Best 120mm PWM <£10?

A

anti-duck

New member
Hi all, it's been a while and I'm in the process of completely overhauling my rig, since I was last here I've changed the 955BE for an FX-8350, whacked an SSD in which I'm just using as a cache drive, swapped my GS700 for a Be Quiet! L8 630w CM, BitFenix Alchemy cables all round, whacked in another 8Gb of RAM and I'm waiting on my CM 690 III, an R9 280X Sapphire Titan edition and an NZXT Hue, so my Sharkoon T9 and HD 6670 can go in the bin ;) Also trying to decide on an AiO water cooling solution.

Anyway, firstly as the new case only comes with 1 x 200mm fan on the front and 1 x 120mm on the rear (I'm not sure if either are PWM), I'm most likely going to be replacing them anyway, so I'm looking for recommendations for 5 x 120mm PWM fans for under £10 each, or 4 x 120mm PWM and 1 x 200mm PWM (depending on the best solution) :) (non-LED please).

Secondly, I bought an air cooler a while ago intending to use it in my new case when I got it but now I've decided to go for an AiO water cooler; it's an Arctic Cooling Freezer A30, I've only opened the box to have a look at it and put it back in and it's been sitting there for months, it comes with everything that was supplied with it (including MX-4 thermal paste), it supposedly performs better than a Hyper 212, you can orient it in basically any direction in your case and is very quiet and it's free (well almost free; just postage and packing) to anyone that's interested :) Just please check the specification as it's a massive heatsink, will potentially block 1 or 2 RAM slots and only comes with mounting hardware for AMD boards (FM1/FM2/AM2/AM3/AM3+) although you can buy mounting hardware for Intel boards for £2.46, just reply here if you're interested.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/04/03/arctic-freezer-i30-review/1 (This is a review for the i30 I know, but the only difference between the i30 and the A30 is the mounting hardware).
 
Thanks guys :D I was actually looking at those CM Blade Master 120's and I can get them for £7 each but I've literally heard nothing about them.
 
Those blademasters look like the fans that come with seidons... If so they're utter bum if you don't like noise.
 
barnsley said:
Those blademasters look like the fans that come with seidons... If so they're utter bum if you don't like noise.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had been looking at the Seidon 120v and 120m, but the specs of the fan that comes with those kits and the specs of the Blade Master 120 are a bit different despite looking exactly the same.
 
barnsley said:
Those blademasters look like the fans that come with seidons... If so they're utter bum if you don't like noise.
Click to expand...

They do get noisy but only when they hit around 1500RPM at full speed they are insufferable but it's rare they get that fast, on the plus side if you use a controller it'll not be much of a problem.
 
Corsair have a PWM version of the SP120, they may be £1 or 2 over £20 for a pair but they are the nuts in my opinion. I think they deserve even more hype than the normal SP's.

JR
 
JR23 said:
Corsair have a PWM version of the SP120, they may be £1 or 2 over £20 for a pair but they are the nuts in my opinion. I think they deserve even more hype than the normal SP's.

JR
Click to expand...

Those do look really good, I can only find the AF120's though, would they be ok to mount to a 120mm rad in an AiO kit?

I'll check those Enermax's fans out, thanks :D
 
anti-duck said:
Yeah, I knew SP was static pressure, I looked for ages though and just couldn't find them and I'm really OCD about all my fans matching :lol:

Thanks for finding them!
Click to expand...

No worries mate :)

Personally, I'd spend the 5 quid more and get the Quiet Editions. They still cool very well, but less noise is always a plus in my book.
 
Feronix said:
No worries mate :)

Personally, I'd spend the 5 quid more and get the Quiet Editions. They still cool very well, but less noise is always a plus in my book.
Click to expand...

That was my next question actually, if the Quiet Edition 120mm fans from the Air series provide a good trade off between noise and performance. Ultimately I am going for silence as my current fans in the Sharkoon T9 powered via molex are doing my head in! Strange how they used to sound silent when I first built this thing (being my first build).
 
Despite them being Quiet Edition, I still have to undervolt mine, they're too loud at 12V for me. Use them with the supplied fan speed reducer, then they're much better.
 
Yeah shouldn't be a problem. I power 11 Corsair fans through a fan controller powered by a single molex.

The AF140 QE for example draws 0.15A at 12V, 5 of which is merely 0.75A. The 12V rail on any decent PSU will handle this many times over with ease. (Though it's not a good idea to put the maximum current from the PSU through a single molex wire!)

Edit: Just looked at my PSU datasheet (AX850) and the 12V rail is capable of supplying 70A; you could power hundreds of fans in total :)
 
Last edited:
Remmy said:
Yeah shouldn't be a problem. I power 11 Corsair fans through a fan controller powered by a single molex.

The AF140 QE for example draws 0.15A at 12V, 5 of which is merely 0.75A. The 12V rail on any decent PSU will handle this many times over with ease. (Though it's not a good idea to put the maximum current from the PSU through a single molex wire!)

Edit: Just looked at my PSU datasheet (AX850) and the 12V rail is capable of supplying 70A; you could power hundreds of fans in total :)
Click to expand...

Wow, apparently either of the PWM headers on my motherboard could power 5 fans then lol :o Thanks :D
 
anti-duck said:
Wow, apparently either of the PWM headers on my motherboard could power 5 fans then lol :o Thanks :D
Click to expand...

Please don't ;)

Also I realised you'd be using SATA power, not Molex, but they'd both provide the fans power from the 12V rail.

The example I gave was non-PWM version, but I doubt they'd be much different.
 
Last edited:
Remmy said:
Please don't ;)

Also I realised you'd be using SATA power, not Molex, but they'd both provide the fans power from the 12V rail.

The example I gave was non-PWM version, but I doubt they'd be much different.
Click to expand...

Ohhhhh, would it be fatal to run 5 fans on 1 header? I asked Gigabyte themselves and they said either of the PWM headers on my board can supply 1A.
 
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