I've got an Antec P180 case with the middle hard drive bay removed. In its place I've 2 Sharkoon 120mm fans one in front of the other. These are pointed at a GTX 480 which is overclocked and subsequently has its fan at a higher speed making it noisier. My question is would it be worth changing one of the Sharkoon fans for an Air Penetrator fan. Plus how what type of noise level do they create? I was thinking that if I replace one of the fans I could have it blowing straight up at the GTX 480's heatsink.
I cant speak for the air penetrators as i dont have one. But saying that, you would almost definatley see an improvement. The sharkoons are awesome (i use them too) but they are not as 'aggressive' of an air shifter such as the AP's or the Sycthe GTs, but they are also nice and quiet
APs are amazing. I'm using 3 in my FT02 and I have never found a better mover of air. Very quiet too.
I've got two AP's arriving tomorrow for the front of my gaming rig so I'll be able to tell you tomorrow night or Friday night. I have a couple of 9.5v resistors coming as well, just in case.
Why do you have one fan in front of the other? Directionality? Wouldn't a DIY funnel do the job better? You'd get better results putting that second fan in parallel if you can.
I'd consider the Sharkoon to be a very noisy fan. So personally I wouldn't be worrying about what the other ones are going to sound like. At least Fingers can tell you tomorrow though.
Oh yeah!!! And can you hear yourself typing above the fans??? Apparently so!! They look an interesting proposition from bittechs own preview.
Cool. All I know is the sharkoon one I have sounds like the sort of fan we use at band practice... or less reputable people use as carbon filters.
I bought a couple of 120mm AP's (they arrived this morning), your P180 should take the same size all round: http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/specs/P180_spe.html.
I won't get to install them until at least tonight, maybe even tomorrow night. As soon as I do I'll post back here.
Okay, just done some unscientific load tests with the 120mm Air Penetrators replacing two 1450rpm Gentle Typhoons in the front of my Antec 300. By my reckoning, and taking into account an ambient increase in the room of 1C between multiple tests, the AP's have reduced my GPU temps (2 x GTX 460's in SLI) by around 2C-3C, depending on the test. They are slightly noisier than the Gentle Typhoon's - it is more a different kind of noise - but the case is right next to my head on the desk at the moment. If it was back under the desk I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It is not a big difference in temperature really and could be accounted for by the unscientific nature of my tests. I'll see how it goes for a while then run the same tests with the Silent Eagle 1000rpm's and compare (tomorrow).
they certainly seem to push a lot of air for the RPM's, but you're right they have a distinctive tone
I've just run the same test but the the 9.5v resistors on the AP's. No difference in GPU temps compared to their full speed but a much more tolerable sound. I don't think there is a lot in it between these and the Gentle Typhoons. I'll compare them to the Silent Eagles tomorrow. The airflow with the AP's is certainly more directional but I am not sure it makes any difference in my Antec 300. I think the directional airflow would make more of a difference in a larger case - e,g, an FT02, ATCS840 or a big Lian Li and maybe a P180 like the OP's.
I think the key might be to have nothing in front of them (i.e HDD cage). They're certainly better than the lian li ref models anyways.
