Results

Because the Vendetta has no included fan controller and the 4-pin fan speed regulation is entirely down to motherboard used, we ran and recorded the Vendetta temperatures at full speed. At 2,800RPM the fan is very noisy, more so than most 120mms, and the noise is more fan mechanism as opposed to just airflow.

Reducing the fan speed by setting the PWM temperature value works fantastically though, but it's obviously at the sacrifice of optimal performance – setting the MSI P6N SLI to maintain 50˚C clocked the fan down to just 1,500RPM, which made it virtually inaudible until the CPU was loaded.

At low fan speed there's very little airflow directed to the power regulation area around the CPU socket, mostly because the fins don't direct the airflow downwards like the Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro or Cooler Master TX2 do.

The Vendetta performance at full flow is the best, inexpensive heatsink we've had to date, but for the noise—like many of the other top performers on the list—we couldn't use it at this speed for the sake of retaining our sanity.