Look at enermax 120mm fans on newegg. Plenty of batwing fans and some pwm options. I'd look too at the non-batwing TB fans. Their noise-performance ratio seems even better. I replaced my gentle typhoons with them because I've decided I can't take the ball bearing noise.
Speaking of still no GTs? Surprised you don't have them laying around. Seems like everybody has one by now.
I second this, where is the REAL King of the hill at on the charts? At least let us make a comparison to these other fans... Everyone knows Gentle Typhoons are benchmark!
You two are kidding, right? That wouldn't be fair at all. This article is intended for tourists, not enthusiasts. Including an enthusiast fan like the GTs in this.. test.. would be plain silly. If you want real testing, this isn't the place for it. Hell, this test doesn't even mention bearing types.
I must third this. From my research the Gentle Typhoons are basically the best 120 mm fans on the market. They are the ones I bought for my personal build.
Amateurs, the Gentle Typhoon is child's play. If you want to see a real enthusiast fan go look up Delta or Panaflo. 100-250CFM+ with pressures ranging from 10-30mm+. I use a set of 3 Delta AFB 1212VHE fans for my watercooling loop (which readily double the specs of the "best" gentle typhoon). At 5 volts they are livable and have no trouble forcing the air through the entirety of my case, heatercore and all! Ahh, makes me miss the old days of overclocking my opty 165....
Anyways, I enjoyed the review. It is nice to see what the rest of the market is doing.
When I think of the "best balance between thermal performance and acoustics", neither Panasonic nor Delta come to mind. Those are fans with an exclusive focus on performance, and a blatant disregard for acoustics.
This test may lack a lot of relevant data, but at least the GTs are in proper context here.
Absolutely wrong, all the community tests say otherwise, all the major cooling enthusiast forums can't be wrong, whilst you're right. Noise to perf ratio GT is better than the Panaflow or Pabst, I cant recall even one of their models being near the top in fact.
The only amateur here is you, nidec-servo (the OEM of the gentle typhoons, not Scythe) is most certainly not an OEM for children... If you'd spent any time doing some "real" research, you'd see that the GT's have been without Qn the dominant rad fan for at least 3yr now, that's only started to wane in recent mths, & even that's still up for debate. Read all the major threads, in all the major cooling enthusiast communities, where very detailed comparos have occurred, & you'll quickly find that it's constantly at the top, alongside a small handful of others.
Correction, it's Nidec & Nidec-Servo, I can't recall the difference between the two groups OTTOMH, I've done business with them in the past for industrial applications.
You should test some Noiseblockers sometime, not the flashiest (pretty plain fin design) but they've consistently been some of the best performers on Xbit's fan roundups.
Though I was very pleased with my magma's for a time, four of the five I bought within the past year has had to be replaced.
Recently picked up some cougars. I had my eye on them for quite some time. When yet another of my magma's started to make a disturbing noise, I bought some of these. So far, they are fantastic in at least two ways: noise, air movement. So far i like them better than the noctua's I recently purchased.
Though this is a reply to an absolutely ancient (in tech forum terms) post, I just wanted to share my experience with my 3 Magmas. I've had 3 running nearly 24/7 at full speed for almost 2 years with zero issues. The fans are very quiet too, nearly inaudible inside my Corsair 750D. The only noise that bothers me is some rattling that I haven't yet found the cause for, that goes away when I tap the case hard enough.
No it's not. I was crazy about gelid fans for a brief time but I was just being an idiot. Don't let the price fool you, they under perform and make too much noise. Look at any fan roundup with them in it and you'll see how mediocre they are. Move along and your wallet will thank you.
Let me start off by saying that I'm a long-time reader of Anandtech and that I absolutely love the site (even when some of Anand's articles go over my head =P). This will be my first comment ever.
I have to say that this is a really disappointing review for at least two reasons: 1) Why test with a Corsair H80? It's a horrid little all-in-one solution whose radiator -- regardless of the fan used -- can't even match the top-ten air coolers. 2) How do you take the time to test a bunch of fans in order to determine which is the best for use with a radiator and *not* test at least one or two Gentle Typhoon variants? Or even some of the GELID offerings? If the article was done in a week and based upon the stock at a local Fry's or Microcenter, then fine. But when the article was written in two parts and across several months? No.
In general I have noticed that this is where Anandtech tends to let me down with the quality of its articles. I can only assume that Anandtech lacks contributors who have a serious interest in specific enthusiast genres like water-cooling. I would love to see the level of expertise and attention to detail that I have come to take for granted with SSD/CPU/Mobo articles applied to water-cooling, overclocking, and case reviews. Especially now that things like water-cooling and overclocking are easier and more mainstream than ever. But hey, maybe I'm crazy and I'm the only one that feels this way. It wouldn't be the first time... =D
To put this in perspective, this is the caliber of review I would expect from 3dgameman.com. And he's one of the least informed owners of a hardware review website that I can think of. Second only to motherboards.org, which makes me wonder why anyone would take computer component advice from someone that looks and sounds like an ex-wrestler.
You're missing the point of the review by complaining about the performance of the H80; it's not the performance of the cooler that is being reviewed, it's how fans used on a radiator perform that is of the matter here.
That certain air coolers perform better than the H80 really doesn't factor into it, as these air coolers aren't radiators.
CPU temperatures, while (maybe) higher than other cooling solutions, are merely supplied as an indicator of fan performance.
Also, in defense of the Corsair H80, it's probably one of the more common all-in-one radiator coolers out there, so people owning one can use this review as an easy indicator of what fan will work well with it. By the way, I am not one of them. I have a Noctua aircooler in my rig.
Really? You people want him to test every single fan on Newegg or something? Are you going to buy all those fans for him? If vendors don't give some to him to test or he doesn't have them on hand he's not testing them. Are you paying him to sit there for 2 months taking 100s of fans off and on the cooler just so you're happy that your brand of fan was in the article?
No, but not including the most commonly praised radiator fans (the Gently Typhoons) doesn't seem reasonable at all. Either the writer doesn't know about them (which would be bad) or the review is biased for some obscure reason (which would be worse).
(To the one complaining about the chosen radiator: the H80 fares typically in the range of the top air coolers and it offers a much more safe mounting than those. If you ever want to ship a computer, don't even think of those top air coolers, unless you want to risk breaking your motherboard. And never forget to ship the fans separately or face finding them bouncing around your case throughout the trip... Ever wondered why factory overclocked systems use Asetek all-in-one watercoolers? Now you know.)
That's all right - I'm a little disappointed in you, too.
1. Fans are being tested, here, not CPU coolers. In this context, the radiator of the CPU cooler is merely acting as a heat source. In order to properly test the fan, it needs to get hot, and quickly. Testing a fan with an overperforming cooler would be like testing an HSF at idle temps - you're not going to see much difference between them.
2. "Yes, undoubtedly I have omitted someone's favorite fan."
3. Aside from point 2, the work is very high quality, and it was free for you to read. How about a little sugar?
So yeah, there are a lot of fans you guys will obviously miss out on, but if given the opportunity, I wouldn't mind burning $10 or $15 to send a fan for you all to test straight from a distributor.
That's the easy part. Whether you have enough time to put dozens more fans through their proper paces is another issue entirely.
I would like to point out that you at least have an understanding of what specs are important for fan performance and that you spent quite a bit of time doing the review. The fans in the test, don't really have a problem with the results, although the review is not perfect. Hopefully, you're going with more of a database approach and just haven't gotten to the most highly regarded fans for radiators. Also, you should consider going with the higher speed fans since higher speed fans have more versatility when combined with fan controller. There are a couple models out there that make weird or annoying noises when combined with a fan controller, although sometimes the same model at a lower speed doesn't have the noise.
Some of the highly regarded fans (most are based on Sony's fluid bearing):
I have Yate-Loon. Bought on clearance from Microcenter three years ago for $2 each. That thing is amazing. Absolutely inaudible and OK airflow. In comparison to the 120 mm Yate-Loon, the Antec fans in this review at lowest speed are noisy. All the Cooler Masters I owned sound like jet - absolutely intolerable and tossed immediately.
I agree, for low noise, people should just buy the SONY fluid bearings based solutions.
Radiator fans don't need to just move air, they need a high air pressure. The Yate-Loons are great case fans, but not that great radiator fans. (Including them would prove that, but the point of a review like this is comparing radiator-friendly fans. Not discard those which aren't.)
Poor Dustin, prodding the bees' nest again :D I think you can produce another 20 roundups like this and still not leave everyone happy. I'm saying this because I know a German reviewer who's so far looked at 130 different fans, only 120mm models, and he still doesn't have nearly all often-requested models either!
Just shows what a big deal noise and thermals are to enthusiasts, who sadly often forget that the specific ranking among fans is influenced more than anything else by the specific testing method, and that different fans are designed for different jobs (for example, your beQuiet rep was right - the Silentwings series was never really meant to sit on a radiator).
That said, I still thank you for the review and hope you'll do a few more despite the crazy comments they tend to induce. Like, have you seen Noiseblocker's new bionic loop fan? That might be worth testing just for the sheer "what the heck is this even" factor :D
As an aside, some of the European brand fans seem to cost more than two times as much in the US, even after adjusting for currency conversion, if they can be found at all. I can only assume it's the same the other way around (for example, we don't get Rosewill fans at all over here). It's really a bit of a shame.
I found the cooling performance to be irrelevant. As long as you have 3 fans in your case (1 for the CPU, 1 at the front and 1 in the back), temperatures tend to stay in the green all the time.
Sure, I could crank them all up to max RPM, but the few extra degrees I would gain are not worth the increase in noise...
The main reason for water cooling instead of using an air cooler is to push your CPU to near the redline. In that area a few degrees of additional cooling do matter.
<quote>some of the European brand fans seem to cost more than two times as much in the US</quote>Those Noctua fans are expensive everywhere. Of course, add the VAT to the prices in Europe. Noctua promises really high MTBF numbers and long waranties compared to most other manufacturers. I personally have been using those lower end Papst fans for some time already. A fan with 80000 hour MTBF is apparently more durable than a hard drive with 800000 hour MTBF. ;)
The prices in Europe usually include taxes, the Noctua is ~18EUR online (in Germany), which is about 24USD, which already includes 20% sales tax. So the price in the US should be more like 20USD, while is seems to be 30USD, which is a rather large price difference.
That...is a really good idea...and I'm ashamed of myself for not having thought of it. Not for this review (I'm seriously backlogged and we have a boatload of stuff coming in), but that's exactly what I've been looking for for my case reviews.
Are the numbers available in textual form anywhere? I'd like to throw them into a spreadsheet to get the plot myself; but would prefer not to have to type them in manually.
Ok, I typed everything into Excel; and after the usual inordinate amount of fighting (to include a detour fighting with Google's spreadsheet too) managed to get a temperature vs noise plot. I'm not really happy about its legability, but with most of the points packed into a fairly narrow area of the graph it's really not practical to try and put labels next to each point.
We all realize that it is impossible to review all rad fans. I would like to add a vote for the 109R1212H1011 120mm X 38mm from Sans Ace. They have worked great in my setups.
Dustin, you'll never make everyone happy, but I'm glad Anandtech is making the effort. Props to Dustin for listening to the comment-ers and revisiting this fan round up! Bravo
Four years ago I bought 12 Enermax Magma UC-MA12's.
Within a year of 24/7 use all but four were broken.
My #1 cautionary recommendation for Magma fans is DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, try to pop the blades off for cleaning. Of the 8 broken fans, half of them broke because when attempting to remove the blades, the entire motor assembly separated from the PCB, or the PCB came up with the fan blades.
They do provide good performance at good noise levels...
I'm wondering why the all-star radiator fan is being omitted. It's a really huge failure to not include the Gentle Typhoon AP-15 so that we can get an apples to apples performance comparison against your data.
You talk about finding the 'outlier' but the one fan that's actually KNOWN to be *THE* outlier isn't present in your testing...
Especially since I switched to GT's and know from experience that the difference between them and the magma is NIGHT AND DAY. Top that off with the fact that you can get them for ~15 a pop... That's only 2 bucks more for the *BEST* performing fan out there.
Add me to the list of users baffled by the omission of GentleTyphoon fans from the testing. This is like excluding a Jeep Wrangler from an off roader comparison.
When I switched to water cooling, like any other good geek, I did an obsessive amount of research and reading online to find the best solution. Time and time again, I ended up with the same recommendation - the Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850 rpm (AP-15) model. I have about 10 of these in my house now and use them on everything (HTPC, server, desktop, laptop cooler). They are expensive fans but they will also last a LONG time while performing very well.
You may not need to do a 3rd roundup, just a 1 page one-off for this fan to satisfy the masses :D
I can't be bothered to chek all the fans but, at least in the case of the Scyte Slipstream and Nexus RealSilent, those are case fans, not CPU fans. It's pointless to include them in this test.
And I second others in stating that if you're interested in sufficently powerful yet almost silent CPU fans, you may want to check the Gentle Typhoon and Noiseblocker.
I can't be bothered to chek all the fans but, at least in the case of the Scyte Slipstream and Nexus RealSilent, those are case fans, not CPU fans. It's pointless to include them in this test.
And I second others in stating that if you're interested in sufficently powerful yet almost silent CPU fans, you may want to check the Gentle Typhoon and Noiseblocker.
This exactly. After doing much research earlier this year I bought 2x gentle typhoon's and 2x Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe M12-P fans to add to my collection of Noctua's and other fans such as the excellent TR-TY140's.
After testing all of them the M12-P's stayed on my overclocked i7-3820 doing push/pull on a TRUE 120 heatsink. They are the business, quiet and powerful. Gentle typhoon's ran a close 2nd and are great fans also.
The fact that you don't include two of the best fans around for heatsink use seems odd to me. Looking forward to part 3 =)
Really? It's a fan. Reconsider your use of the word "solution" as a replacement for everything. Sometimes it makes sense, but often it's just a silly fad word that has gotten out of control.
hen you are writing a longer text, it is considered good form to occasionally replace often-repeating words with substitutions to improve the reading flow. If every sentence had the word "fan" in it, you'd eventually get dizzy. It's like starting every sentence in a story with "Then", that's just a no-go.
I think it would be helpful to isolate fan performance.
When reviewing cooling fans how about connecting each fan to be tested to a variable speed controller and set the speed of the fan to a predetermined cfm so that the fans can be evaluated on a level playing field. This way noise can be evaluated in an even playing field.
In the same manner speed can be increased/decreased to a predefined level and cfm and be measured.
Because in the end what we're really trying to determine is which fan moves the most air while being the most quiet while doing it.
Or, if you won't want to deal with cfm measurements, just load the test bed and increase/decrease the fan speed until the temperature is at a predetermined level. Then measure the noise.
You're testing the cooling capacity of fans for a radiator, in an environment this type of solution WILL NEVER BE USED IN. Broken right from the start. If someone's investing 60-120$ in a water cooler, the chances they're building an HTPC without a graphics card in the system are slim to none.
This should have at least a 650 or 660 in the box to get a more real-world result. It's not often you let us down Anandtech, but this one is a pretty obvious failing on your part.
I would quite like to know how many amps each of the fans actually draw, as it has been my experience that the spec sheets frequently list a value that is not accurate. In future reviews/round ups, would it be possible to measure and list the actual amps drawn please?
Fans are entirely subjective outside of these thorough AT tests. Obviously most fans won't be reviewed here (every fan in every single one of my workstations is NOT reviewed but I am happy with all of them)
But one thing is for certain. Using a non-PWM fan is nonsense these days. Constant RPM fans spend most of their life needlessly consuming power, producing noise, and increasing dust.
Plenty of mobo's allow adjusting the voltage for non-PWM fans in order to adjust their speed... I think most boards only have one or two PWM headers and 2-4 voltage adjusted headers no? Not nearly as many people with fan controllers and rheobus as people with mobos equipped to do the fame thing already... It's more of a personal choice/individual setup kinda thing.
No GTs, no Panaflos, no Deltas. You're not really testing any of the fans that I would feel confident in buying as radiator fans, and because you haven't, I STILL don't feel comfortable buying any of the fans in this review.
The Sickle Flow fan is not advertised primarily for radiator cooling. This is an excerpt from the official CM website about the features of that fan, verbatim:
"Silent operation as an excellent choice for case cooling"
It says "..excellent choice for case cooling", not for radiator cooling. Even the sample photos published over there show it is paired with an air cooler, which doesn't have the exact design as a typical liquid radiator.
Well, to be fair, maybe some sellers are 'raving how fantastic' its performance is when paired up with a radiator just to sell it, or maybe on the packaging it is written otherwise??
Anyhow, what i don't understand is, why all the negative/abrasive remarks were made about the sickle flow fan, and also cooler master for that matter, since the previous review and in this updated one. I believe a good technical review like this roundup should always remain free from unnecessary personal preferences with accompanying harsh words against certain brand/product which serves no purpose but just to stir up some needless dust. A good technical review should generally encourage positive reaction from the readers which will lead to a healthy further discussion on the subject.
Nevertheless, tq for technical analysis, data and effort...sure it did bring light to certain areas of my knowledge on pc cooling.
The bearing is just genius. I have been running 4 of them for 4 years at least 16/7 now and they are still completely free of mechanical noise as on the first day. Additionally I have bought over 25 of them for other computers and they all still run perfectly. Dozens of others have broke in that time frame, even the very expensive Noiseblockers. When I get a fan with conventional bearing that cant be changed to an Enermax fan, I always have a bad feeling. Like in January this year I bought a new CPU cooler with integrated fan. It made a slight bearing noise from the start, nothing unusual for conventional fans, but I still felt bad about it. And guess what, after 3 months it started getting louder and louder and now its unbearable. I guess I will now buy an 80mm Enermax and just glue it in instead. It really sucks that they dont make smaller ones than 80mm or thin versions. :( For some reason I dont think Enermax even realizes what awesome fans they build, since the variety isnt that huge.
The bearing is just genius. I have been running 4 of them for 4 years at least 16/7 now and they are still completely free of mechanical noise as on the first day. Additionally I have bought over 25 of them for other computers and they all still run perfectly. Dozens of others have broke in that time frame, even the very expensive Noiseblockers. When I get a fan with conventional bearing that cant be changed to an Enermax fan, I always have a bad feeling. Like in January this year I bought a new CPU cooler with integrated fan. It made a slight bearing noise from the start, nothing unusual for conventional fans, but I still felt bad about it. And guess what, after 3 months it started getting louder and louder and now its unbearable. I guess I will now buy an 80mm Enermax and just glue it in instead. It really sucks that they dont make smaller ones than 80mm or thin versions. :( For some reason I dont think Enermax even realizes what awesome fans they build, since the variety isnt that huge.
While I am not going to straight out request that you test anything, I just wanted to point out two (well, three, errr... 2 and a half?) fans that I have found to be absolutely unbeatable for price:performance on radiators, or even as powerful case fans. Granted, they are "performance enthusiast" fans, not "quiet PC enthusiast" fans, but I have yet to find anything that even comes close...
First, for 120mm Radiators: the Koolance 120x25mm 2600rpm Fan. Rated for a, quite honestly conservative, 107.4cfm and 5.4mmH2O, this fan uses double-ball bearings for its motor and costs just $7 a piece. If you have the room and would prefer even more static pressure/airflow, the exact same fan is available in the thicker 120x38mm form factor, with steeper blades as one would expect, producing 118.3cfm and 6.5mmH2O static pressure at the same 2600rpm (same motor, dual ball bearings). Also, same price! Both of these fans have outperformed everything outside of the high-speed Delta/San-Ace fans that I've tried, using an Alphacool NeXXos UT60 240 with push-pull, and produced a 2.1C lower Delta-T than four equally-priced Scythe Ultra Kaze 3000rpm fans that use junky sleeve bearings and are not only significantly louder, they don't undervolt anywhere close to as well as the Koolance fans do. Running them at 50% via BitFenix Hydra Pro fan controller, with all four fans on one channel, they are inaudible and still outperform most fans cranked to full. Even when at their full 2600rpm they are NOT "loud", there is simply a "whoosh" of air that is noticeable but far from irritating.
For 140mm Radiators: the Bgears B-Blasters 140mm 1800rpm Fan. Rated at 103cfm and 3.5mmH2O, it is the single highest static pressure fan south of $60, well south in fact as it costs just $9-12 depending on the retailer. Like the Koolance twins, Bgears employed dual ball bearings: a smart move knowing that most radiators are mounted horizontally, and how big a role static pressure plays in liquid cooling fans. I have 6 of these in push-pull on an EX420 and I have yet to find anything that can come close to their performance, with the 2nd place fan not only being quite a bit louder, much worse at undervolting (well, the Bgears is in fact EXCELLENT anywhere from 50-100%, although it is almost completely silent at 80% and below!), and resulted in a Delta-T of a full 2C higher. Compared to 6 Gentle Typhoons, specifically the 1850rpm models (AP-15's), which were setup identically except for the use of the (ironically?) Bgears 120mm-to-140mm fan adapters. This is important to note because these are not exactly shallow adapters, and I have seen a significant "shroud effect" from many fans, either using 120's on a 140 rad or vice-versa. Still, even at full speed, and with the benefits of their shrouds, the AP-15's were at a disadvantage to the Bgears by a consistent 2.2C.
A few runners-up for "best fans for the money for radiators", in my opinion: - XSPC 120mm 2000rpm "Xinrullian" Fans $6-8/ea - Akasa Viper 120/140 PWM Fans $11-16/ea - Rosewill Hyperborea 120/140 Fans $7-9/ea *Note: These are in fact re-branded Akasa fans* - Yate Loon D12SM/D12SH/D14SM 120/140 Fans $5-8/ea - Scythe Ultra Kaze 120x38 2Krpm/3Krpm $9-13/ea *LOUD*
I tested using the following: 3930K @ 4.4Ghz with Swiftech Apogee HD White CPU Block Rampage 4 Extreme with Active VRM Cooling 16GB G.Skill DDR3-2133cl9 @ 2400 9-11-10-30 with 2x RAM Coolers ("RAM fans") EVGA GTX670FTW 2GB @ 1380core/7920mem w HeatKiller GTX680 "Hole Edition" Block+Backplate Samsung 830 256GB SSD XSPC EX420 Radiator Alphacool NeXXos UT60 240 Radiator 2x Swiftech MCP35X PWM Pumps at 20%, 35%, 50%, and 100% (above 50% the speed doesn't change, but for completeness) BitFenix Hydra Pro Fan Controller 3x Laboratory-Grade Thermometers calibrated to within 0.001C (1 for ambient, other two for air in/water out) 1/2"x3/4" Tubing with Bitspower Compression Fittings
My testing was performed with an Ambient of 18.2-18.9C, and the processor was run at 4.4Ghz with HT enabled, all C-states disabled, minimum state set to 100%, and the GPU overclocked to a healthy 1380core/7920mem (it does not throttle at those clocks, ever). I ran Intel Burn-In Test for 60min and looped 3dMark11 at the same time on a second display, both are 1920x1080 (2560x1600/1440 seemed to represent far too few people to be proper for testing, and the higher resolution certainly can affect things). The Delta-T's are an average of minutes 10-50 over 10 runs (5 per fan set) with 2 hours between tests to regain it's normal idle d-T of 1.658C for the loop (normal full-load with my ten fans plus 5x122cfm case fans feeding them is a d-T of 4.925-5.1975C).
i would like to see the Akasa fans put to the test, they claim some pretty nice numbers, and they aren't too expensive. The two that I'm looking at are the AK-FN073 and the AK-FN072.
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81 Comments
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landerf - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Look at enermax 120mm fans on newegg. Plenty of batwing fans and some pwm options. I'd look too at the non-batwing TB fans. Their noise-performance ratio seems even better. I replaced my gentle typhoons with them because I've decided I can't take the ball bearing noise.Speaking of still no GTs? Surprised you don't have them laying around. Seems like everybody has one by now.
Udit - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Could you add the Gentle Typhoon 1850rpm to the test please?Naviblue - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I second this, where is the REAL King of the hill at on the charts? At least let us make a comparison to these other fans... Everyone knows Gentle Typhoons are benchmark!Earthmonger - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
You two are kidding, right? That wouldn't be fair at all. This article is intended for tourists, not enthusiasts. Including an enthusiast fan like the GTs in this.. test.. would be plain silly. If you want real testing, this isn't the place for it. Hell, this test doesn't even mention bearing types.DarkStryke - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Yeah, don't include one of the best performers when you can hawk a load of mediocre overpriced junk instead!Good reasoning there bud.
lbeyak - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I must third this. From my research the Gentle Typhoons are basically the best 120 mm fans on the market. They are the ones I bought for my personal build.Sea Shadow - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Amateurs, the Gentle Typhoon is child's play. If you want to see a real enthusiast fan go look up Delta or Panaflo. 100-250CFM+ with pressures ranging from 10-30mm+. I use a set of 3 Delta AFB 1212VHE fans for my watercooling loop (which readily double the specs of the "best" gentle typhoon). At 5 volts they are livable and have no trouble forcing the air through the entirety of my case, heatercore and all! Ahh, makes me miss the old days of overclocking my opty 165....Anyways, I enjoyed the review. It is nice to see what the rest of the market is doing.
iamkyle - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
This man speaks the truth.Panasonic and Delta Electronics have been putting fans in computers since all before most of you were born.
If they're good enough for IBM XT's, YOU CAN BET they are good enough for a modern rig.
Earthmonger - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
When I think of the "best balance between thermal performance and acoustics", neither Panasonic nor Delta come to mind. Those are fans with an exclusive focus on performance, and a blatant disregard for acoustics.This test may lack a lot of relevant data, but at least the GTs are in proper context here.
lyeoh - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Whaaat? Sorry I can't hear you!Sea Shadow - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
While I concede Delta's are loud (they can scream like a banshee), Panaflow and Papst still beat the GT any day of the week in all regards.sicofante - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
I hope you can back that up with some sources. (And it's Panaflo, without the last 'w').jed22281 - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Absolutely wrong, all the community tests say otherwise, all the major cooling enthusiast forums can't be wrong, whilst you're right.Noise to perf ratio GT is better than the Panaflow or Pabst, I cant recall even one of their models being near the top in fact.
jed22281 - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
The only amateur here is you, nidec-servo (the OEM of the gentle typhoons, not Scythe) is most certainly not an OEM for children...If you'd spent any time doing some "real" research, you'd see that the GT's have been without Qn the dominant rad fan for at least 3yr now, that's only started to wane in recent mths, & even that's still up for debate.
Read all the major threads, in all the major cooling enthusiast communities, where very detailed comparos have occurred, & you'll quickly find that it's constantly at the top, alongside a small handful of others.
jed22281 - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Correction, it's Nidec & Nidec-Servo, I can't recall the difference between the two groups OTTOMH, I've done business with them in the past for industrial applications.Synomenon - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Aside from the color, is the Enermax Magma the same fan as the Enermax Cluster (white with white LEDs)?Impulses - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
The Cluster is a PWM, Magma's fixed 1500.You should test some Noiseblockers sometime, not the flashiest (pretty plain fin design) but they've consistently been some of the best performers on Xbit's fan roundups.
Impulses - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Hmm, the Cluster I saw reviewed elsewhere was a PWM anyway, apparently not the one Newegg carries tho.pdjblum - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Though I was very pleased with my magma's for a time, four of the five I bought within the past year has had to be replaced.Recently picked up some cougars. I had my eye on them for quite some time. When yet another of my magma's started to make a disturbing noise, I bought some of these. So far, they are fantastic in at least two ways: noise, air movement. So far i like them better than the noctua's I recently purchased.
garadante - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link
Though this is a reply to an absolutely ancient (in tech forum terms) post, I just wanted to share my experience with my 3 Magmas. I've had 3 running nearly 24/7 at full speed for almost 2 years with zero issues. The fans are very quiet too, nearly inaudible inside my Corsair 750D. The only noise that bothers me is some rattling that I haven't yet found the cause for, that goes away when I tap the case hard enough.Iketh - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...still didn't include a fan with winglets and nanoflux bearings like the one above... this fan is a real gem...
prophet001 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
"Yes, undoubtedly I have omitted someone's favorite fan."Iketh - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
yea i guess when people say things like this that everyone should shutup and never give recommendations... brainiacwhat are you? a sheep?
landerf - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
No it's not. I was crazy about gelid fans for a brief time but I was just being an idiot. Don't let the price fool you, they under perform and make too much noise. Look at any fan roundup with them in it and you'll see how mediocre they are. Move along and your wallet will thank you.Naoe Shigen - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Let me start off by saying that I'm a long-time reader of Anandtech and that I absolutely love the site (even when some of Anand's articles go over my head =P). This will be my first comment ever.I have to say that this is a really disappointing review for at least two reasons:
1) Why test with a Corsair H80? It's a horrid little all-in-one solution whose radiator -- regardless of the fan used -- can't even match the top-ten air coolers.
2) How do you take the time to test a bunch of fans in order to determine which is the best for use with a radiator and *not* test at least one or two Gentle Typhoon variants? Or even some of the GELID offerings? If the article was done in a week and based upon the stock at a local Fry's or Microcenter, then fine. But when the article was written in two parts and across several months? No.
In general I have noticed that this is where Anandtech tends to let me down with the quality of its articles. I can only assume that Anandtech lacks contributors who have a serious interest in specific enthusiast genres like water-cooling. I would love to see the level of expertise and attention to detail that I have come to take for granted with SSD/CPU/Mobo articles applied to water-cooling, overclocking, and case reviews. Especially now that things like water-cooling and overclocking are easier and more mainstream than ever. But hey, maybe I'm crazy and I'm the only one that feels this way. It wouldn't be the first time... =D
Naoe Shigen - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
To put this in perspective, this is the caliber of review I would expect from 3dgameman.com. And he's one of the least informed owners of a hardware review website that I can think of. Second only to motherboards.org, which makes me wonder why anyone would take computer component advice from someone that looks and sounds like an ex-wrestler.But I digress...
FaaR - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
You're missing the point of the review by complaining about the performance of the H80; it's not the performance of the cooler that is being reviewed, it's how fans used on a radiator perform that is of the matter here.That certain air coolers perform better than the H80 really doesn't factor into it, as these air coolers aren't radiators.
CPU temperatures, while (maybe) higher than other cooling solutions, are merely supplied as an indicator of fan performance.
Also, in defense of the Corsair H80, it's probably one of the more common all-in-one radiator coolers out there, so people owning one can use this review as an easy indicator of what fan will work well with it. By the way, I am not one of them. I have a Noctua aircooler in my rig.
Gasaraki88 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Really? You people want him to test every single fan on Newegg or something? Are you going to buy all those fans for him? If vendors don't give some to him to test or he doesn't have them on hand he's not testing them. Are you paying him to sit there for 2 months taking 100s of fans off and on the cooler just so you're happy that your brand of fan was in the article?sicofante - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
No, but not including the most commonly praised radiator fans (the Gently Typhoons) doesn't seem reasonable at all. Either the writer doesn't know about them (which would be bad) or the review is biased for some obscure reason (which would be worse).(To the one complaining about the chosen radiator: the H80 fares typically in the range of the top air coolers and it offers a much more safe mounting than those. If you ever want to ship a computer, don't even think of those top air coolers, unless you want to risk breaking your motherboard. And never forget to ship the fans separately or face finding them bouncing around your case throughout the trip... Ever wondered why factory overclocked systems use Asetek all-in-one watercoolers? Now you know.)
zalbar - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
That's all right - I'm a little disappointed in you, too.1. Fans are being tested, here, not CPU coolers. In this context, the radiator of the CPU cooler is merely acting as a heat source. In order to properly test the fan, it needs to get hot, and quickly. Testing a fan with an overperforming cooler would be like testing an HSF at idle temps - you're not going to see much difference between them.
2. "Yes, undoubtedly I have omitted someone's favorite fan."
3. Aside from point 2, the work is very high quality, and it was free for you to read. How about a little sugar?
soloburrito - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
So yeah, there are a lot of fans you guys will obviously miss out on, but if given the opportunity, I wouldn't mind burning $10 or $15 to send a fan for you all to test straight from a distributor.That's the easy part. Whether you have enough time to put dozens more fans through their proper paces is another issue entirely.
Just a thought.
Adamantine - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I would like to point out that you at least have an understanding of what specs are important for fan performance and that you spent quite a bit of time doing the review. The fans in the test, don't really have a problem with the results, although the review is not perfect. Hopefully, you're going with more of a database approach and just haven't gotten to the most highly regarded fans for radiators. Also, you should consider going with the higher speed fans since higher speed fans have more versatility when combined with fan controller. There are a couple models out there that make weird or annoying noises when combined with a fan controller, although sometimes the same model at a lower speed doesn't have the noise.Some of the highly regarded fans (most are based on Sony's fluid bearing):
Gentle Typhoon 1850
Scythe S-Flex
Gelid NFB
Cougar PWM 1500
Cougar 1200
DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I'd also like to see at least one Yate-Loon fan. They're a popular budget model and seeing how they stack up with higher end fans would be beneficial.Juddog - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Co-signed for Yate-Loon; all the fans in my quiet case are yate-loons and I love them, especially when tweaked with a fan-bay adapter.One other thing to note for future fan reviews is that some fans seem to perform ok with fan bay adapters whereas others have issues.
Ananke - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I have Yate-Loon. Bought on clearance from Microcenter three years ago for $2 each. That thing is amazing. Absolutely inaudible and OK airflow. In comparison to the 120 mm Yate-Loon, the Antec fans in this review at lowest speed are noisy. All the Cooler Masters I owned sound like jet - absolutely intolerable and tossed immediately.I agree, for low noise, people should just buy the SONY fluid bearings based solutions.
sicofante - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
Radiator fans don't need to just move air, they need a high air pressure. The Yate-Loons are great case fans, but not that great radiator fans. (Including them would prove that, but the point of a review like this is comparing radiator-friendly fans. Not discard those which aren't.)Streetwind - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Poor Dustin, prodding the bees' nest again :D I think you can produce another 20 roundups like this and still not leave everyone happy. I'm saying this because I know a German reviewer who's so far looked at 130 different fans, only 120mm models, and he still doesn't have nearly all often-requested models either!Just shows what a big deal noise and thermals are to enthusiasts, who sadly often forget that the specific ranking among fans is influenced more than anything else by the specific testing method, and that different fans are designed for different jobs (for example, your beQuiet rep was right - the Silentwings series was never really meant to sit on a radiator).
That said, I still thank you for the review and hope you'll do a few more despite the crazy comments they tend to induce. Like, have you seen Noiseblocker's new bionic loop fan? That might be worth testing just for the sheer "what the heck is this even" factor :D
As an aside, some of the European brand fans seem to cost more than two times as much in the US, even after adjusting for currency conversion, if they can be found at all. I can only assume it's the same the other way around (for example, we don't get Rosewill fans at all over here). It's really a bit of a shame.
DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Got a link to his reviews?Finally - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
THIS is the German site you mentioned:http://kdb.orthy.de/index.php?tablename=Luefter&am...
I personally prefer Enermax T.B. Silence.
It's extraordinarily quiet and I can plaster my whole PC with 3 of them for just 18€.
DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Thanks. Am I overlooking it, or this reviewer only looking at noise levels and not cooling performance?Finally - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Here is the latest Fan roundup (number sixteen!) of Summer 2012: http://www.orthy.de/2012/07/354/I found the cooling performance to be irrelevant.
As long as you have 3 fans in your case (1 for the CPU, 1 at the front and 1 in the back), temperatures tend to stay in the green all the time.
Sure, I could crank them all up to max RPM, but the few extra degrees I would gain are not worth the increase in noise...
DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
The main reason for water cooling instead of using an air cooler is to push your CPU to near the redline. In that area a few degrees of additional cooling do matter.Finally - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
You are preaching to the wrong crowd. I like my PC undervolted, cool and QUIET.TeXWiller - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
<quote>some of the European brand fans seem to cost more than two times as much in the US</quote>Those Noctua fans are expensive everywhere. Of course, add the VAT to the prices in Europe. Noctua promises really high MTBF numbers and long waranties compared to most other manufacturers. I personally have been using those lower end Papst fans for some time already. A fan with 80000 hour MTBF is apparently more durable than a hard drive with 800000 hour MTBF. ;)tty4 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
The prices in Europe usually include taxes, the Noctua is ~18EUR online (in Germany), which is about 24USD, which already includes 20% sales tax. So the price in the US should be more like 20USD, while is seems to be 30USD, which is a rather large price difference.DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Instead of trying to match up noise/performance numbers from two bar graphs could you do a noise vs temperature scatterplot?maximumGPU - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I second that, It would be so much more useful!Dustin Sklavos - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
That...is a really good idea...and I'm ashamed of myself for not having thought of it. Not for this review (I'm seriously backlogged and we have a boatload of stuff coming in), but that's exactly what I've been looking for for my case reviews.DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Are the numbers available in textual form anywhere? I'd like to throw them into a spreadsheet to get the plot myself; but would prefer not to have to type them in manually.DanNeely - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Ok, I typed everything into Excel; and after the usual inordinate amount of fighting (to include a detour fighting with Google's spreadsheet too) managed to get a temperature vs noise plot. I'm not really happy about its legability, but with most of the points packed into a fairly narrow area of the graph it's really not practical to try and put labels next to each point.http://orthogonaltonormal.com/midden/fans.png
If anyone wants to try and make a better chart, here's the raw data too:
http://orthogonaltonormal.com/midden/fans.xlsx
Conficio - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
First thanks for the informative review!I second that, Google chart tools - https://developers.google.com/chart/ - offers an easy way to present some good graphs.
7amood - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
finally, a simplified fan roundup review... THANK YOU!Maxal - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
How about putting results in chart, with Temp and Noise on X/Y axis?arthur449 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Thanks for the Die Hard 2: Die Harder reference. It brought a smile to my face.toyotabedzrock - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I have had horrible luck with fans. They all go bad in a year.Even expensive ones.
Finally - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Try Enermax T.B. Silence.Excellent price, very quiet and even IF they should fail after only 1 year, you have just "lost" 6€.
Here a link to put my recommendation in perspective: http://kdb.orthy.de/index.php?tablename=Luefter&am...
Udit - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
It's just a request ... please add scythe gt-1850 & glidestream 120 ... I have 4 gt-1850 on my h100 & really wanna change themscmikes - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
We all realize that it is impossible to review all rad fans. I would like to add a vote for the 109R1212H1011 120mm X 38mm from Sans Ace. They have worked great in my setups.Take care, and keep up the good work
Runamok81 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Dustin, you'll never make everyone happy, but I'm glad Anandtech is making the effort. Props to Dustin for listening to the comment-ers and revisiting this fan round up! BravoPurpose - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Four years ago I bought 12 Enermax Magma UC-MA12's.Within a year of 24/7 use all but four were broken.
My #1 cautionary recommendation for Magma fans is DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, try to pop the blades off for cleaning. Of the 8 broken fans, half of them broke because when attempting to remove the blades, the entire motor assembly separated from the PCB, or the PCB came up with the fan blades.
They do provide good performance at good noise levels...
I'm wondering why the all-star radiator fan is being omitted. It's a really huge failure to not include the Gentle Typhoon AP-15 so that we can get an apples to apples performance comparison against your data.
You talk about finding the 'outlier' but the one fan that's actually KNOWN to be *THE* outlier isn't present in your testing...
Especially since I switched to GT's and know from experience that the difference between them and the magma is NIGHT AND DAY. Top that off with the fact that you can get them for ~15 a pop... That's only 2 bucks more for the *BEST* performing fan out there.
Swing and a miss.
xxtypersxx - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Add me to the list of users baffled by the omission of GentleTyphoon fans from the testing. This is like excluding a Jeep Wrangler from an off roader comparison.scook9 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
When I switched to water cooling, like any other good geek, I did an obsessive amount of research and reading online to find the best solution. Time and time again, I ended up with the same recommendation - the Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850 rpm (AP-15) model. I have about 10 of these in my house now and use them on everything (HTPC, server, desktop, laptop cooler). They are expensive fans but they will also last a LONG time while performing very well.You may not need to do a 3rd roundup, just a 1 page one-off for this fan to satisfy the masses :D
Slyne - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Dustin,I can't be bothered to chek all the fans but, at least in the case of the Scyte Slipstream and Nexus RealSilent, those are case fans, not CPU fans. It's pointless to include them in this test.
And I second others in stating that if you're interested in sufficently powerful yet almost silent CPU fans, you may want to check the Gentle Typhoon and Noiseblocker.
khanov - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
This exactly. After doing much research earlier this year I bought 2x gentle typhoon's and 2x Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe M12-P fans to add to my collection of Noctua's and other fans such as the excellent TR-TY140's.
After testing all of them the M12-P's stayed on my overclocked i7-3820 doing push/pull on a TRUE 120 heatsink. They are the business, quiet and powerful. Gentle typhoon's ran a close 2nd and are great fans also.
The fact that you don't include two of the best fans around for heatsink use seems odd to me. Looking forward to part 3 =)
BlueReason - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
"Corsair's solutions"Really? It's a fan. Reconsider your use of the word "solution" as a replacement for everything. Sometimes it makes sense, but often it's just a silly fad word that has gotten out of control.
Streetwind - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
hen you are writing a longer text, it is considered good form to occasionally replace often-repeating words with substitutions to improve the reading flow. If every sentence had the word "fan" in it, you'd eventually get dizzy. It's like starting every sentence in a story with "Then", that's just a no-go.Hulk - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I think it would be helpful to isolate fan performance.When reviewing cooling fans how about connecting each fan to be tested to a variable speed controller and set the speed of the fan to a predetermined cfm so that the fans can be evaluated on a level playing field. This way noise can be evaluated in an even playing field.
In the same manner speed can be increased/decreased to a predefined level and cfm and be measured.
Because in the end what we're really trying to determine is which fan moves the most air while being the most quiet while doing it.
Or, if you won't want to deal with cfm measurements, just load the test bed and increase/decrease the fan speed until the temperature is at a predetermined level. Then measure the noise.
JonnyDough - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
No mention that CoolerMaster's Turbine is based on the compressor section of a turbofan jet engine? Hmm.nianiania - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
You're testing the cooling capacity of fans for a radiator, in an environment this type of solution WILL NEVER BE USED IN. Broken right from the start. If someone's investing 60-120$ in a water cooler, the chances they're building an HTPC without a graphics card in the system are slim to none.This should have at least a 650 or 660 in the box to get a more real-world result. It's not often you let us down Anandtech, but this one is a pretty obvious failing on your part.
gcor - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I would quite like to know how many amps each of the fans actually draw, as it has been my experience that the spec sheets frequently list a value that is not accurate. In future reviews/round ups, would it be possible to measure and list the actual amps drawn please?Samus - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Fans are entirely subjective outside of these thorough AT tests. Obviously most fans won't be reviewed here (every fan in every single one of my workstations is NOT reviewed but I am happy with all of them)But one thing is for certain. Using a non-PWM fan is nonsense these days. Constant RPM fans spend most of their life needlessly consuming power, producing noise, and increasing dust.
Impulses - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Plenty of mobo's allow adjusting the voltage for non-PWM fans in order to adjust their speed... I think most boards only have one or two PWM headers and 2-4 voltage adjusted headers no? Not nearly as many people with fan controllers and rheobus as people with mobos equipped to do the fame thing already... It's more of a personal choice/individual setup kinda thing.Mr. Pedantic - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
No GTs, no Panaflos, no Deltas. You're not really testing any of the fans that I would feel confident in buying as radiator fans, and because you haven't, I STILL don't feel comfortable buying any of the fans in this review.Strulf - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Could you do a test with 120mm slim fans (12mm height instead of 25mm)? That'd be cool since I will need slim fans for my new ultra compact enclosure.Occasional Visitor - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
The Sickle Flow fan is not advertised primarily for radiator cooling. This is an excerpt from the official CM website about the features of that fan, verbatim:"Silent operation as an excellent choice for case cooling"
It says "..excellent choice for case cooling", not for radiator cooling. Even the sample photos published over there show it is paired with an air cooler, which doesn't have the exact design as a typical liquid radiator.
Well, to be fair, maybe some sellers are 'raving how fantastic' its performance is when paired up with a radiator just to sell it, or maybe on the packaging it is written otherwise??
Anyhow, what i don't understand is, why all the negative/abrasive remarks were made about the sickle flow fan, and also cooler master for that matter, since the previous review and in this updated one. I believe a good technical review like this roundup should always remain free from unnecessary personal preferences with accompanying harsh words against certain brand/product which serves no purpose but just to stir up some needless dust. A good technical review should generally encourage positive reaction from the readers which will lead to a healthy further discussion on the subject.
Nevertheless, tq for technical analysis, data and effort...sure it did bring light to certain areas of my knowledge on pc cooling.
coolhund - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
The bearing is just genius. I have been running 4 of them for 4 years at least 16/7 now and they are still completely free of mechanical noise as on the first day. Additionally I have bought over 25 of them for other computers and they all still run perfectly.Dozens of others have broke in that time frame, even the very expensive Noiseblockers.
When I get a fan with conventional bearing that cant be changed to an Enermax fan, I always have a bad feeling. Like in January this year I bought a new CPU cooler with integrated fan. It made a slight bearing noise from the start, nothing unusual for conventional fans, but I still felt bad about it. And guess what, after 3 months it started getting louder and louder and now its unbearable. I guess I will now buy an 80mm Enermax and just glue it in instead.
It really sucks that they dont make smaller ones than 80mm or thin versions. :(
For some reason I dont think Enermax even realizes what awesome fans they build, since the variety isnt that huge.
coolhund - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
The bearing is just genius. I have been running 4 of them for 4 years at least 16/7 now and they are still completely free of mechanical noise as on the first day. Additionally I have bought over 25 of them for other computers and they all still run perfectly.Dozens of others have broke in that time frame, even the very expensive Noiseblockers.
When I get a fan with conventional bearing that cant be changed to an Enermax fan, I always have a bad feeling. Like in January this year I bought a new CPU cooler with integrated fan. It made a slight bearing noise from the start, nothing unusual for conventional fans, but I still felt bad about it. And guess what, after 3 months it started getting louder and louder and now its unbearable. I guess I will now buy an 80mm Enermax and just glue it in instead.
It really sucks that they dont make smaller ones than 80mm or thin versions. :(
For some reason I dont think Enermax even realizes what awesome fans they build, since the variety isnt that huge.
Daggarhawk - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
note on idiom use. the phrase refers to unpolished diamonds. diamonds in a qualitative state called rough, not diamonds in a place called "the rough."nleksan - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
While I am not going to straight out request that you test anything, I just wanted to point out two (well, three, errr... 2 and a half?) fans that I have found to be absolutely unbeatable for price:performance on radiators, or even as powerful case fans. Granted, they are "performance enthusiast" fans, not "quiet PC enthusiast" fans, but I have yet to find anything that even comes close...First, for 120mm Radiators: the Koolance 120x25mm 2600rpm Fan. Rated for a, quite honestly conservative, 107.4cfm and 5.4mmH2O, this fan uses double-ball bearings for its motor and costs just $7 a piece.
If you have the room and would prefer even more static pressure/airflow, the exact same fan is available in the thicker 120x38mm form factor, with steeper blades as one would expect, producing 118.3cfm and 6.5mmH2O static pressure at the same 2600rpm (same motor, dual ball bearings). Also, same price!
Both of these fans have outperformed everything outside of the high-speed Delta/San-Ace fans that I've tried, using an Alphacool NeXXos UT60 240 with push-pull, and produced a 2.1C lower Delta-T than four equally-priced Scythe Ultra Kaze 3000rpm fans that use junky sleeve bearings and are not only significantly louder, they don't undervolt anywhere close to as well as the Koolance fans do. Running them at 50% via BitFenix Hydra Pro fan controller, with all four fans on one channel, they are inaudible and still outperform most fans cranked to full. Even when at their full 2600rpm they are NOT "loud", there is simply a "whoosh" of air that is noticeable but far from irritating.
For 140mm Radiators: the Bgears B-Blasters 140mm 1800rpm Fan. Rated at 103cfm and 3.5mmH2O, it is the single highest static pressure fan south of $60, well south in fact as it costs just $9-12 depending on the retailer. Like the Koolance twins, Bgears employed dual ball bearings: a smart move knowing that most radiators are mounted horizontally, and how big a role static pressure plays in liquid cooling fans. I have 6 of these in push-pull on an EX420 and I have yet to find anything that can come close to their performance, with the 2nd place fan not only being quite a bit louder, much worse at undervolting (well, the Bgears is in fact EXCELLENT anywhere from 50-100%, although it is almost completely silent at 80% and below!), and resulted in a Delta-T of a full 2C higher. Compared to 6 Gentle Typhoons, specifically the 1850rpm models (AP-15's), which were setup identically except for the use of the (ironically?) Bgears 120mm-to-140mm fan adapters. This is important to note because these are not exactly shallow adapters, and I have seen a significant "shroud effect" from many fans, either using 120's on a 140 rad or vice-versa.
Still, even at full speed, and with the benefits of their shrouds, the AP-15's were at a disadvantage to the Bgears by a consistent 2.2C.
A few runners-up for "best fans for the money for radiators", in my opinion:
- XSPC 120mm 2000rpm "Xinrullian" Fans $6-8/ea
- Akasa Viper 120/140 PWM Fans $11-16/ea
- Rosewill Hyperborea 120/140 Fans $7-9/ea *Note: These are in fact re-branded Akasa fans*
- Yate Loon D12SM/D12SH/D14SM 120/140 Fans $5-8/ea
- Scythe Ultra Kaze 120x38 2Krpm/3Krpm $9-13/ea *LOUD*
I tested using the following:
3930K @ 4.4Ghz with Swiftech Apogee HD White CPU Block
Rampage 4 Extreme with Active VRM Cooling
16GB G.Skill DDR3-2133cl9 @ 2400 9-11-10-30 with 2x RAM Coolers ("RAM fans")
EVGA GTX670FTW 2GB @ 1380core/7920mem w HeatKiller GTX680 "Hole Edition" Block+Backplate
Samsung 830 256GB SSD
XSPC EX420 Radiator
Alphacool NeXXos UT60 240 Radiator
2x Swiftech MCP35X PWM Pumps at 20%, 35%, 50%, and 100% (above 50% the speed doesn't change, but for completeness)
BitFenix Hydra Pro Fan Controller
3x Laboratory-Grade Thermometers calibrated to within 0.001C (1 for ambient, other two for air in/water out)
1/2"x3/4" Tubing with Bitspower Compression Fittings
My testing was performed with an Ambient of 18.2-18.9C, and the processor was run at 4.4Ghz with HT enabled, all C-states disabled, minimum state set to 100%, and the GPU overclocked to a healthy 1380core/7920mem (it does not throttle at those clocks, ever).
I ran Intel Burn-In Test for 60min and looped 3dMark11 at the same time on a second display, both are 1920x1080 (2560x1600/1440 seemed to represent far too few people to be proper for testing, and the higher resolution certainly can affect things).
The Delta-T's are an average of minutes 10-50 over 10 runs (5 per fan set) with 2 hours between tests to regain it's normal idle d-T of 1.658C for the loop (normal full-load with my ten fans plus 5x122cfm case fans feeding them is a d-T of 4.925-5.1975C).
SpoonLarry - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link
i would like to see the Akasa fans put to the test, they claim some pretty nice numbers, and they aren't too expensive. The two that I'm looking at are the AK-FN073 and the AK-FN072.http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/pro...
http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/pro...
WireNazi - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
Oh my eye's!!!! That is some terrible wire management.