Heat was kept under control in all tests, with the Corsair A115 preventing the Core i9-14900K from throttling all the way up to its official maximum turbo spec of 253 watts. In the Cinebench 2024 10-minute stress test, the hottest package temperature was 93°C, excluding the 21.4°C ambient temperature.
How about running without limits? Like the default state for all motherboards like our ROG Strix Z690 GAMING-E WiFi? Well, while the A115 is very efficient at Intel’s spec wattage, the insane “limitation” of 4095W results in instant throttling, even with the fans turned up to 100%. At this speed, the fans are not quiet.
When testing noise levels, I used my trusty Nady DSM-1X sound pressure meter, rated for +/- 1.4 dBA accuracy, located exactly 18 inches from the cooler on an open test bench. Of course, this isn’t a realistic scenario unless you’re like me and run an open system on a desk next to a monitor.
When idle, the meter cannot detect noise levels and can only measure as low as 30 dBA. When the fan speed is low, I see a “Below 30dB” warning on the screen. With thermal loads in the 125W – 170W range, the fan speed was controlled and the SPL meter recorded only 32.8 dBA in the Cinebench stress test. Pushing the power into the 230W – 253W range finally forced the fan speed to 100%, with the meter peaking at 41.8 dBA.
Ideally, other large air coolers would have been included in our testing, but since I’ve actually just been spinning (pun intended) a cooler test bench after being away from thermal testing for a long time, that doesn’t belong in this particular evaluation .