Hardware What's the best 120mm case fan?

We've collected 22 120mm fans and put them through rigorous noise and airflow tests to see which is the best. Read on to see how to keep your hardware cool while keeping the noise your PC makes to a minimum.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2009/09/28/what-s-the-best-case-fan/1

 

Was not expecting this. Good article though, too bad I already bought my Fans.


Also,

 

This is an extremely useful article, guys! I was in the market for some decent 120mm fans, are you actually capable of clairvoyance?

 

I have a reclamation, or two:
- the trash bag used is to small
- and it should be of another colour (yellow, pink,..)
- pizza box should have been used

I hope you'll expand with bigger size ventilators,..

 

Hard to believe there's such a big variation in products which are essentially identical.

 

I was really surprised by this too, but when you think of the huge differences in F1 car performance caused by minor additions in aerodynamic design, you start to understand how a few extra mm of plastic or a a few degrees of fin pitch can make a big, big difference.

 

Well my S-Flex are off to the bin.

Never did like their noise signature, they do cool wee though!

Thanks BT for a very informative and well put together article.

 

No wonder you're putting them in the bin. Eurgh!

 

Thank you so much for this article. I'll be passing this around.

 

I heard alot about the Gentle Typhoon. I replaced my NF-P12's with the AP-14's and they are indeed much quieter and push alot more air despite the higher RPM. They are not quite so nicely finished though (cable is unbraided and a bit short, and fiddly to mount), but for half the price I can live with it. Now all we need is a 140mm version.

Are there any plans for more fan reviews? Of perticular interest are the enermax apolloish and akasa apatche (which is apparently made by Scythe so should not be tripe).

 

I'm so glad when i built my system i bought sharkoon!

I put an akasa amber fan in the roof the other day and it was so noisy! My system is almost silent, and thats the way i like it!

 

still, for me the best case fans are Nexus silent 120, got 5 of them in p182 at full speed and can't hear them, true i've got soundproofing in my case, but still after testing about 20+ different fans nexus came as a winner in my box.

 

LOL I predicted this since i paid for this article a couple months ago ¬_¬

 

This is a good article taken from CustomPC. How come you didn't post the other fan sizes you tested in the mag?

It would have been nice to see a Yate Loon fan in there, especially for the watercooling testing as they are widely regarded to be the best for this job.

Also seeing all the stats together like this but with actual cfm & dBA instead of 7/10 etc would have been more informative (IMHO):





Anyway, great stuff as usual.

 

Very good job with this article, and an interesting way of measuring "real world" airflow. I have a couple of Scythe fans myself, though not the ones in the test. I've had a liking for them for a while due to their effectiveness and low noise.

 

Great article, but can you do a bit more please? As the radiator test showed there's a big difference between using a fan to shove some air in/out of the case and using one to shove air between the grills of a heatsink.

Would have liked you to run all the fans through something like a thermalright ultra 120 with the sides taped, then into your bag to measure their effectiveness for an aircooled heatsink.

Would also have liked you to measure some of the slower S-flexes.

Any chance of a follow up?

 

Thanks for the article! I was looking for something as well in the lines of a Slim Fan..

 

No Yate Loons? ;(

 

Lol, how very apt that phrase is for me, since it was only a week ago I bought my first Custom PC mag just for the fan article! Still, I guess there are more fans tested in the mag.

 

For those that have asked - we'll be putting the other fan size reviews up shortly as we didn't want to put a monster 20+ page article up covering all fans sizes in one go.