ID-Cooling SE-214L Snow Edition Air Cooler Review

Performance

Stock

For an entry-level cooler, we were not expecting mind-blowing results and we were not disappointed. The ID-Cooling SE-214L is clearly outclassed by a number of other coolers. That being said though, for stock cooling performance, the figures are not bad. An interesting statistic is just how well this performs under idle or gaming load. It’s only when pushed to the limits when the temperatures get a little high.

Overclocked

This cooler clearly has problems when under maximum CPU load when it comes to overclocking. Performance while gaming though only hits 46c. That being said though, for any Intel processor, 92c is very hot and as such this cooler clearly doesn’t have the capacity to deal with anything special. We would note though that our overclocking method is designed to push products to their limit and even so, despite it being hot, it was, just able to manage a fair performance.

Stock Acoustics

The statistics don’t lie and the ID-Cooling SE-214L is not a quiet runner. With it’s idle noise on par with most other coolers maximum it seems that whatever improvements they did make to the fan, it wasn’t quietness. Despite it clearly not being a quiet runner though, it still wasn’t, despite how it looks, overly intrusive.

Overclocked

While there is a clear gap in noise performance in stock levels. Things return to some level or normality when it comes to overclocking. Admittedly in turn with the notably high top-end temperatures though, this does make some sense. Unfortunately though, again the idle noise levels still surpass nearly everything else we have seen on maximum load.