Airflow vs static pressure fans. Are they a scam?

[The red spirit]

You are most likely correct. And that's just the nature of the free free market and corporations. Make all the money you can while spending next to nothing to do so.
But i feel the truth is some fans are better than others.

I just think that some fans just look really cool. I really love the look of Silverstone Air Penetrators with fat translucent blue blades. Or Noiseblocker Black Silents with basic 7 blade design, but nice purple translucent blades:

I have one myself and they actually look just as good irl. I have a feeling that they would look good in smoked tempered glass case.

the question is will they be better for your specific application and are they worth the cost.
If you want to really know something is right, you must do it yourself. Else you will always have the what if in your mind. The old say go's "if you want something done right you gotta do it your self" i would like to think everyone has heard this but in todays world i'm pretty sure many have not.

I guess what i'm saying is until you get your hands on these different fans for your self and conduct the test you want to do. you might always have questions.

Well, I have bunch of random fans myself. Most of them aren't too different, but I noticed that Silencio fans just don't seem to move as much air. After reading shit ton of fans tests and reviews, I came to conclusions that blade shape barely matters. That's a bit anti-climatic in this thread, but that's the truth so far.

Have you seen the Aero Shark fans before?

Yes, they look pretty cool. They kinda remind me of Enermax T.B. Silence fans with bat wings:

I have 80mm version myself and they are quite good. But they are abysmal at generating pressure. Even worse than Xilence Redwings Performance C.

 

[formula383]

There are bad fans around. but i think over the years things have gotten better for all quality of fans. little aspects for lowering noise have been included in almost all fan designs of today. 20 years ago might have been a completely different story. So i guess your lucky today you can find pretty OK fans with just about anything on the market. some of that might be in thanks to the internet allowing people to voice and share there opinions and findings. Other reasons might include patents expiring and tooling (molds) being reused for cheaper fans as new designs are being made. That and technology keeps getting more refined so making quality parts becomes less difficult and less costly to do.

you have heard? "you get more miles out of cheap pair of sneakers" this i think is very true in fans. However some fans do use better quality plastics that do cost more. and they even might have slightly better air flow with less noise at the same time. Or maybe more so the tone of the noise that is less bothersome to our ears. I have really enjoyed using "cougar" fans they often can be found on sale and they are pretty good quality. I also like the orange color blades too I think they make black ones if you dont like the orange but yea been pretty happy with them for the price they are very good fans. i think the first ones i bought were around $7~8 each but that was years ago. now i feel like if you can get 120mm for around $13~15 they are well worth it.

i think the color is slightly off in this photo but at least you can see the style of it.

PS they do make a few different types so pay close attention to what type you are buying. The last ones i got are CF-V 12HP 1500rpm. They do make noise but i think its more the air flow making the noise rather than the fan it self. At any rate they are worth giving a shot imho.

 

[The red spirit]

I also like the orange color blades too I think they make black ones if you dont like the orange but yea been pretty happy with them for the price they are very good fans.

I probably like colored version more than black version. But then again, in the past I have bought some bright green Akasa Vegas fans and put them on Cooler Master K280 case. They looked great through mesh and air filter. That looked a bit like starry sky with green dots, lovely effect

i think the first ones i bought were around $7~8 each but that was years ago. now i feel like if you can get 120mm for around $13~15 they are well worth it.

For me locally, Cougar products aren't really available or cheap. The clear budget winner is Arctic P12 fans, due to their sub 7 Euro cost. In similar price bracket there are Thermaltake Pure 12, Zalman F2 Plus, Silentium Zephyr fans. For less than 9 Euros you can get Scythe Slipstream, Bitfenix Spectre, Silverstone FN121-P-L, Silentium Sigma Pro fans. Pretty good, but still visually bland. And basically all other fans are at under 15 Euros. And some fans are at over 20 Euros for a single fan (mostly Noctuas). But deals depend on store. Other stores have cheap Cooler Master SickleFlow, Deepcool RF120, Xilence Redwing fans for cheap. Some fans are sold for less than 4 Euros. Really no point in paying tithe for "premium" fans (they aren't all that premium, plenty of tests show that they are not really better and sometimes poor in comparison to others).

 

[80251]

I just checked them out and that Delta isn't actually 50 mm thick. Well the whole thing is, but blades are 25mm thick, meanwhile the other half of it are air routing blades. Interesting. And for some reason Delta fan consumes whopping 17 watts, which is a lot. And when looking at spec sheet, you would think that Delta is obviously better, but it all is at cost of noise. Well, I don't really trust much spec sheets anymore, but at least on paper Delta is 54.5 dBA, meanwhile Noctua is 41.3 dBA. The difference should be huge. Anyway, it seems that it's possible to make thicker fan to be better at airflow. But even then, going thicker doesn't yield much gains. For 2 times thickness, you only get 20-30% static pressure and airflow. That's poor efficiency. Meanwhile, diameter increase would yield a lot more gains. And reason for that is simple. Sucked in air accelerates from hub to end of blades and thus at the end of blades, it is the fastest. Therefore, increasing thickness of fan and desiring more airflow would mean, that fan instead of working like a normal axial fan, now it would have to keep air longer on blades to accelerate it longer and thus change the angle of airflow. Unfortunately, that means more noise (because forcing air to to move at steeper than natural angle, is not aerodynamic and thus is noisy), and likely due to worse turbulence, airflow gains aren't big.


I wonder how deaf average TPU user is. I'm deaf and I qualify for hearing aids, but even then fan noise is quite audible. My goal from cooling with fans is to stay close to the point of being audible and inaudible. Which for me would be 30-40 dB. I'm pretty sure that any healthy person would certainly hear a silent computer.

Delta publishes the methodology and equipment used by which they arrive at their figures for each fan. They produce far more fans for far more applications than Noctua. There ARE standards for measuring fan performance metrics published by international standards bodies as well as for the USA alone.

If we were to lower the Delta's 140x50mm RPM level so that it matched the noctua's CFM and static pressure what would the dbA levels be then? Insignificantly different?

 

[The red spirit]

If we were to lower the Delta's 140x50mm RPM level so that it matched the noctua's CFM and static pressure what would the dbA levels be then? Insignificantly different?

Granted that spec sheets say truth, I would say that delta would be a little bit louder then. But only by 3 dBA or less.

 

[mtcn77]

Granted that spec sheets say truth, I would say that delta would be a little bit louder then. But only by 3 dBA or less.

Those vanes don't operate quietly.

 

[Deleted member 212040]

Meanwhile I just run Silent Wings 3 140mm PWM all across the board at 1000 RPM and they do the job well while being quiet. Set it and forget it.

No need to overthink all of this. Dust? Unwinnable battle, get a blower and dust your PC out once in a while.

 

[mtcn77]

Meanwhile I just run Silent Wings 3 140mm PWM all across the board at 1000 RPM and they do the job well while being quiet. Set it and forget it.

No need to overthink all of this. Dust? Unwinnable battle, get a blower and dust your PC out once in a while.

Silent Wing 3's are top grade fans according to hardware.info though. You are oversimplifying the debate by virtue of settling the problem.

 

[Deleted member 212040]

Silent Wing 3's are top grade fans according to hardware.info though. You are oversimplifying the debate by virtue of settling the problem.

Top grade fans? I recall them being called shitty by pretty much everyone

 

[mtcn77]

Top grade fans? I recall them being called shitty by pretty much everyone

Everyone, except me. Don't worry about stuffies.

 

[Deleted member 212040]

Well count me in too because I love them lol

 

[mtcn77]

Well count me in too because I love them lol

I was looking through past review material, but since they don't overlay different methodologies together(there are 2 charts for 2019 tests, 1 for 2017, 1 for 2014) it becomes hard comparing them. While nfa12x25 are respectable, I bet they aren't the best. I couldn't figure how I listed the best in previous reviews though, maybe because I'm trying to overlay the new noctua review...

 

[The red spirit]

I was loking through past review material, but since they don't overlay different methodologies together it becomes hard comparing them. While nfa12x25 are respectable, I bet they aren't the best. I couldn't figurr how I listed the best in previous reviews though, maybe because I'm trying to overlay the new noctua review...

I have watched a lot of reviews and yes, Noctua isn't the best. Reduxes seemingly perform even worse. Depending on review, winner changes, but I have seen Arctic P12, Scythe Kaze Flex, NoiseBlocker Multiframe being the best. Noctua either is average or slightly above average. Always on the bottom is Corsair and Be Quiet's Shadow Wings.

 

[freeagent]

I've been looking at the Redux 1700s because they are cheap.. literally half the cost of SW3's. Probably quieter than my old Panaflos. Only 70cfm though.. kind of a bummer. Next step up is iPPC 2000s. Bah. Consumer fans =

 

[Deleted member 212040]

I don't wanna hear about Arctic P12s, P14, Pwhatevers ever again. Bought a 5 pack, some P14s as well, and all of them had the worst motor noise ever.

My NF-A12x25s on my cooler and the Silent Wings 3 I use as case fans are so quiet that the coil noise in my PC is more audible.

Only 70cfm though..

I'm over here trudging along with 60 cfm because I've found that anything above 1000 rpm on my 140mm fans make 0 difference to cooling but a lot of difference to my hearing.

 

[mtcn77]

Okay, it might be a noob moment, but I just figured Noctua's "FLX" attributed fans are their free flow fans... you know what to do for radiator fans, that goes without saying.

PS: while it may be not correlatable, they have tested two different sets of the same test at different dBA values - don't ask me why.
Noctuas are on the half ordinal, while the rest are on the full ordinal. I have never seen such a stupid methodology baitswitch, but it is what it is...

 

[claes]

I’m wondering who you all trust with fan reviews? I don’t trust any of the YouTube reviewers I’ve encountered, and only a handful of written reviewers have what I would consider to be a decent test methodology.

My admittedly short list:
Silent PC Review (defunct)
Ehume/overclockers.com (defunct)
@VSG/thermalbench/TPU (not sure if we’ll be seeing any fan reviews at TPU but TB.com was great)

Any others people would recommend?

Edit: hardware.info seems okay but they seem to change methods without notification. I remember liking some German site but I don’t remember which, and don’t think they’ve done fan reviews for awhile. PCper used to be okay but I haven’t kept up with them either.

 

[mtcn77]

Ehume/overclockers.com (defunct)

Haha, he runs vortez.net. He isn't a rookie.
Again, this is the ~7v(not exact since they didn't crossmatch the old dBA test to it) air flow list. Since Noctuas and Scythe Kaze are only tested among themselves, they are DNF, but stronger than the rest.
We still don't know what regular fans would do as sp fans for limitation of methodology.
30dBA-cfm ordered

 

[VSG]

I’m wondering who you all trust with fan reviews? I don’t trust any of the YouTube reviewers I’ve encountered, and only a handful of written reviewers have what I would consider to be a decent test methodology.

My admittedly short list:
Silent PC Review (defunct)
Ehume/overclockers.com (defunct)
@VSG/thermalbench/TPU (not sure if we’ll be seeing any fan reviews at TPU but TB.com was great)

Any others people would recommend?

Edit: hardware.info seems okay but they seem to change methods without notification. I remember liking some German site but I don’t remember which, and don’t think they’ve done fan reviews for awhile. PCper used to be okay but I haven’t kept up with them either.

I've been doing fan reviews here as well, just search for "fan" or similar in the reviews section: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/

 

[freeagent]

'm over here trudging along with 60 cfm because I've found that anything above 1000 rpm on my 140mm fans make 0 difference to cooling but a lot of difference to my hearing.

I know, one of my Panaflos has a low frequency rumble at higher RPMs. They have been running since 2006. They don't spin as freely as my other fans, so I will replace them all at once. They don't owe me a thing.. My iPPC are pretty decent. I barely heard them with my 5600, but with my 5900 they sound like they are angry that it even thought of making heat. Ehume is a pretty good guy, for sure he knows what he is talking about. I butted heads with him once a few years ago and I still feel bad about it because I wouldn't back down, and I probably should have. Young guys eh.. think they know it all.

Some of those guys still float around the forums..

 

[The red spirit]

I’m wondering who you all trust with fan reviews?

To be honest, there's no point in doing that. Generic 7/9 blader is pretty much the best shape of fan. There really aren't fans that are truly bad and fans that are way above others. They are all the variation of same or similar thing. Besides from catching some poorly performing fans, fan reviews are pretty much pointless now. It's just like power supplies. You could buy a clearly dangerous unit in the past, but today, pretty much anything is fine and there's not much point in paying more than you should.

 

[Shrek]

Fans tend to use a prime number of blades to avoid harmonics, so 7 might be better than 9; interesting that house fans tend to be 3 or 5 bladed, although I have one 4 bladed unit.

I remain of the opinion that the bearing is important, something that isn't really tested in reviews; ball bearings can get noisy with age.

 

[mtcn77]

Fans tend to use a prime number of blades to avoid harmonics,

12cm Noiseblocker eLoops have the rotor stator ring which enable a 6 bladed design. I would say they do well.

They aren't any more noisier than any other fans. Come on, it's Scythe. They are specializing in quiet and powerful cooling solutions far more than other brands. Anyway, if yo uare interested in Fuma 2, you have to watch these two videos, they explain everything:

TL;DR is that it performs great and is very quiet, it's also great value for money. It performs like highest end dual tower coolers (minus 140mm models) and is at top or near top of quietness charts. Mostly due to the fact that Scythe just puts rather slow fans on it.

I think we would get better results from the counter rotating fans on the Fuma 2, had MajorHardware tested them on the same slot. He tested with an extra push-pull-pull triple fan setup, yet he never considered push-push-pull like optimum tech did. Long story short, at same noise corrected performance, this enables 0.5 degrees better cooling even not considering counter rotating impellers. Which was my idea for gradual air acceleration for high laminar flow at even less axial pressure gradient.

 

[HTC]

Fans tend to use a prime number of blades to avoid harmonics, so 7 might be better than 9; interesting that house fans tend to be 3 or 5 bladed, although I have one 4 bladed unit.

I remain of the opinion that the bearing is important, something that isn't really tested in reviews; ball bearings can get noisy with age.

As someone who works @ a ball bearing manufacturing factory, i can tell you that ALL honed bearings (bearings where their rings are polished) are tested for their noise levels and they have tolerances for low, mid and high frequencies.

Noctua MAY just require tighter tolerances of the bearings they use which results in better noise levels: this DOES MAKE the bearings A LOT MORE PRICEY as the quality control is different.

 

[Shrek]

I meant as they age... not as they are new.