When it comes to affordable coolers, the market is pretty much saturated as consumers have more options than ever before. Entering into these waters is SilentiumPC with their Grandis 3 EVO ARGB and Grandis 3 coolers. To be fair, performance for the price is actually pretty damn good. However, when looking at performance based on size, the two coolers don't quite hold up to other heavyweight offerings. That brings us back to the price point as both are nearly half the price of a top-tier dual-tower options on the market. So in regards to size in conjunction with performance to value, both are a bit strange, but still a huge improvement over the previous-generation Grandis 2. This is fantastic news since it means SilentiumPC is actively working on and improving their base lineup of coolers, and taking steps in the right direction.

When it comes to noise levels, they were surprisingly good as well because of the extended PWM range on the fans. Since the fans have a range of 250–1400 RPM on the 140 mm and 250–1600 RPM on the 120 mm version, the cooler remains completely silent at low loads. Even with the fans set to run at their maximum RPM, the cooler peaks at just 46 dBA. While not silent, that is still a tolerable noise level as a typical chassis will likely dampen that noise level by 1–2 dBA.

Build quality is also surprisingly good across the board with no issues or problems to report. However, the mounting hardware definitely needs improvement. While simple by design, it's fairly tedious to work with, which can be frustrating if one isn't patient. Now with that having been said, memory and graphics card clearance is far from perfect as well. Yes, the fan can be raised to improve memory clearance, but you are going to be sacrificing performance, or will have a funny looking cooler if you opted for RGB memory. As for the graphics card, on our test bench, everything is fine since the first expansion slot is empty. However, on some Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX motherboards, you may encounter issues with the heatsink and fan clips touching the back of the graphics card, which is something to keep in mind depending on your build.

Overall, the SilentiumPC Grandis 3 EVO ARGB and Grandis 3 are solid coolers that don't quite live up to their size and the clearance issues it tends to bring with it. While they remain a fairly good value, smaller options exist that deliver similar value and are more widely available.