120mm Radiator Fan Roundup Part 2: Fan Harder
by Dustin Sklavos on October 22, 2012 12:01 AM ESTScythe Slipstream ST1225SL12L
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| Airflow (in CFM) | Static Pressure (in mm/H2O) | RPM | Rated dBA |
| 40.17 | none given | 800 | 10.7 |
This fan in particular was one I picked up some time ago on a recommendation from Silent PC Review. I was looking for a fan that delivered a good blend of performance and acoustics, and this looked to be it. As it turns out, the Slipstream has served me well for a fairly long time. It's barely inaudible but it does move a decent amount of air (I used a pair on a CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ heatsink). With my history on hand, I was curious to see if it really was as good as I thought.
Thermaltake TT-1225
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| Airflow (in CFM) | Static Pressure (in mm/H2O) | RPM | Rated dBA |
| 41.6 | none given | 1400 | 21 |
This one's kind of an oddball. It's ratings are lowish and you can't find it in retail anymore, but it saw inclusion in a lot of different cases over the years. It wouldn't be surprising if some enthusiasts had one or two laying around. Since I had one, I figured I'd test it too.
NOT AVAILABLE
Antec TwoCool 120
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| Airflow (in CFM) | Static Pressure (in mm/H2O) | RPM | Rated dBA |
| 21.3/42.6 | 0.24/0.96 | 600/1200 | 17/23.7 |
Antec's TwoCool 120 isn't readily available in retail on its own, but is included with the popular P280 enclosure as well as a few other models. I was actually using a pair of these briefly to cool a 240mm radiator. If you have an Antec case that uses these, it may be worth seeing if they're a decent alternative to the stock fans that come with your radiator or cooler.
NOT AVAILABLE
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Finally - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Here is the latest Fan roundup (number sixteen!) of Summer 2012: http://www.orthy.de/2012/07/354/I found the cooling performance to be irrelevant.
As long as you have 3 fans in your case (1 for the CPU, 1 at the front and 1 in the back), temperatures tend to stay in the green all the time.
Sure, I could crank them all up to max RPM, but the few extra degrees I would gain are not worth the increase in noise...
DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
The main reason for water cooling instead of using an air cooler is to push your CPU to near the redline. In that area a few degrees of additional cooling do matter.Finally - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
You are preaching to the wrong crowd. I like my PC undervolted, cool and QUIET.TeXWiller - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
<quote>some of the European brand fans seem to cost more than two times as much in the US</quote>Those Noctua fans are expensive everywhere. Of course, add the VAT to the prices in Europe. Noctua promises really high MTBF numbers and long waranties compared to most other manufacturers. I personally have been using those lower end Papst fans for some time already. A fan with 80000 hour MTBF is apparently more durable than a hard drive with 800000 hour MTBF. ;)tty4 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
The prices in Europe usually include taxes, the Noctua is ~18EUR online (in Germany), which is about 24USD, which already includes 20% sales tax. So the price in the US should be more like 20USD, while is seems to be 30USD, which is a rather large price difference.DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Instead of trying to match up noise/performance numbers from two bar graphs could you do a noise vs temperature scatterplot?maximumGPU - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I second that, It would be so much more useful!Dustin Sklavos - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
That...is a really good idea...and I'm ashamed of myself for not having thought of it. Not for this review (I'm seriously backlogged and we have a boatload of stuff coming in), but that's exactly what I've been looking for for my case reviews.DanNeely - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Are the numbers available in textual form anywhere? I'd like to throw them into a spreadsheet to get the plot myself; but would prefer not to have to type them in manually.DanNeely - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Ok, I typed everything into Excel; and after the usual inordinate amount of fighting (to include a detour fighting with Google's spreadsheet too) managed to get a temperature vs noise plot. I'm not really happy about its legability, but with most of the points packed into a fairly narrow area of the graph it's really not practical to try and put labels next to each point.http://orthogonaltonormal.com/midden/fans.png
If anyone wants to try and make a better chart, here's the raw data too:
http://orthogonaltonormal.com/midden/fans.xlsx