Antec Kuhler H20 920 CPU Water Cooler Review

How quiet is Silent, how extreme is Extreme.

The Kuhler H2O 920 took me by surprise when I fired up the “Extreme” setting for the first time. In the “Silent” mode the cooler is very quiet, I couldn’t make out the 920’s fans over my Scythe case fans I use in the test system. When I set it to “Extreme” all I could think was WTF. It is by far the loudest set of fans I have used so far. I could literally hear the system roughly 35 feet from my workbench.

Since I wasn’t entirely sure how loud the system was getting with the “Extreme” setting I borrowed a sound level meter and made a short video. I start out with the system off, boot up into “Silent” mode, sign in, then switch over to the “Extreme” mode.

When I boot up the system the sound level come in at 61-64dB depending on whether or not the hard drive was being accessed.

I then switched over to the “extreme” mode, and the sound level jumped to 72dB. We asked Antec what the dB rating for the fans was and they told us the sound level is 46db max. I don’t doubt that rating one bit.