Which heatsink class is right for me?

To help our customers choose the right cooler for their performance, noise and compatibility requirements, we distinguish between the following heatsink classes: 

• State-of-the-art performance: The best of the best coolers using our latest 140mm fans. Choose this class if you demand ultimate performance-to-noise-efficiency. 
• High-end performance: 140 and 120mm fan coolers with outstanding performance-to-noise-efficiency, just very slightly lower than the top category.  
• Mid-range performance: Classic 120mm fan tower coolers with solid performance-to-noise-efficiency and excellent compatibility. The perfect choice for a wide range of setups and users. 
• Compact tower: These coolers use 9cm fans and are much smaller and slightly lower performing than tower coolers that use 12 or 14cm fans, which makes them ideal for compact builds. Despite their compact size, these heatsinks still provide surprisingly good performance-to-noise efficiency. 
• High performance top flow: These coolers blow air down onto the motherboard. While the CPU cooling performance is not quite as good as with tower-style coolers of the “state-of-the-art” and “high-end-performance” classes, top flow coolers are ideal when additional airflow over nearsocket components is required. 
• Low profile: Ultra-compact heatsinks for Small Form Factor builds. By design, the cooling capacity of these small heatsinks is more limited, so verify CPU compatibility before purchase and only choose this category if you cannot fit bigger coolers.  
• Passive (fanless): Choose these if you require completely silent cooling and can live with the limited cooling performance this approach implies. Carefully verify CPU compatibility and case compatibility. 

Choosing a higher performance heatsink (e.g. “State-of-the-art performance” instead of “Mid-range performance”) will enable you to run the fans at lower RPM speeds and noise levels. Therefore, performance and noise considerations should always go hand in hand.