Fractal Design Kelvin S36 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. The Fractal Design Kelvin S364. Installing the Fractal Design S365. Testing Methodology and Overclocking6. Thermal Performance7. Acoustic Performance8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

To test the performance of the Fractal Design Kelvin S36, we built a powerful X79 based system on an open test bench to push the cooler to the limits.  As we were testing on an open test bench, we directed a Be Quiet! Shadow Wings 120 mm fan at the VRM circuitry to better simulate the airflow generated in a case.

For our extreme tests, we manually overclocked the i7-3930K to 4.7 GHz by increasing the multiplier to 47x, leaving the baseclock set at 100 MHz.

We set Load Line Calibration to ‘High', and increased the CPU Current Capability to 120% with a minor voltage increase.  Speed stepping was disabled for both stock and overclocked tests.

We tested the Kelvin with the fans connected to a 12V header on our motherboard.

Coolers Tested

• Fractal Design Kelvin S36 (fans at 12V)
• Cooler Master Nepton 240M (fans at 12V)
• Corsair H105
• Corsair H110 (fans at 12V)
• Corsair H90 (fan at 12V)
• Phanteks PH-TC14PE (fans at 12V)
• Noctua NH-D14 (fans at 12V)

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