How noisy is a stock Intel cooler on 35W CPU?

[JustCoz]

Hi all! I have a small home server that currently has an AMD E-350 board in it, but this week will be getting upgraded to an Asus H97I-Plus and i3-4160t. The CPU is used and doesn't come with a cooler, but I have the stock cooler from my i7-4790k, which I'm assuming is either the same as or better than the i3 one. The CPU won't be overclocked, and it's only a 35W CPU, but the system sits in a corner of my living room and the heaviest usage it typically gets is Plex transcoding, so I'm concerned about the fans spinning up just as the movie starts getting good.

So my question boils down to, does anyone have a 35W i3/i5 with the stock cooler on it, and if so, how well does it cool and how noisy is it?

I'm also open to cooler suggestions, my case is a Cooler Master Elite 120 which has a specified max height of 65mm, and I'd prefer to keep it under $50. I've considered a cheap water cooler as well, but I'm nervous about noise, leaks, and pump reliability, not to mention that this case doesn't leave much space to mount even an 80mm radiator.

 

[lehtv]

Practically silent. I've got a 54W TDP Pentium G4400 next to me inside a HTPC case (Node 605), the case fans set to 5V make more noise than the CPU fan.

You should be able to lock the CPU fan to the minimum 1000 RPM without having to worry about temperature problems while transcoding. I've run some x264 encoding tests in linux, CPU temperature was about 40 and I couldn't hear any spinning up. Though if anyone knows a more brutal stress test for Linux (Ubuntu 16.04) - similar to Prime95 28.7 or IBT v2 - I'd be happy to do a few more tests.

 

[Charlie98]

I've got one on my i3 Sandy (65W TDP) in my HTPC... never hear the thing. I run a few loops of LinX every so often... and I still can't hear it.

 

[Auric]

If the fan is allowed to vary, then the Intel copper core heatsink will result in fewer speed increases with sporadic load since it more readily absorbs heat than the aluminum core. As said, at least limit the max speed since the mainboard default won't and so could result in up to 3000 RPM depending upon supplier -which is overkill even for the 95W spec.