Performance
The M403 pulls ahead nicely thanks to the extra heat pipes, offering super cooling performance that goes head to head with many great coolers, including a nice mixture of air and water coolers such as the Kraken X41 and the Nepton 280L. The I402 obviously didn’t fare as well, but while this isn’t an amazing cooler, it’s certainly adequate for a non-overclocked CPU.
OK, this is pretty much what we all expected isn’t it? These coolers are not designed for overclocking and they fell flat on their faces here. Of course, they should be fine for those using a boost mode, but hardcore overclocking coolers they are not.
This is really impressive, as despite having small fans, they were barely audible past ambient room noise; if you want a super quiet cooler, either of these will work great!
When overclocked, those tiny fans had to work pretty hard. Sure enough they did the job though and our systems didn’t hit their shutdown temperatures, but you’ll notice a bit of fan noise overall. Admittedly they’re not exactly loud either, but it’s unlikely you’ll ever put them under this kind of load scenario anyway.
