Results: Noise vs. Performance :

The second results graph has all the results (0/crash excluded) sorted by noise+temperature, providing a better way to find the most successful fan/heatsink combo:



The Intel stock HSF sets the baseline for the performance/noise ratio; any heatsink scoring well below that one can be considered as a good 3rd party solution.

The Titan Siberia suffers from having a very small alu-copper heatsink, not able to keep the P4 cool enough at a reasonable noise level.

Although you will see quite a lot of dBA results at 35.8, there is still a difference among them; unfortunately I was unable to correctly capture noise levels below that measurement as the ambient noise was causing interference.

Take the Papst 120mm for example, at High fan speed (12v) its noise level is already at/below 35.8dBA, lowering the fan speed still gives enough airflow for the XP-120 to score near the top.

The temperature differences are overshadowed by the large margins in noise generation by some HSF combo's, but mostly you can see the same ranking as on the previous page, with some interesting results here and there.

Zalman CNPS7700-CU @ Low scores better then the CNPS7000b-CU @ High

Spire's Coolgate (with 70mm fan) @ Low offers similar results as the Thermalright SB-2 with Delta @ High

The XP-90 from Thermalright and CNPS7700-Cu are closely matched near the top of the graph.

The best performance/noise ratio can be had from a large heatsink with a slower spinning fan, which sounds very logic indeed :-).