120mm Radiator Fan Roundup Part 2: Fan Harder
by Dustin Sklavos on October 22, 2012 12:01 AM ESTRosewill Hyperborea
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| Airflow (in CFM) | Static Pressure (in mm/H2O) | RPM | Rated dBA |
| 57.53 | 2.64 | 600-1300 | 6.9-16.05 |
When I contacted the Rosewill rep about sending fans for review she was a bit hesitant, but I wasn't convinced there wasn't something good hiding out in their lineup. Rosewill often provides good products at reasonable prices, so I felt like their lines were worth investigating. I received this fan, which is actually a PWM fan (despite having virtually no dynamic ratings), and the next one...
Rosewill RFX-120BL Blue LED
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| Airflow (in CFM) | Static Pressure (in mm/H2O) | RPM | Rated dBA |
| 87.5 | none given | 2200 | 38.15 |
The other Rosewill representative is a more basic, garden variety case fan with no qualms about running full tilt. It bears mentioning that this model does include an additional fan controller bracket that may make it at least a little more attractive (though personally I'm more interested in the fan controller bracket than the fan), but this should at least be a good representation of a generic case fan.
be quiet! Silent Wings 2
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| Airflow (in CFM) | Static Pressure (in mm/H2O) | RPM | Rated dBA |
| 50.5 | 1.63 | 1500 | 15.7 |
The Silent Wings 2 is be quiet!'s top of the line fan. While our rep (who amusingly enough is my predecessor here for case reviews) wasn't super bullish on it as a radiator fan, the staggeringly low decibel rating and decent airflow and static pressure at least make the Silent Wings 2 a compelling entrant worth checking out. be quiet! as a company has been slowly making waves lately so I've been anxious to test some of their products.
be quiet! is still young yet and like BitFenix they're very slowly making inroads in American markets. As a result the Silent Wings 2 isn't widely available yet, but a quick visit to Google Shopping can find the Silent Wings 2 for a healthy $40.
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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