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General |
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| Overall, the Fractal Design Kelvin S36 is a very
solid product with a good looking color scheme, which is perfectly in
line with the ASUS X99 Deluxe and MSI's Krait as
well as all other black and white motherboards. It offers
great cooling
performance but when it comes to noise level we would have loved to have
an inaudible pump in front of us. Especially when the system is in idle
it's well possible to hear the pump. |
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- Cooling capacity
- Quality
- PWM |
- Noise levels 12V
- Pump Noise |
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Installation |
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| The installation is simple an pretty straightforward. With two included
mounting kits, where one is for Intel and another for AMD sockets, it should be quite easy even for less technical users
to mount the cooler properly in a heartbeat. Mounting the fans needs a
torx key which is included in the delivery. The thermal compound provided in a 1g
syringe is good and apart from that it's more than enough even for
multiple applications. In the case that the mounting isn't
self-explanatory there is a details and nicely designed instruction
manual. |
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- Easy and practical
- Compatible Intel and AMD |
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Performance |
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| The Fractal Design Kelvin S36 offers great cooling
performanace in any situation. With the fan driven at 7V and 12V we find
the cooler in the second place of our charts. In PWM mode, the
performance drops a slight little bit but still ranks third place. |
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- Cooling performances in general |
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| Noise Levels |
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| Our tests show that the fans included in the bundle
are audible at 7V and at 12V they are noisy, reaching
37.8 dBA when running at 7V and 48.7 dBA at 12V. Rotation speeds at
7V and 12V are 1'400 and 1'740 rpm. In PWM mode, the fan speeds are
lower, causing the noise level to drop to a silent 34.2 dBA in idle and
under load conditions the noise level was still ok with 35.3 dBA. As we
already mentioned also the pump is noisy with this cooler. We want to
add that driving the fans at 6.5V makes the fan speeds drop to 300 rpm
and in this case they become inaudble and the only thing you can still
hear is the pump. |
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- Noise levels 12V
- Pump Noise |
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| Recommendation /
Price |
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| The suggested retail price of the Kelvin S36 from
Fractal Design is 135 Euro. If you keep in mind that the Kelvin S36 is
amongst one of the most powerful AiOs we tested in in our lab, then this is a highly competitive price.
The build quality is on a good level as well as the bundle. Overall this
is a good all-in-one watercooler that offers great cooling
performance. |
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- Gaming PC
- Overclocking |
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