The goal OCZ's technicians had when developing this heatsink and fan combo was to make it silent without sacrificing cooling performance, and they managed to do just that. Regarding noise levels, I would have no problem using the Gladiator Max in a HTPC or a workstation PC - the fan is barely audible from a foot away, and is dead silent from a meter on. Overall, the performance is perfect for lower voltage processors, but I'd have second thoughts before popping this onto a quad-core system unless you really value quiet operation. There you have it, OCZ's "Gladiator Max" CPU heatsink and fan.