Cooling 120 and 80mm fans..

looking down quietpc.com there seems to be quite a few decent 120mm and 80mm silent/near silent fans

does anyone have any recomendations for them? need 4 80mm fans for general in/out air flow, and 3 120s to fit on my radiator for water cooling-- so don't have to be fast or anythinig. .just able to push some air.

 

Depends really on CFM you're requiring, etc. Also, are you looking for plain fans, lighted fans, etc?

 

I've just got two Noctua fans (NF-S12 1200) and when I tested them (I couldn't decide which side was in and which side was out) I couldn't hear them at all!

The colour isn't exactly to everyone's taste (father-in-law reckons they're pink!) but they work, no doubt about it!

Andy

 

bog standard fans, no silly LEDs etc. CFM isn't really an issue, the fans can all be turned off and the system still idles at 30c, they're just there for when i need a bit more cooling (doing cpu intensive stuff) so basically the most silent fan that gives the best CFM..

 

If you have a newer board that supports PWM fans, I'd give the Arctic Cooling Arctic Cooling AF Fan 8025 80mm fan a go. They offer 26.8 CFM @ 21 dB, or can undervolted down to 9.5 dB.

If you have normal 3-pin fan connectors, or alternatively, you're using a fan controller, pretty much anything decent manufacturing-wise should work for you. Junk is junk, as a rule. But beware of the crap lines of fans that the 'names' put out as well. I'm prone to use Scythe, Arctic Cooling, or Noctuas when I use 80's (which isn't often). The Enermax Enlobals are good too. Scythe's Minebea series are pretty good, as well as the Kama line. Just depends on budget and what you're really looking for out of the fan in particular.

Good luck!

 

so if i went all noctua that would be nearly silent? and good?

 

I don't see why not. If it's in your budget, go for it.

 

budget's not really an issue, priced it up and it's ~£60 for 7 fans, not bad...

 

No 1200RPM fan, however good, is "nearly silent" in a quiet room. Two similar are twice as loud, four four times as loud. For decent flow you're better off using just 120mm fans and undervolting to below 800RPM.

And I'd save a lot of money and get Nexus. Noctua, IIRC, don't perform as radiator or HS fans, they don't like back-pressure. Check SPCR reviews.

 

VERY true.

Just as system fans they're fine, but don't use the Noctuas for rads. And it would be, for example 1200rpm OR like 15db. Not both. The nexus fans are good, albeit a bit more expensive, or get some Yates. Which are basically the same fans.

 

Yateloons for the 120's, or the Smoked grey Akasas.

 

yeah, my 2 yate loon fans bought from Mankz was superb, cooling my CPU better than ever

 

Ditto; Yate Loons are excellent fans and quite quiet as well.

 

so yates for all of them? (3 120s and 4 80s?)

 

I'd go yates for the rad and Noctuas for the 80's. I totally forgot about you needing rad fans, lol. I would have mentioned Yates all along!

 

fair play. so..

4xNoctua NF-R8 80mm Quiet Case Fan(rated at 17db)
3xYATE LOON 120mm - D12SL-12(rated at 28db?)

 

I run mine at 8v on a controller. Dead Silent.

 

The P-12 Noctua's are meant to sort out the back pressure issue with the fans, I have one arriving today to replace the stock fan in my Tuniq, i'll let you know how it performs, could be an alternative to Yate Loons, i think the stock fan in the tuniq wasa yate loon and i thought it was a little too noisey and didn;t perfom very well, in fact the Antec Tricools that came with my Chasis out performed it!

 

mankz : what controller you got?
sj : look forward to hearing how it goes

 

right three-ish days of constant use and the temps on the cores are about 4 degrees lower, and the motherboard is 3 degrees lower, and the fan is absolutely silent, so as far as i'm concerned teh P-12 is awesome,

*** sorry I hit post and ended up typing the whole message again in the post below, still new to the whole forum posting thing... ***