Closer Examination

The Silverstone FHP141 is one heavy fan, clocking in at over 200 grams (~220 g), and a lot of this has to do with the thick PBT plastic used to get this 140 x 140 x 38 mm frame manufactured. As seen in the images above, the fan comes out of the box as a round-framed version with fan holes on its corners set up to match those for a square frame 120 mm fan. The rotor has seven thick blades with a leading edge angled to make the most of the available room and counter airflow restriction. There are four stator vanes on the back, curved at the corners and meeting at the hub on the back. A Silverstone logo is present on both sides of the hub, just in case you forget. One of the corners also has arrows to show the direction of rotation, as well as that of the airflow through the fan.


The provided accessories do indeed include screw-in corners to help make this a traditional square frame 140 mm fan for mounting, so you could also use this on 140 mm radiators without needing anything else. The corners have an inset that goes into the hole in the frame, and the metal inserts provide a durable threading for the screws to secure into. No vibration-dampening corner pads on either configuration, which is why you get the rubber mounts if you were to use this as a case fan only, but this does not help with its use as a radiator fan. Another corner has a toggle switch to switch between Q (Quiet) mode and P (Performance) mode, which just changes the usable RPM range from 500-1200 to 500-2000, and we see wires which lead to the PCB with two specific sets of ICs for these two modes.


Each fan is rated for a peak current draw of 0.35 A, which does not match the 0.65 A mentioned on the product page. I go by the number on the sticker as it is the result of a third-party agency, so the FHP141 is capable of drawing 4.2 W at most, including start-up boost. Silverstone did confirm that the 0.65 A rating mentioned was an error from earlier units, and they will make sure to correct the figure to 0.35 A. In practice, the fan had an operational current draw of 0.22 A (2.6 W), which means powering each off a standard 1 A fan header should not pose any issues at all. If you do have more, the provided MOLEX adapter is recommended, which would have you power the fan off the PSU. Alternatively, a PWM splitter will also work and be more friendly with cable management. Solder quality was good here, especially with the increased wires to connect to the motor, and Silverstone is using dual ball bearings (an example of these can be seen here). The fan cable is the standard 12" long, although it has a daisy-chained connector that can be used if you were to use the provided MOLEX adapter to only pass on RPM monitoring and PWM control.


For those who were left wondering what else Silverstone had sent along, it ended up being the FPS141-VF, which is a variation of the FHP141 we are examining here. This fan, which will not get its own review, is a case fan with a reversible rotation. Notice the different rotor design here compared to the FHP141, and the short cable coming out of a corner. Instead of a built-in toggle for two speed modes, this cable connects to a provided white and braided cable which in turn connects to a controller fashioned to fit into an available PCIe lane cover. This controller has the toggle and is larger than necessary to allow Silverstone to fit it into the fan itself. It's an interesting variation which could allow radiator usage for intake or exhaust to quickly test out the effects of possible neutral or negative case pressure, but the standard FHP141 remains the more performance-oriented of the two and is the one we will test on the next page.