the nexus 120mm fan is inferior for overclocking purposes, it puts out less pressure than the stock fan that comes with the mugen2, for instance, which you can see if you are patient enough to wade thru the rather controversial spcr cpu review thread on that cooler so yes, it's quieter, because it's doing less cooling at full speed.DAve_M wrote: But being realistic, the nexus 120mm is the SPCR reference fan of choice. Since it is running at at full speed, 12v, 100%, and is also pushing 60°C with a top heatsink like the megahalems, then for sure a more high speed fan would be needed for overclocking. The results already show that at full speed it is at 16dBA which is pretty much at the limit while being 'silent'.
spcr has agreed that most people will not swap out a stock fan for the nexus, especially when the fan is as good as the mugen2 fan, so putting a nexus on every cpu cooler that comes down the pike isn't relevant info for the majority of the spcr readership.
likewise, there are several people in this thread who value performance above power useage.