Xilence M906 XC081 Review

Introduction

Xilence has an excellent track record of creating incredibly affordable coolers that perform like the competition's best. Let's see if their newest flagship addition can keep up with that!

What's in the Box?

Xilence's newest M906 Flagship air cooler comes inside the tried and tested Xilence-Styled packaging. Mostly white with a bit of black coloring, some imagery and a short overview of it's specs.

Once everything is unboxed, we will find the following items:

• Xilence M906 Heatsink
• XPF120X.B PWM fan
• 2x Fan clip set
• Mounting hardware Intel
• Mounting hardware AMD
• Thermal Paste
• Screwdriver

Down below you will find a summary of the cooler's specs.

Compatibility

Compatibility-wise, the M906 does not come restricted in any way. Down below you will find the full compatibility list including AMD's and Intel's newest chips:

Individual Components

Fan

The Fan that comes included with the new M906 is Xilence's newest allrounder XPF120X.B.PWM fan.

This all-black PWM-controlled fan is capable of spinning at up to 1500RPM whilst pushing 63.41CFM at 1.58mm/H2O.

Although the static pressure of the fan does not suggest that the fan is the strongest out there, this should not become an issue thanks to the M906's heatsink being slightly spaced out compared to previous models.

In case you would like to run the cooler in dual fan mode, Xilence added an additional Fan clip to the cooler's bag of goodies.

Heatsink

The M906's heatsink is relatively enormous considering what Xilence released until now. Being 129x105x154mm, it is definitely one of the bigger single towers on the market.

Being all black from top to bottom, there are 6 similarly colored heat pipes traveling from the base up the heatsink.

Thanks to the heatsink's slight off-shift relative to the cooler, neither the fan nor the heatsink creates any ram restrictions for the user.

Base

An unanticipated surprise for us was the implementation of the cooler's base. Instead of direct-touch heat pipes, as Xilence usually did until now, the M906 comes with a bigger copper base that seems to be nickel plated.

Appearance

Thanks to the all-black color scheme for both the heatsink and fan, the M906 comes across as incredibly stealthy and clean.

The only accent color found on the cooler would be the silver Xilence logo found in the center of the fan.

Overall, we absolutely love how the M906 looks. Its "cleanness" makes it incredibly easy to integrate into most builds.

Benchmark

We Benchmarked the M906 on top of our usual CPU cooler Benchmark.

Whilst letting the fan spin at its max 1500RPM it managed to keep the CPU at 51.9°C above ambient. This positions it right next to the Arctic Freezer 50.

Slowly reducing the Fan by 10% decrements created an interesting and quite shocking noise-to-performance graph.

Although the M906 is by far Xilence's biggest cooler, it is by far not its most Noise efficient.

From start to finish, the M906 was not capable of keeping up with any of Xilence's previous coolers.

Conclusion

Build quality-wise, design-wise, and overall max performance-wise, we do not see anything wrong with the M906. Quite the opposite actually. Looking at the full Max-Performance benchmark table, it stands relatively strong right next to the even bigger Arctic Freezer 50.

However, not everything is perfect, but this is due to Xilence's own making.

As the Noise-to-Performance graph showed, their previous coolers, especially the M705, are so incredibly efficient that they leave no room to breathe for the newest addition.

Upon further investigation, we believe this is due to Xilence's decision to switch to the block of copper base design. Leaving their previous direct-touch design seems to have brought some serious efficiency issues that show themselves in our noise-to-performance graph.

However, the biggest issue is the price. It is incredibly affordable as of now (+- 45€). But, the M705, which performed better on every metric, is even more affordable. 

This price difference makes it incredibly difficult to recommend the cooler.

Ignoring the M705 for a minute, the M906 stands very strong, and it is definitely comparable to the very best out there. However, once the M705 is back in the picture, it makes a lot more sense to go for the more affordable and better alternative.

All in all, the M906 is a solid cooler, and you will do nothing wrong when going for that one, the M705 is just a lot better.