Performance
Why did I use an Antec case with Antec fans known for already being very quiet? Well I wanted to put the GELID Wing 12 fans up against the best hardware I have. If they faire well against such a challenge you should get an impression of how well they’ll faire in your rig, be it awesome or awful.
As with any cooling review, the first set of tests we ran through for the GELID Wing 12 fans was to see how they affected thermal performance. To perform these tests, we set the fans to three speed settings and recorded the resulting idle and load temperatures. Load conditions were generated using the software program OCCT. This particular piece of software can be used to generate load on both CPU and RAM, pushing the CPU to 100% usage across all available cores and sending traffic to RAM.
Upon first glance, it would appear that the GELID Wing 12 fans were beat out by the Antec stock fans by a slim margin. The GELID fans held their own at Medium speed, but were otherwise beaten by the Antec fans by a factor of 1°C in all other tests. Admittedly this is a statistically insignificant number, as 1°C of temperature difference has little to no impact on overall system performance. While it may appear that the Antec fans beat out the GELID fans, even by a small margin, they really didn’t. This is especially true when you take into account our next set of tests.
The thermal tests put the Antec stock fans in our test rig and the GELID Wing 12 cases in a neck-and-neck race for cooling supremacy, so it should be the acoustic and noise tests that place either product on the winner’s podium. Without gushing too much, I think it’s safe to say that the GELID fans are the clear winner here. The reasoning behind that is simple.
Though the GELID and Antec fans are similar in thermal performance, the GELID fans are noticeably quieter. This isn’t just a numbers game though; our ears also say that the GELID fans are perceptibly quieter then our test rig. The most impressive performance delta is at the high end of the scale, and unsurprisingly the medium speed setting is where the best balance of noise and performance is found. However it’s the low end where the difference is made clear. The difference in noise levels may only be 1dBA on paper, but that’s enough to our ears to make the GELID near silent while still maintaining excellent cooling performance. The Antec fans on the other hand still had an audible din at their lowest speed. Imagine how much a set of GELID Wing 12 fans would improve a case with really loud or poorly performing 120mm fans.