan at more than about 1800RPM and the little fans on those retail heatsinks aren't what I would call obnoxious at this speed. They go up to about 3200RPM and the last thousand RPM are where you'll hear it above other things like case fans, GPU fans, the noise of air rushing over grilles etc.

At this point we need to know:

1. Is the room with your PC in it VERY warm?
2. Are you sure the heatsink is installed correctly and the fan is plugged into the correct four-pinned fan header (CPU1) on the board?
3. How quiet is quiet? i.e. what other fans/cards do you have in your computer and what are you doing when you call the CPU fan noisy?

If you truly value silence, your best bet is to buy ANY 120mm heatpipe & tower cooler like the Hyper 212 and then buy a very slow PWM fan. One that caps out at 800-1000RPM ought to be fast enough. Without a doubt, a 120mm tower with an 800rpm fan will be able to cool better than the retail heatsink, and the fan's speed is the largest factor in how noisy it is (alongside things like blade count, blade design, angle of the blades, bearing type, but all of these are secondary factors. If you have two fans of the same size, one is 1600RPM and the other is 1000RPM, the slow one WILL be quieter, no matter what the marketing blurb says).