Wherewolf?
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5 years ago I bought this Antec P180 B case as I whas really tired of listening to my previous box 80 mm case fans roaring.
I bet that case gave me a slight tinitus.
Well, the Antec case are really nice as such. But the 3 x 120 mm Antec fans where a dissapointment. They made a slight ratteling sound at high and mid settings. The settings were done by the included switchbox btw. It did'nt help much to use rubber pegs instead of screws to mount the fans either.
Pretty sloppy to make a case that is intended for silent computing, and then add noisy fans to it is'nt it?
To be fair, Antec have got better fans nowadays for their cases though.
So I started a mayor reserach on the net for a silent 120 mm with a good airflow. Could'nt be that hard I belived.
I whas wrong! Either, the fan whas silent, but instead it had a ridiciously low cfm or vise versa.
Well, after some hunting at the net, I happend to stumble over a review on the Noctua fans.
According to this, these fans had all that I whas looking for. I found a little later on, a couple of very positive reviews by customers too.
So I decided to take the risk and ordered a couple of 1200 rpm, 120 mm.
I was a bit nervous when fireing up the rig with these fans as exhaust only, and I did have removed all the Antec, "rattlers" too btw.
My first reaction whas : - What?! I could now only hear a slight hizzing sound when the air where sucked in thru the front case intakes.
Then my second reaction whas a suspision that the temperatures would go much higher, as no way I belived, these fans possibly could push the amount of air as stated by the manufacturer and being this quiet?
But checking the temperatures in HW monitor, showed that they where quite nice. Actually a tiny little bit better than with the Antecs at full throttle.
Now, these Nocta fans have done their work for as said 5 years without any hiccups. And since then, the guys at Noctua have taken the fans to new hights. A friend of mine bought a 92 mm and 1600 rpm Noctua recently for his CoolerMaster TX3 cpu cooler. And it whas as silent as a 92 mm fan ever can be. Despite the fact it runs at 1600 rpm max and then have a cfm at 64.3 according to the specification. At 1300 rpm it's very silent. So he is very happy with the fan.
Yes, these fans cost quite a bit more than most other fans. But besides the silent operation and the good cfm. You also get a 6 year warranty, a life span of minimum 150.000 hours and some rubber, vibration dampers. plus 2 X resistors to force lower rpm. And some screws.
Some may wonder over the pretty odd colours of these fans? But I have heard that Noctua picked this colours of an Owl to match their logo.
So, if you are on the lookout for a good and silent fan? Here you have it!
I bet that case gave me a slight tinitus.
Well, the Antec case are really nice as such. But the 3 x 120 mm Antec fans where a dissapointment. They made a slight ratteling sound at high and mid settings. The settings were done by the included switchbox btw. It did'nt help much to use rubber pegs instead of screws to mount the fans either.
Pretty sloppy to make a case that is intended for silent computing, and then add noisy fans to it is'nt it?
To be fair, Antec have got better fans nowadays for their cases though.
So I started a mayor reserach on the net for a silent 120 mm with a good airflow. Could'nt be that hard I belived.
I whas wrong! Either, the fan whas silent, but instead it had a ridiciously low cfm or vise versa.
Well, after some hunting at the net, I happend to stumble over a review on the Noctua fans.
According to this, these fans had all that I whas looking for. I found a little later on, a couple of very positive reviews by customers too.
So I decided to take the risk and ordered a couple of 1200 rpm, 120 mm.
I was a bit nervous when fireing up the rig with these fans as exhaust only, and I did have removed all the Antec, "rattlers" too btw.
My first reaction whas : - What?! I could now only hear a slight hizzing sound when the air where sucked in thru the front case intakes.
Then my second reaction whas a suspision that the temperatures would go much higher, as no way I belived, these fans possibly could push the amount of air as stated by the manufacturer and being this quiet?
But checking the temperatures in HW monitor, showed that they where quite nice. Actually a tiny little bit better than with the Antecs at full throttle.
Now, these Nocta fans have done their work for as said 5 years without any hiccups. And since then, the guys at Noctua have taken the fans to new hights. A friend of mine bought a 92 mm and 1600 rpm Noctua recently for his CoolerMaster TX3 cpu cooler. And it whas as silent as a 92 mm fan ever can be. Despite the fact it runs at 1600 rpm max and then have a cfm at 64.3 according to the specification. At 1300 rpm it's very silent. So he is very happy with the fan.
Yes, these fans cost quite a bit more than most other fans. But besides the silent operation and the good cfm. You also get a 6 year warranty, a life span of minimum 150.000 hours and some rubber, vibration dampers. plus 2 X resistors to force lower rpm. And some screws.
Some may wonder over the pretty odd colours of these fans? But I have heard that Noctua picked this colours of an Owl to match their logo.
So, if you are on the lookout for a good and silent fan? Here you have it!
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