Quiet Fans, your views and Recommendations

[SLIZER]

Want views on quiet case/cpu fans, please note there is no such thing as a silent fan, silent does not exist in computers, even the capacitors on PSU and mobo make noise, eg.. switch on your system and unplug all fans, stop psu fan and put ear to it.... buzzzzz....

When I say a fan is quiet I mean it really is quiet, I test fans on their own, in an emty quiet room, nothing else running, not even psu fan, fans tested outside of case and in case to give idea of real world usage

Back on Topic

I have used many fans that are labeled quiet, here are my views on 120mm

Top Fans for Airflow/Noise that are actually Quiet

Nexus 120MM @ 7V

-Very Quiet at 7V, at 5V near silent

-Good Static air pressure at 7V for CPU

-Ideal for front intake fan at 5V, 7V rear

-Source for less than £6

-Sleeve bearing so can only be used vertical

Enermax UCTB12 T.B.Silence Case @ 5V

-Fairly Queit at 7V, Near Silent at 5V

-Removable Blade for cleaning

-Less than £8

Overated fans..

Akasa Apache..

-At 7V they make this high pitch whine...

-Do not work at 5V

-4 pin fan connector, a pain to conect 7v fan speed reduction cable since 3 pin..

-Expensive

Noctua NF-S12B

-At 7V Quiet

-Static air pressure not ideal for cpu usage

-Ideal for front or middle case fan

-Expensive

Noctua NF-P12

-Good Static air Pressure

-Ideal for CPU Fan

-Found they emit a high pitch noise no matter what speed they ran at, tested two of them

-Expensive

Please post your views on other fans, the same way I have, also comments to... I need to test more fans..

 

[Scoob]

Hi SLIZER,

I've not got too much experience in different fans but I've bought a few of these recently and have been pleased:

Alpenfohn Wing Boost (120mm):

- A little loud at the full 12v, but they shift a LOT of air (108.6 m3)

- Noise range is 8 - 25 dB(A)

- Speed 500 - 1500 rpm, I've had them running at 25% speed silently off PWM, so <5v OK

- 4 Pin PWM natively but come with 3pin adaptor/extention as well as Molex.

- Has voltage dropper to 7v off molex as an option (in addition to full 12v molex)

- Hydraulic bearing - quiet and long-life apparently

- all screw points have "injected rubber sound absorbtion" so no vibration and noise transmitted through the case.

- I paid I think about £12 each...happy with that myself, but that is expensive.

Some personal observations of these fans in my PC.

- near silent at low rpm, yet can still push through my 120mm rad & provide adequate cooling of cpu.

- noisy at high rpm when running push/pull through rad (restricted air flow)

- fairly quiet at high rpm when just run as extractor/intake fan on higher flow grill

One observation with your testing outside the case. In my experience a fan with no impedement will be far quieter than one behind a grill for example. Pop it on a heat sink, or a rad and noise increases again.

Personally I don't mind a gentle sound of moving air, I don't like the overly turbulent noise of air being forced through a grill/rad when it doesn't want to go - though some sort of cowling will help there. Additionally, though this is rare these days, I hate fans that have a noisy motor.

Hope this is of use. If you'd like to collate any data this thread recieves then you can maybe create a proper fan guide for us all here to refer to. Though things like noise levels are subjective to a certain degree. I think, if someone says a fan is loud/quiet they need to describe the specific use the fan is being put to, i.e. simple intake or extraction, heat sink, rad, or indeed if it's pushing/pulling through a fine mesh or a more coarse grill.

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[JesseLactin]

I got some SickleFlows being used as both intake and exhaust in a CM HAF 922 (pushing or pulling through the coarse metal grill on the top and side). I can't hear them over the stock AMD cooler, but that doesn't mean much.

 

[Scoob]

I got some SickleFlows being used as both intake and exhaust in a CM HAF 922 (pushing or pulling through the coarse metal grill on the top and side). I can't hear them over the stock AMD cooler, but that doesn't mean much.

Yes, one loud component can make it hard to judge a fans performance noise-wise.

For me, when gaming, my GPU fans are always louder than the CPU but obviously I can bench CPU/GPU in isolation or leave system at idle.

Is the stock AMD cooler quite noisy even when the CPU as at idle then? My system is pretty much silent at idle bar the very soft whooshing of air. My gateway PC (Q6600 @ 3.0 with Titan Fenrir) is louder - though I think the bulk of the noise is from the 8800GT in this rig, it doesn't have idle states so even just surfing etc. the GPU is in the 50's of c...

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[SieB]

The new Cougar Vortex look promising i'm still trying to get hold of some.

There are no reviews for them yet but I have seen a vid of someone using them and they are quiet.

Speed: 800-1500

Air flow: @ 12V CFM 70.5

Air pressure: @ 12V mm H2O 2.2

Noise: 17.9dB

Also the new Phanteks fans look promising as well.

 

[Scoob]

Not heard of either of those, still that's hardly a surprise with me

Up until very recently all I ever bought were the cheapest blue-LED 120's I could find. I never had need for particularly high air-flow or static pressure so I just got cheap stuff. Saying that I've always used them in fairly un-restricted positions and my cases grills are fairly coarse.

In a couple of my cases that are full of hdds the fans are really just used to keep those cool. It's only my gamer that works hard enough to get hot really. This is why I like using over-spec'd air coolers in my gateway and media machines, they run quietly as the coolers are very efficient and the CPU temp never ramps up enough to tax them. Sorry, venturing off-topic there, just wanted to stress that there is still a place for cheap fans in PCs tasked for lighter loads.

Scoob.

 

[Lollipop]

I've only ever used Noctua so can't comment on that...

But what i will say when i hooked them up to a fan controller i couldn't hear my rig

 

[nothingspecial]

When I did acoustics at uni, the rule of thumb was that <20dBA is below the range of human hearing. Anything below that won't make a lot of difference. So that's what I work to when buying fans.

As for which fans to go for, my go-to option is the Xigmatek Crystal series. The 120mm ones are 1500RPM/61CFM/<20dBA (which probably means 19.9dBA) , and the 140mm are 1000RPM/63.5CFM/<16dBA.

All clear plastic, available with White/Green/Red/Blue/Purple LEDs, and they're whisper quiet.

Edit: That's all on 12V. Haven't played with running them lower, as it's really not worth it to my ears.

 

[Ya93sin]

I have 5 NF-P14 FLX' in my rig (including one on the NH-D14), at 50% they are extremely quiet, at 100% ofc they are loud, not many fans aren't.

 

[Lollipop]

I have 5 NF-P14 FLX' in my rig (including one on the NH-D14), at 50% they are extremely quiet, at 100% ofc they are loud, not many fans aren't.

I got one bitFenix spctre... you can't hear it at 12v.... but then again it doesn't move any air

 

[Ya93sin]

I hated mine (230mm ones), but in all honesty looking back it could have been faulty or something

 

[JesseLactin]

Yes, one loud component can make it hard to judge a fans performance noise-wise.

For me, when gaming, my GPU fans are always louder than the CPU but obviously I can bench CPU/GPU in isolation or leave system at idle.

Is the stock AMD cooler quite noisy even when the CPU as at idle then? My system is pretty much silent at idle bar the very soft whooshing of air. My gateway PC (Q6600 @ 3.0 with Titan Fenrir) is louder - though I think the bulk of the noise is from the 8800GT in this rig, it doesn't have idle states so even just surfing etc. the GPU is in the 50's of c...

Cheers,

Scoob.

Loud? Check this vid out.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6p4016ByZg[/media]

OK, I exaggerated a little, but it still screams like a banshee. As far as idling, it's not the worst thing in the world. You can hear the sound of a ball bearing fan at 2000RPM. I don't know what idling is though. I fold 24/7. Well, I did before my PSU decided to be a POS and begin dying (unstable voltage, odd fan sounds, etc). The SickleFlows are great though. I jumped a Dell PSU to run all 5 off. Maybe 25 dB for all 5.

 

[Stryker64]

GELID Wing makes wonderful fans in my experience. They also come in a nice variety of colours and aren't overly expensive.

GELID Wing 12 120mm PWM Blue LED Fan

-Good airflow: 75.6 CFM

-Quiet, at least in my experience and my setup.

-Great static pressure: Claimed to be 2.66mmH20

-Price is reasonable, but tipping onto the expensive side at $19 AUD

Also while the <20dB is the threshold of human hearing is a decent baseline, that opinion ignores that humans perceive loudness differently depending on the frequency. For instance 30dB at 1kHz is fairly loud, yet 30dB at 50Hz would in inaudible, in fact if your fan created noise at 50Hz it would have to be around 50dB to have the same loudness, although if you have pets it would probably annoy the hell out of them. It's due to this reason that Scythe Gentle Typhoons seem quieter than their competitors with a similar decibel range.

 

[Scoob]

Some good recommendations on this thread for fans. I think the consensus is that ALL fans are pretty damn loud at full whack - assuming they're actually moving a useful amount of air of course!

Modern fans don't really suffer from actual fan noise as such (unless something is failing/worn) just the noise of the air-flow. Obviously the smoother this air-flow the better for both noise levels and cooling, however the nature of a "choppy" fan will always be exactly that, choppy air flow.

I'm not sure how much the various fin designs really help, nor the new "wing boost" stuff some are using now. I've gone from fairly basic fans (cheap as you can get) which were reasonably quiet at 50% and noisy at 100% but didn't shift much air, to a decent fan that shift more at 50% silently than the cheap ones did at max with a lot of noise. This suggests that these new fin designs really do make the air smoother as they are in the SAME application (rad/grill/whatever) and are pushing air through the SAME restriction, yet still manage to be quieter.

I've not done any real scientific testing, just jumped from cheap to good fans. Oh, the good fans ultimate ability to shift air tends to be quite high, useful if you don't mind the noise and also good as they still shift a useful amount at lower rpms.

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[Ya93sin]

Tell you what, if they got those Dyson blade-less fans, got the same tech into a 140mm/120mm size suitable for case fan use, then they would make massive sales.

Airflow is very direct, not choppy, and its quiet.

 

[yassarikhan786]

Tell you what, if they got those Dyson blade-less fans, got the same tech into a 140mm/120mm size suitable for case fan use, then they would make massive sales.

Airflow is very direct, not choppy, and its quiet.

I've seen those, they seem like a good idea, but I am very sure they can't beat conventional fans in terms of airflow (not right now anyway, but maybe in the future

). They would also look too simple and kind of out of place in a case IMO.

 

[Ya93sin]

They wouldnt look out of place if you can only see the ring lmao, and it's a new technology, but this will eventually become the norm.

 

[yassarikhan786]

They wouldnt look out of place if you can only see the ring lmao, and it's a new technology, but this will eventually become the norm.

They may eventually become the norm, but I don't like the look of em (Too simple for my taste).

 

[Scoob]

Tell you what, if they got those Dyson blade-less fans, got the same tech into a 140mm/120mm size suitable for case fan use, then they would make massive sales.

Airflow is very direct, not choppy, and its quiet.

Umm, you know the "Dyson Bladeless fans" aren't really that...it's a conventional fan in the base, it's the cleverly designed cowling that evens out the air flow. Some very clever engineering & flow-design for sure, but (from what I've read) the static pressure is rather low.

I'm not sure if it'd be possible to incorporate this design into a PC application easily. Even if it could be done it'd likely need to be run at high rpm (noisy) to provide adequate flow / static pressure. I think this particular application would only work if it didn't have to pull air through a grill assembly or anthing, even then the flow would likely stall as soon as it hit any component.

Still, maybe they will perfect a PC cooling solution...but I'd not hold my breath (considering I can barely do a minute it'd be somewhat pointless lol)

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[Ya93sin]

As with all technology, there is scope for it to be improved