No offense, here are some things that bother me about your understanding of fans.

[Rover4444]

There is Noctua and then there is everyone else. Accept no substitutes!!!

I accept Arctic as my substitute. Part of the AIO, part of the case.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I accept Arctic as my substitute. Part of the AIO, part of the case.

I was being sarcastic. T30-120 or bust for me lol.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Noise cancellation is a thing among fans.

 

[Onasi]

This thread has a cursed “Katanas are Underpowered in d20” meme vibe. I don’t even fully grasp what OP wants to accomplish by this. Like, yeah, any fan technically has an efficiency sweet-spot, but it’s so completely irrelevant in PC fans that wasting time finding it for each model (accounting for individual sample variance too, for maximum suffering) and including it in the tests is just piling on unnecessary work onto reviewers.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Yate Loon used to be a pretty popular brand. Hardly hear about them anymore.
Warning: Throw Back post -->

Thread 'Yate Loon fans any good?'

Oct 1, 2008

I'm looking at some 140mm fans to possibly replace the ones I have now. One of them has had a bearing go I think, and although I'm gonna get an RMA, its kinda left a bad taste in my mouth so to speak. I have heard of yate loons being mentioned before but I didnt know what they were like. Are they better than the sharkoon's I have now?

Here is a link to the ones I'm looking at (Model No. D14SL-12 )

http://www.yateloon.com/style/conte...tomer_id=1356&name_id=31277&rid=8511&id=38839

• alexp999
• Replies: 12
• Forum: Overclocking & Cooling

 

[Visible Noise]

Wut?

There is Noctua and then there is everyone else. Accept no substitutes!!!

Well, there’s water.

 

[thesmokingman]

Yate Loon used to be a pretty popular brand. Hardly hear about them anymore.
Warning: Throw Back post -->

Thread 'Yate Loon fans any good?'

Oct 1, 2008

I'm looking at some 140mm fans to possibly replace the ones I have now. One of them has had a bearing go I think, and although I'm gonna get an RMA, its kinda left a bad taste in my mouth so to speak. I have heard of yate loons being mentioned before but I didnt know what they were like. Are they better than the sharkoon's I have now?

Here is a link to the ones I'm looking at (Model No. D14SL-12 )

http://www.yateloon.com/style/conte...tomer_id=1356&name_id=31277&rid=8511&id=38839

• alexp999
• Replies: 12
• Forum: Overclocking & Cooling

I went thru a phase with Yates back in the day, can't beat 5 bux per fan iirc. They were decent for the spare change they costed albeit short lived.

Personally I'm still rocking decade old GTs.

 

[cvaldes]

A handful of PC hardware reviewers recognize this conundrum and will do tests at equivalent rpms and/or provide noise-normalized metrics.

Of course sane people understand that there's the notion of statistically significant sample sizes which none of these reviews cover.

Moreover, it's difficult to quantify the value of a longer warranty period or even balance out price-performance metrics. Some people care more about how much air a fan moves. That's fine. Other people care more about how quiet the fan runs. That's equally fine. Some people only care about saving a few bucks. That's their choice.

The noise factor is interesting because people have different ears which respond differently to different frequencies even if the overall dB/A are the same.

None of these reviewers address long term reliability. And it's important to point out that reliability isn't just how long a fan can spin until it stops spinning. If a fan starts making annoying noises in two years, there's less value in it (to me) than a fan that might cost a little more but maintains its same acoustic profile.

The best course of action is to stick with a manufacturer you can trust and try out their fans in your specific build. If you have multiple builds (like me), you might find yourself using a variety of models from different manufacturers and walk away reasonably satisfied with all of them in specific usage cases.

I realize that this sort of level headed attitude is not always practiced on the Internet.

Pity.

If some people are happy with the $1 fans they buy on AliExpress, that's great. More power to them. However premium fan manufacturers raise the bar for quality. Today's cheapass PC fans are WAY better than cheapass PC fans from 30 years ago. If no one cares about doing anything better, we'd all be stuck with crap fans in crap cases powered by crap PSUs. And with even increasing power requirements of other components (motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU), this would be horrible.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I went thru a phase with Yates back in the day, can't beat 5 bux per fan iirc. They were decent for the spare change they costed albeit short lived.

Personally I'm still rocking decade old GTs.

I have a couple Delta AFB1212SHE 12v 1.6a that I position here and there... I have this thing about moving the air....

 

[Noci]

My understanding of fans: fans must blow.

On the other hand uhh side, they suck....

All I know is that their purpose is to force (directional) air movement in order to discharge generated heat. So, generally speaking: how much volume of air needs to pass at which speed over a surface to create the desired delta-T of that surface.
Just imagine how many variables there will already be with a regular pc case with a number of fans, a variety surfaces with different fluctuating temperatures and even the impact of positive or negative air pressure in that case.
Diving into the rabbit hole of the science and complexity behind the interaction of aerodynamics and thermodynamics for each induvidual (pc)case is unrealistic.

So what I'm trying to say is that the efficiency of each individual fan is only of very minor importance.

Noise perception is mostly an induvidual thing and noisy is just an opinion .

With all the testing and reviews of fans it gives a good indication of how they perform in comparrison to each other, nothing more nothing less.

The balance is where the real knowledge lies.

Like you say, balance is all.
This means as fans being a part of the cooling system, one just has to find the sweetspot with their own personal preferences either it being performance, noise levels and even aesthetics or brand loyalty.
Doubt if induvidual fan efficiency is even a thing and that someone would even consider it when choosing fans.

 

[chrcoluk]

I kind of get the point from the OP, fans can have about 80% cooling capability with a slow as about 30% RPM. Some fans I got from Amazon to cool my NUC, were all way too fast, and with no way to slow them down, had to use an attenuator.

I would like to see max fan speed have less emphasis in reviews.

PC fans air moving efficiency is basically of no consequence for PCs

pc's are cheap and so are pc fans, I'd be more concerned with noise (cfm vs .rpm vs. db) and warranty. Even that is generalised though. Forced convection cooling is related to velocity, so whatever fan can get the best velocity at the lowest noise is good enough.

In underground mining when you have multiple 5000+hp fans consuming massive amounts of energy that's when efficiency gets looked at.

Cheapest fan I have brought for PC use in the last 3 years was £24 (fractal), I have paid over £40 (noctua) for some fans, I guess we have different ideas of cheap, efficiency is important as I expect affects life expectancy of the fan, and of course noise.

 

[Macro Device]

Cheapest fan I have brought for PC use in the last 3 years was £24 (fractal), I have paid over £40 (noctua) for some fans, I guess we have different ideas of cheap, efficiency is important as I expect affects life expectancy of the fan, and of course noise.

And I only use the cheapest fans on the market in my gaming computers. The idea behind this is if you need fans fancier than that it means you're doing something wrong.

NB: this only applies to desktop gaming PCs. Any other computers might actually need more serious equipment.

 

[Shrek]

Cheapest fan I have brought for PC use in the last 3 years was £24 (fractal), I have paid over £40 (noctua) for some fans, I guess we have different ideas of cheap, efficiency is important as I expect affects life expectancy of the fan, and of course noise.

At that price my 6 case fans would have cost a small fortune.

Got a 3 pack of Antec T3 120mm fans for $30

Way I see it, $10 for a fan is a better way to keep things cool than some fancy thermal paste.

 

[Caring1]

My understanding of fans: fans must blow.

Some suck.

 

[Macro Device]

Some suck.

In case of fans, the more you suck the less you suck.

 

[Frick]

And I only use the cheapest fans on the market in my gaming computers. The idea behind this is if you need fans fancier than that it means you're doing something wrong.

More expensive fans have a tendency to be quieter. But yeah, this is basically my attitude as well, especially nowadays with PWM and shit.

Some suck.

A fan must do both.

 

[Macro Device]

More expensive fans have a tendency to be quieter.

While I understand this concern I personally couldn't care less. If this isn't enough to injure me physically then I don't care.

Let's say you're building a gaming desktop computer of commonly available parts. In modern days, there's practically no sense in getting a ridiculously fast CPU for gaming purposes, even a standard Ryzen 7 7700 will serve you exceptionally well. So, considering this and considering the fact the stock settings have some overkill wattage in mind and shaving a hundred MHz or two isn't a big deal for actual gaming performance but it drastically lessens the cooling requirements so that you just use the stock cooler with the stock fan and never get too hot. Unless you messed up the TIM application or chose something that's not made of right materials.
GPU coolers are generally overbuilt and thus GPUs don't need additional cooling. Exceptions happen so if you bought an exception then again, you did something wrong.
RAM, too, isn't much of a concern.
SSDs are way more power efficient than HDDs and they don't need active cooling most of the time. In a gaming PC, they practically never do. You bought a stupidly fast gen 5 drive? It's on you, buddy.

And so on and so forth. Adding vastly sophisticated coolers because otherwise it overheats or it doesn't but is too loud means you messed up with part picking, in-case geometry, TIM application, BIOS settings, or the combination of those. Or maybe your room is too hot but then again, you should probably postpone the PC build until you fix your air conditioning.

 

[Shrek]

SSDs are way more power efficient than HDDs

I thought they were about the same (compared to a 2.5" hard drive)

Or maybe your room is too hot but then again, you should probably postpone the PC build until you fix your air conditioning.

I try to make my desktop able to tolerate heat, a lot cheaper than cooling the room.

 

[Macro Device]

I thought they were about the same (compared to a 3.5" drive)

I have a PSU that can power up a SATA SSD but can't power up an HDD. I tested it a billion times and my tests show that even under the most ridiculous load, SATA SSDs draw less power than idle 3.5" HDDs.

 

[Shrek]

My bad, I meant a 2.5" drive

 

[Macro Device]

My bad, I meant a 2.5" drive

These can power up but they crash under load. SSDs never crash.

 

[chrcoluk]

And I only use the cheapest fans on the market in my gaming computers. The idea behind this is if you need fans fancier than that it means you're doing something wrong.

NB: this only applies to desktop gaming PCs. Any other computers might actually need more serious equipment.

Too many bad experiences when cheaping out, dont like having to change my fans often.

 

[Macro Device]

Too many bad experiences when cheaping out, dont like having to change my fans often.

I replace mine every 4 to 5 years for 3odd pounds apiece. Maybe it's just my good luck with those.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I am offended at my knowledge of fans, I thought I was this thread's OnlyFan.

I thought they were about the same (compared to a 2.5" hard drive)

No, SSDs are still much more efficient overall since their operational time to load data is a mere fraction of a HDD. Active load is also lower, that motor pulls some serious juice even at lower speeds.

I replace mine every 4 to 5 years for 3odd pounds apiece. Maybe it's just my good luck with those.

I run mine till they fail, the oldest cooler master 212 fan is running 15 years strong now.

My Noctuas are all currently 8-9 years old, havent lost one yet.

A fan must do both.

Sir, she's gone from Suck to Blow!

In case of fans, the more you suck the less you suck.

The more you suck, the less you suck and the more you blow, and the more you blow the less you blow.

 

[Frick]

While I understand this concern I personally couldn't care less. If this isn't enough to injure me physically then I don't care.

Ok.

Let's say you're building a gaming desktop computer of commonly available parts. In modern days, there's practically no sense in getting a ridiculously fast CPU for gaming purposes, even a standard Ryzen 7 7700 will serve you exceptionally well. So, considering this and considering the fact the stock settings have some overkill wattage in mind and shaving a hundred MHz or two isn't a big deal for actual gaming performance but it drastically lessens the cooling requirements so that you just use the stock cooler with the stock fan and never get too hot. Unless you messed up the TIM application or chose something that's not made of right materials.
GPU coolers are generally overbuilt and thus GPUs don't need additional cooling. Exceptions happen so if you bought an exception then again, you did something wrong.
RAM, too, isn't much of a concern.
SSDs are way more power efficient than HDDs and they don't need active cooling most of the time. In a gaming PC, they practically never do. You bought a stupidly fast gen 5 drive? It's on you, buddy.

And so on and so forth. Adding vastly sophisticated coolers because otherwise it overheats or it doesn't but is too loud means you messed up with part picking, in-case geometry, TIM application, BIOS settings, or the combination of those. Or maybe your room is too hot but then again, you should probably postpone the PC build until you fix your air conditioning.

Ok? Sure, if you downclock stuff the power draw will be lower, but I still have around 400W of heat that has to go somewhere. Also do note that you hinted that too loud for you is when your hearing is physically damaged and that is ... fine I guess but it's also a pretty rare take.

I replace mine every 4 to 5 years for 3odd pounds apiece. Maybe it's just my good luck with those.

And there it is. I've bought ... six fans in my entire life, all of them cheap but not that cheap, and three of them I bought in 2024 because they were on a sale and the fans that came with the 2012 case were pretty loud and one of them was starting to rattle a bit.

I have a PSU that can power up a SATA SSD but can't power up an HDD. I tested it a billion times and my tests show that even under the most ridiculous load, SATA SSDs draw less power than idle 3.5" HDDs.

Then there's something wrong with that PSU.