EK-Meltemi 120ER Fan

[VSG]

EK Water Blocks adds to their fan portfolio with the massive 38 mm thick Meltemi. Available in their -ER (extended range) version, the EK-Meltemi aims to take their popular Vardar fan as a base and build upon it with a bigger, badder motor, and promises high static pressure optimization for PC DIY water cooling.

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[dj-electric]

Ouch... wow...
how?

I mean, You'd think they would make sure this kind of product should absolutely knock it out of the park with metrics. How does the engineering team just go ahead and greenlight the launch if this kind of product?

 

[Crackong]

So....why not a NF-A12x25 ?

 

[TechLurker]

These are completely worthless; especially when compared to EK's regular 25mm thick EVO Vardars as shown in the graphs, and compared to the plethora of San Ace (Sanyo), Nidec (Servo), Delta, and similar server-grade 38mm thick fans used by the hardcore. Moreso since some of those 38mm screamers actually sound pretty good at lower speeds while still pushing more air than typical 25mm fans, whereas the Meltemi barely exceeds that of regular 25mm thick radiator fans even at lower speeds. Even the classic Gentle Typhoon (the one used in the tests) as well as the A12x25 are close enough to make it a wash.

So I do have to wonder what is the exact purpose of this fan? Was this just EK's attempt to compete with the "big boys" in the 38mm thick fan space? Or just an e-peen attempt at a consumer level fan thicker than 25mm? If it's the former, they're still way out of their league. If it's the latter, then this would just be as big a bust as the Feser Triebwerk 120mm x 55mm Fans, which also weren't much better than the GTs they were meant to rival back then despite being much thicker and longer (granted, the Triebwerks looked nice; kind of like a giant acrylic ice cube sitting on the radiators, but that was it).

 

[phanbuey]

the sound difference on the A12's mean you can run them 250-300RPM faster and still be quieter and get better airflow... and they're smaller.

:/

They needed to abandon ship on this one, unfortunately.

 

[GeorgeMan]

I don't even get why these should exist. Pretty disappointing...
Thick fans should only have one thing they should excel in: performance. And those perform worse than 25mm. Something must have happened wrong here, really.

 

[kapone32]

This reminds of my Scythe KamaKize fan that was the same thickness but the speed of the fan is 3500 RPM.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Saw this reviewed on GN about a month ago. My opinion is that if the motor itself didnt cover such a large area, creating a massive dead spot then maybe it would of performed better.

EK should of just scrapped the fan rather then putting it into production. Nobody will buy them apart from maybe the OEM market for servers and other stuff. They are going to find a way to shift these fans and if there commercial market aint biting then theres not a lot of other places to go.

 

[Valantar]

I guess maybe this has a use for massively thick radiators? Other than that, as many have said above, there is absolutely zero reason to buy these over not only the NF-A12x25, but a bunch of other competitors too (including the Vardar series).

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Good to see shrouds still provide benefit. I usually have an affinity for thicker fans, aesthetics regardless. I miss my old Panaflo 120x38's.

Biggest drawback to me is that the noise levels are not as competitive.

 

[Ubersonic]

Excellent, been waiting ages for somebody to bring out some decent 38mm fans so I can replace the ageing SilenX units on my watercooled folding rig

 

[TechLurker]

Nobody will buy them apart from maybe the OEM market for servers and other stuff. They are going to find a way to shift these fans and if there commercial market aint biting then theres not a lot of other places to go.

Problem with that though is that while these may perform better than generic 25mm-thick fans, they don't perform much better for the cost. And if those OEMs really wanted to go 38mm for workstation or server use, most are likely to already have had deals inked with Sanyo Denki, Nidec, EBM-Papst, Sunon, Delta, etc for their 38mm+ thick fans that are purpose-built for cooling systems that run 24/7. The same fans that that have dominated the majority of the server market for a few decades now.

For the hardcore that want a 38mm fan, 20~30 USD or so could buy a used or new-old stock server fan and spend another 5-10 USD on wiring it up and get more (extreme) performance at the expense of noise, such as the Nidec Beta V450s or Deltas that litter Ebay (or buying New Deltas from Sidewinder Computers). Or spend more on the "exotic" San Aces, EBMs, Sunons, or Nidec/Servos out there for either better tonal noise at all speeds (San Aces usually) or more extreme performance (the 12VDC unicorn Servo G1238B).

Literally the ONLY two advantages the Meltemi has over most of the server-grade fans out there is consumer-ready PWM and less-likely to blow a motherboard fan header. By that, the Meltemi doesn't require a custom PWM controller to modulate the speed of the fans, and doesn't require a Molex adapter to directly provide 2 amps or more of continuous power.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Problem with that though is that while these may perform better than generic 25mm-thick fans, they don't perform much better for the cost. And if those OEMs really wanted to go 38mm for workstation or server use, most are likely to already have had deals inked with Sanyo Denki, Nidec, EBM-Papst, Sunon, Delta, etc for their 38mm+ thick fans that are purpose-built for cooling systems that run 24/7. The same fans that that have dominated the majority of the server market for a few decades now.

im sure they will find a way to dump'em in bulk. Make them so cheap to buy that their whole inventory gets bought up. Im sure some companies will buy them to put them on stuff that isnt server related but need the cooling. machinery and such.

 

[Chrispy_]

Did you get a chance to test this with a 120mm heatsink?

I mean, they suck as radiator fans but perhaps they do a better job with a long airflow path such as the 60-80mm of fin depth on a typical 120mm tower cooler.

 

[Roboionator]

why not test noiseblocker?

 

[Ubersonic]

Did you get a chance to test this with a 120mm heatsink?

These type of fans are aimed at/generally used with radiator shrouds.

 

[VSG]

why not test noiseblocker?

I have tested most of their 120 and 140 mm fans elsewhere, and used to have the NB-eLoop B12-4 here for a while before I had to cut down a few fans. This one was removed because it did not slow down enough to only be in two of the four RPM charts, and the others have full reviews on another website.

 

[CheapMeat]

I love the 140mm Silverstone fans. They (both variants) are my second favorite of all time. I like these because they're 120mm but as other mentioned, some 25mm just out-do it all around.

 

[Valantar]

Excellent, been waiting ages for somebody to bring out some decent 38mm fans so I can replace the ageing SilenX units on my watercooled folding rig

... but these are far from decent. I would be willing to bet the Noctua NF-A12x25 at 2000rpm is both quieter and has better airflow than this at 1600 - after all the chart shows them just barely lagging in airflow at 1500. Unless you have a massively thick radiator with a shroud these look like they perform quite terribly.

 

[Chrispy_]

These type of fans are aimed at/generally used with radiator shrouds.

I encounter 38mm fans all day every day in 1u and 2u rack servers where a bank of them are expected to push air through a huge number of long heatsinks, typically 100mm of CPU heatsink and then a break before going through up to 250mm of GPU heatsink.

I know these are marketed as radiator fans but they're clearly rubbish at that job, so I was just wondering if they'd been tested for any other consumer jobs. The 4-pin PWM connector makes them interesting, at least...

 

[CheapMeat]

They say:

For the best performance EK recommends using the EK-Meltemi 120ER in pull mode!

And in the review:

Indeed, I will also agree with them that the fan does better in push than pull, but such is the fickle nature of DIY PC watercooling today that aesthetics matter more, and people tend to have fans in push. For something intended for pure performance, however, having mediocre results in push is a negative no matter how it is spun.

It's easy to scan through and miss this part in the review, in case anyone is reading the comments.

 

[Valantar]

They say:



And in the review:



It's easy to scan through and miss this part in the review, in case anyone is reading the comments.

Even in pull mode that giant motor housing looks like it would hurt performance - a shroud really seems like a must for these fans.

 

[Turmania]

That motor area is too large. I wish they could make it smaller. I believe enema done it smaller with their squargb fans but have no idea if it's usefull or marketing trick.

 

[Ubersonic]

Unless you have a massively thick radiator with a shroud these look like they perform quite terribly.

I do, the mechanics of shrouded radiators seem to work very differently to radiators not optimised for shrouds (AKA all modern radiators), I'm no expert on the physics of it but as a result of it I'm still using 38mm SilenX fans from a decade ago, I have tried replacing them over the years with Gentle Typhoons and later with Vardars and Noctuas, but none could match the performance to noise ratio.

It's also worth noting that these perform terribly if you bolt them to a radiator in push config because they're not supposed to be used like that, the reviewer even mentions they're designed for pull configs on shrouds and when used correctly they would normally perform much better than what his testing showed.

I encounter 38mm fans all day every day in 1u and 2u rack servers

They will be different to ones designed for water cooling. You wouldn't really wanna put these (or any other WC aimed 38mm fans) in a server (unless you were water cooling it).

 

[Daisho11]

Knowing that a shroud will help in this case, I wanted to test the effect of adding a 12 mm thick plenum I had lying around. Two tests done with the fan at 1000 and 1500 RPM convincingly show that the EK-Meltemi benefits highly from this,

How much so? Can you post any recorded performance metrics for this?

It would be interesting to see how this fan compares to the Vardar and other 25mm thick fans when they are all using shrouds.