Thanks for that but, I never use the new-fangled emojis. What makes you say that? My comment referred to my inability to use the code you quoted, as I have a TKL keyboard.
Just taken another, more in-depth, look at it. I see there is a great deal more than just emojis there. I'm sure I'll be using it in the future, even if only for the ₤ sign, as I have a US keyboard.
I managed to set aside a little time this evening to get the best out of my current setup, and the suggestion to add a couple of drops of Fairy liquid to the water worked wonders - thank you! The fluid moves a lot more freely in the tubes and it'll be considerably easier to make more accurate readings. I'm going to take several measurements with the u-gauge in the vertical inclination, and then I need to work out how to standardise the angle of incline (it's relative to the chamber atm, which may or may not be mounted level). I measured a few Delta fans this time round because I have the specifications available, and I'm really pleased that my readings are in line with what the fans are supposed to produce - it makes the job a lot easier. I'm measuring the speed each time I take a reading of the static pressure, and I've noticed with a couple of the fans that they are running significantly slower than they should and are therefore generating less static pressure than specified. All of my results are being collated in a spreadsheet for future reference, and more in-depth testing will see how performance fares when I turn the speed down. Here are the two most promising results, which if anything show very clearly the advantage of the 38mm fans. I have four of these AFCs (well, one is the AFB variant...) and they are all quite different. (NB: I'm measuring one side of the gauge and multiplying the value by 2.)
I think we really need a dB meter reading to make these relevant otherwise its fairly meaningless for 99.999% of people on here
Happy to see it's working out for you - good shout Mr_Mistoffelees 14mmH2O! 135Pa.. sweeet. Yeah that's gunna be noisy
He's testing static pressure. A few degrees variation in ambient temp won't make a hair of a difference to surface tension inside a 3/8 ID (?) hose.
@David yep it's 10mm ID so pretty much 3/8". @Bloody_Pete I'm definitely interested in measuring acoustic performance however it's not something I've ever really bothered about as I know that you can't have good cooling performance with "silent" fans, regardless of what the companies tell us. Back when Martin did his extensive testing of fans he concluded that there's really no point in differentiating between fans when running at or below 1,000rpm. His words from https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress.com/category/fans/ I'm noticing that the static pressure almost completely disappears with most fans at the 1,000rpm mark, which is what people tend to run their system fans at; and it therefore follows that spending money on so-called "static pressure" fans (here's looking at you, Corsair...) is virtually pointless. For all that the NH-A12x25 and Gentle Typhoon are extremely impressive fans, they are still far from quiet when running at full tilt. Turn them down, and you lose all that wonderful static pressure you just paid £30 for! So today in my continuing efforts to "calibrate" my manometer I've tested some of the "big boy" fans, and that Nidec scares me like no other fan. For all that it's a masterpiece of engineering, it's just raw, unadulterated, air-pushing power. Even when bolted to the chamber it loses only around 5% of its rotational speed in free air. I'll let the results speak for themselves. Within the next couple of weeks I hope to put together a video of the setup and how I'm measuring the static pressure.
@cobalt6700 indeed - on paper, it has higher static pressure than any other 120mm 12v fan. Even compared to my best Sanyo Denki and Delta fans, it is entirely in a league of its own, somewhat justifying the $110 asking price!
That is very interesting, can you run a test on a typical case fan (maybe a noctua) at 25, 50, 75 and 100% and record SP? I had never considered that!
@LennyRhys Oh wow. That's a bit special. I just went back through the datasheet - I didn't read it very well the first time These fans are totally mental compared to my experience with PC fans - never been in the server world, only home PC/workstation machines. Out of interest, whats the natural habitat for one of these things? I had a quick look on google but pretty much just found people playing with them.
Hey @LennyRhys , I've got a 80mm Vantec Tornado here I'd be happy to donate to your experiments if it's of interest. It's in a pretty sorry state, the plug has been cut off and its been drawn on with permanent marker but it still works. It's a Noctua compared to your Nidec but thought of you when I re-discovered it recently.
Hahaha yes that was the OC.com crew a few years back, and it all started because a guy bought this fan and wanted to build a controller for it. The search began for a "standard" 12V 4-pin fan with the highest static pressure, and that's when the G1238B was discovered, and one of the guys bought two of them. I bought four of the San Aces (still have three of them) and have been tinkering with fans and controllers ever since. The G1238B is so specialised (and expensive) that you won't find it in server cabinets or the like, and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a guy harvested some from a CNC milling machine or similar. @lancer778544 Thanks for the offer - I'm limited to 120mm fans at the moment because of the aperture on the chamber, but if I get round to adapting it for larger and smaller fans I'll let you know! @Goatee once I set the manometer up for finer measurements that's exactly what I hope to do. Seeing how adversely the high static pressure affects the speed of the fans, I'm curious how heatsinks and case grills affect speed and power draw, so I'll be looking into that as well.
Dust filters would be a interesting one, as we know it restricts them but actually seeing data across several fans so we can chart it would be great!
Ahh, sounds fun. That's cool Cool, that makes sense, cheers I would imagine dust filters are going to make a fair difference, especially with the flow rates of the fans LennyRhys is testing here. I would be interested if these little axial fans follow the fan laws - they should. In simple terms, 2x the flow - 4x the pressure - 8x the power. @LennyRhys are you measuring power draw?
Yep dust filters is a good idea - I reckon they will kill static pressure performance pretty quickly. I have a few good 92mm fans and hope to make an aperture for the chamber... same for 140mm fans as they are really popular at the moment. This afternoon I had a productive session with the incline setup, and I'm really pleased by how accurately it's reading the numbers of the slower fans. I used my results from the standard u-gauge to come up with a conversion factor for the incline measurements and it turns out that 20:9 is just the ticket, giving me very consistent results across the board. I don't want to be too specific with values less than whole numbers which is why I've used < and > as qualifiers. The first pic is a shot of the "calibrated" zero, just to make sure all my measurements are taken from the same starting point. I re-tested several fans many times, and after all the back and forth I got some great results. You can see in the last pic that the measurement looks to be around 1/4mm, but I've rounded it up to "less than 0.5" on the scale. As before, all the values must be doubled because it's still a u-gauge!
Awesome! This is where a sound meter is really needed as I'd love to know the difference between that GT and the A12!!! In my experiance GT's were really silent.
Haha I have that fan - that's the VA450DC in post #54 @cobalt6700 yes I will be measuring current with a DMM. @Bloody_Pete I have to say the Noctua is quieter, but the speed is lower and so is the static pressure, so it's a trade-off. In saying that, the actual performance difference will be so small that it's moot. But I do plan to do a head-to-head heatsink test with both fans for the sake of thoroughness as I'm equally curious!
@LennyRhys doesn't know this, but the bugger cost me my perfect rating on eBay. I sold almost all my computer hardware years ago due to tendonitis, just getting back into things now a bit. I put a AFC1212DE on eBay I got from Lenny, I didn't want anyone to try and connect it to their motherboard and blow it up, so stated in the auction how much power it draws etc and included photos of it plugged into an external supply and put a big warning up. Some idiot bought it and of course what did they do, plugged it in and something went pop. Negative feedback, I complained but eBay sided with them and I lost my 3000+ perfect feedback! Still bitter to this day...
