Closer Examination

As this is a "Black Edition" Gentle Typhoon, the frame and impeller are both black-colored PBT-ABS resin in composition. The impeller has nine highly curved blades, and their trailing edges have small incisions near the hub in an attempt to minimize the deadspot in the center. The corners are closed and have no vibration-dampening pads out of the box, but one can use shaped, cut pieces of soft foam if so desired.


The hub is quite large and can cause a decent deadspot in airflow despite the blade design. The front hub measures in at 2.01" and the back hub at 2.05", which does not make a shroud a waste of money in my opinion. It also depends on the radiator core and how far apart it is from the frame, but it is something to consider. The fan is rated to consume 0.049 A as it operates, with a peak draw of 0.25 A. On the 12 VDC rail, that corresponds to 0.59 W as it operates, with 3.0 W at the peak. In practice, the three fans provided consumed a maximum of 0.034 A each during operation (0.41 W), so please plan accordingly. A standard 1 A motherboard header should be able to power three fans by itself even after peak draw has been accounted for. These are 3-pin fans, so this also opens up a lot of fan controllers, although in 2017, most decent motherboards offer good fan control already. Removing the hub sticker reveals clean soldering of the wires on the PCB, and the cable itself is unsleeved as mentioned before. It is a standard 12" in length and terminates in a white 3-pin fan header. DazMode, as do other resellers who stock these fans, offers a sleeving service at an optional cost, but it remains one of the things the mainstream market would want to see included out of the box.



Since I had three samples here, I decided to sacrifice one (after testing was completed, of course) to take a look inside. There is a small circlip that holds the rotor in place on the motor's shaft, which is what I was referring to previously, and then we can take a look at the 4-pole motor used, the PCB on the back, and, finally, the dual ball bearings. At lower fan speeds, ball bearings can be audible to some people where a fan's airflow noise does not drown it out, so here is also where a lot of newer fans are adopting fluid bearings or even magnetic levitation bearings.