The SilentiumPC Fera 5 CPU Cooler Review: Quiet Cooling on a Budget
by E. Fylladitakis on May 17, 2022 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Cooler
- SilentiumPC
- CPU cooler
Conclusion
SilentiumPC is a company whose designs are driven by just two decisive factors – cost-effectiveness and low noise. The company’s ideology is to satisfy the majority of mainstream PC builders who are content with a budget-priced product that is good enough for the task. Air coolers are a difficult product to hit the sweet spot in that market, mostly because the price differences often are negligible in comparison to the value of the whole system. However, if a company manages to hit that sweet spot, their product can sell in high volumes for many years to come.
At first sight, the performance of the SilentiumPC Fera 5 seems unimpressive. While it does perform better than a stock air cooler, the Fera 5 seems barely able to compete with tried and true designs that are now a decade old. The average thermal resistance of 0.1640 °C/W is right on par with the venerable Hyper 212, a cooler that was released in 2012, and is worse than what many top-tier coolers can do with their fans dialed down.
However, when we take into account the acoustic performance, the performance boards shift dramatically. The noise output of the SilentiumPC Fera 5 cooler is very low, even with its fan running at maximum speed, allowing the cooler to deliver good thermal performance with minimal noise. This was made obvious via our Thermal Resistance VS Sound Pressure Level test, which revealed at the Fera 5 delivered very good thermal performance per acoustic dB(A).
The high inclination of the curve suggests that adding more airflow would help the Fera 5 to eventually reach the performance of much more expensive coolers, such as the Noctua NH-U12A. With SilentiumPC marketing a dual-fan version of the Fera 5 for just $8 more, choosing the dual-fan version probably seems alluring.
Looking to satisfy our curiosity, we went ahead and tested a dual-fan configuration– and to our surprise we found is that adding a second fan to the Fera 5 actually worsens the overall performance of the cooler, shifting the curve to the right significantly. A substantial amount of noise is added by the second fan, but the thermal performance gain is negligible. The Fera 5 simply does not have the mass and/or the surface area to significantly benefit from very high airflow. In that respect the sole fan that ships with it is a good counterpart for what the heatsink itself is capable of.
SilentiumPC designed the Fera 5 to entice advanced users who want a good tower cooler for their new gaming system and/or workstation but, at the same time, are on a limited budget. With street pricing running at around €30, it's a very tempting price for those in the market for a silent CPU cooler that will do more than just get the job done. Alas, the global instability during the past couple of years significantly limited the availability of many products, with the smaller companies facing the brunt of the crisis. As a result, the Fera 5 is virtually limited to Europe – and even then it's not exactly an equal distribution. Still, for those markets that have access to it, the SilentiumPC Fera 5 is a very sensible choice for users that want a budget cooler that offers a lot of bang for the buck and do not expect to be upgrading their CPU/motherboard combo anytime soon.
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Wereweeb - Tuesday, May 17, 2022 - link
Why bother? Provided it's good enough, why pay more than necessary?A lot of people can barely afford to buy non-superfluous components such as a non-stock CPU cooler. And while I'd also rather go for the best if I'm already going out of my way to buy a new cooler, I can see why a lot of people just want a quieter or cooler system and won't gain much from going for *the best*.
aaniyog - Thursday, June 2, 2022 - link
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Meta22 - Tuesday, May 17, 2022 - link
But is it really $20? Here in my country (a south american one) I can get a ID-COOLING SE-224-XT Basic for the equivalent of US$ 28 while a Noctua U12S Redux (no, not the "full-fat" version) goes for $100. So: 98-99% of the Noctua's cooling performance for 28% of the price. And the noise is actually reasonable considering the only part of my PC noisy enough to bother me is my GPU (should've known better than to buy a card from the line named WINDFORCE, heh). Heck, I could replace the Basic's fan with a Noctua NF-P12 Redux ($26 here) and get higher performance at the same noise level compared to the U12SMeta22 - Tuesday, May 17, 2022 - link
Whoops, I accidentally posted before I finished typing. Anyways, what I meant was that even in places where you can get all brands at MSRP the options for budget buyers are often very good and worth buying. I imagine there's more countries like mine where Noctua prices are horribly inflated for whatever reason, too.Mgz - Wednesday, May 18, 2022 - link
I would second the ID-COOLING SE-224-XT option, in my case a South East Asia country so price is even cheaper, around 20$.Also my case is NR200 which the SE-224 fits well.
necroperversor - Thursday, May 19, 2022 - link
Hey, I'm from Poland, so do a company and I want to clarify a few things. Firstly, yes it is really 20$, to be precise Fera 5 Dual Fan cost in poland 150zł = 34$ (VAT included, shipping in country free), and for a single fan version you have to pay 105zł = 24$. For example, I bought dual fan version on not so black friday (polish shops with electronics tends to rise prices in october to lower them in november), but I did manage to buy it for lowest ever price I belive of 80zł = 18.5$. I think it's awesome cooler. with Ryzen 5 1600 on 3.8 Ghz and 1.237V temps in idle 31 C and on 100% load after 3h it's 55 C. Additional I have 3 Fluctus fans (that wierd one, cutted in the fan) in my Phanteks case and it's so quiet. I'm just sad that in the test there is no Spartan 5 or Fortis 5. Spartan low tier, Fera low-medium, Fortis medium, and I bet they will present Grandis 5 (high-tier) to the end of year. On fall I'm putting new pc with ryzen 5 7th and there will be Grandis 5 dual on top of him What is the best deal out of that, is that they all coolers and fans have 6 years warranty. For the intrested I'm posting video (sorry but only in polsih) with graph for Fera 5 and Fortis 5 from series 5. https://youtu.be/f7IBV8LEeOc?t=200Meta22 - Friday, May 20, 2022 - link
Oh, I was not questioning the pricing on the SilentiumPC coolers, just pointing out to that user that the price difference with Noctuas might not necessarily be $20 everywhere. I think Silentium coolers are very good and fairly priced considering all reviews I've seen, though unfortunately they are not sold over here in my country. And that was a good deal you got, my country is very much like yours with regards to not-so-black-friday (oh, you unscrupulous merchants).Review - Sunday, May 22, 2022 - link
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