While everyone “hears” noise differently there is one easy way to remove all subjectivness and easily compare different fans: use a sound level meter. This way you can easily compare the various fans noise envelopes without us coloring the results and see what fans fit within your personal comfort level. Of course, we will endeavor to try and explain the various results – which are taken at a 15 inch distance from the GPU’s fan(s) – to help you gain an even better understanding of how loud a cooler’s stock fan is, but even if you discount our personal opinions, the fact remains numbers don’t lie.
For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak temperature. For Load tests we ran AIDA64 for 20 minutes.
As you can see the Stealth is a decent enough cooling solution for its class, it is just that it gets outclassed by the AMD Spire cooling solution. So much so that seeing XFR limiting heat levels will not be all that uncommon when using the 1300X. Put another way if you plan on overclocking, or just want to get the most out of your shiny new Ryzen 3 1300X an aftermarket cooling solution may be a wise investment. Conversely, the Ryzen 3 1200 is more than happy with the Stealth and an replacement cooling solution will only be warranted when you want a lower noise solution.
