Are Cougar Fans Good?

[Punkster217]

So I'm thinking of buying the new NZXT Noctis 450 case and I was thinking of getting some Cougar Dual X fans. Maybe 3 120mm for intake, and 3 140mm for exhaust. Do you guys think these fans will do a good job?

 

[Darkbreeze]

I have an Enthoo Pro (5 fans ... will be 7 when cooler arrives), an Enthoo Luxe (9 fans) and Enthoo Primo (15 fans). I have had a lotta back and forth with Phanteks TS (Brian) via the OCN forum "Enthoo Owner's Club" thread and via e-mail. One was noisy, they sent replacements. Also have 5 hubs.

So, as I thought, no budget fans there at all. That's about what I figured.

See, that's what I'm talking about. Anybody who knows their way around a rig isn't going to use a cheap fan except in a pinch, and then, not for longer than necessary. I mean, you can get by with a Cooler Master Sickleflow, which has great CFM, is relatively quiet on paper, but doesn't have a high quality motor or bearing. In six months, it will be loud, and will have lost some of it's capacity, almost guaranteed. In a year, it will be noticeable at any RPM. From there on, it's life is probably numbered in weeks rather than years. At least if it's being used for a good number of hours per day.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Of course it's stoopid. So is calling 1,000 MB a GB instead of 1024.

When somebody wants to sell you something they pick statistics that a) give the bigger numbers and b) most consumers won't understand. That was the argument when knowledgeable consumers complained about the switch from 1024 to 1000.... "answer was regular folks are unfamiliar with base 2" but the fact was it simply made the drive look bigger.... when the change came, some vendors resisted but finally gave in as they were at a sales disadvantage.

MTBF is useful in a server farm cause it helps you determine anticipated spares inventory and downtime. So the marketing types who saw these numbers figured this was great. Back in the day, for bearings for example, we used to sue "B-10 Life" which indicated that 10% of the bearings would fail within xx hours. That's useful measurement.

Fortunately we have this for most components at least .... how many failed in 6 - 12 months of use:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-2/cartes-meres.html

no fans tho

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah, I'm familiar with that article. I agree it would sure be nice to have a similar profiling of popular fans and also something more concrete and applicable to consumer usage rather than data center usage, than the Backblaze data on hard drives. That's why I tend to go with what I know is a good product when it comes to fans. I dislike guesswork and I really dislike having somebody bring me back a system because a fan or other component has failed.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Punkster, I'll leave you in the very good hands of Karadjgne and Jack for now, gotta get some sleep. Hopefully this discussion at least gave you some food for thought when it comes to fan selection. It's not a side of PC building that novice users generally give much thought to, but they should. Without good case, GPU, PSU and CPU cooling, things tend not to last as long when running high end gear.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The backblaze data is absolutely useless. The bonehead that is buying consumer drives for a server application for which they were not designed oughta be give a pink slip. Only thing i can think of is it's cheaper for them to buy 3 consumer drives than 1 server drive. Consumer drives don't have firmware that supports staggered spin up, harmonic balancing, differential queuing, vibration monitoring, etc.

Consumer drives utilize head parking as a protective and power saving measure. What this does is park the head when drive not in use so if ya bump ya case, the head doesn't hit and damage the platters.... each drive is rated for like 250-500k park cycles which is like 230 / 460 a day for 3 years of usage. In a server application, a drive could go thru 50-100k cycles in a month. That's why server / NAS / RAID drives typically have firmware that often completely disables head parking . Hitachi for example doesn't even support the command which allows this which is why they do well in the backblaze study.

Also when you have 100s of drives of the exact same model, you can amplify harmonic vibrations....server drives are designed to resist this, consumer drives are not.

 

[Darkbreeze]

That was kind of my point. That data is useless for consumers. It pisses me off when I see people reference those reports as if they actually reflect any relevant probability of how reliable any particular drive model or brand is when used a mainstream or enthusiast system, which as you say are worlds apart from enterprise drives or usage. Anyhow, I agree. Useless. That's why it would be nice to get some manufacturer RMA data, but I really doubt we'll ever see that.

 

[Punkster217]

So guys, definitely the Phanteks over the Cougars?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Without any doubt.

 

[Karadjgne]

Without a doubt. I mean don't get anyone wrong on this, the Cougars are good fans, but in that price range they just don't compare to the quality and performance of the Phanteks

 

[Punkster217]

Guys, I've been looking into the specs between the Phanteks PH-F120SP and the Cougar 12CM CFG fans and from what I see, it looks like the Cougars do a better job.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835709033 Phanteks
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835553012 Cougar

The Phanteks operate at a higher rpm and produce 54.4 CFM and the Cougars operate at a slightly lower rpm and produce 64.37 CFM. Plus, the Phanteks' noise level is 24.2 dB(A) and the Cougar's noise level is 16.6 dB(A)

I don't have the greatest knowledge with fans, but the Cougar's specs look better, should I still not go with them?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Like I iterated several times on this thread, the specs you see on paper AIN'T always what you get. The listed specs provided by a KNOWN quality manufacturer are far more likely to represent actual findings, while those provided by budget manufacturers are far more likely to be padded or outright wrong. This is the reason why there are hardware reviews, to see whether what the brand says is, IS. Often, it's NOT.

But either way, you won't get a terrible fan. Personally, I'd ditch the preference for an LED fan, that's a novelty feature that will wear off quickly and should always be a secondary consideration to performance. If you plan to be looking at your case while you game or whatever you do, great, get the LED fans. If you plan to be looking at your monitor(s) and want the best protection and performance you can reasonably afford, then I'd base my purchase decision entirely on that.

These are the fans I'd most recommend for pure performance if you're going with three 120mm for intake. With 103CFM and a staggering 7.63mm H2O static pressure, it's pretty hard to beat them. They do have a 43.5db level at max speed, but it's unlikely you'll ever see them run past half speed with three of them and since you said you'd be wearing headphones anyhow, it's a non-issue.

http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=80&lng=en&set=1


These would be another good choice with 71 CFM and 3.94mm H2O static pressure. Decibel level is only 29.7 at full speed, which is half of the fan above, but also half the static pressure. A very good fan, and you're likely to only see about 22-24db in most cases. The Phanteks and Cougar, by comparison, have only 1.4 and 1.2 H20 static pressure.


If a standard enthusiast fan is desired, which doesn't have near the capability, but is much quieter, I'd go with one of these:

http://noctua.at/en/products/product-line-chromax/nf-f12-pwm-chromax-black-swap

http://noctua.at/en/products/fan/nf-f12-pwm

http://www.blacknoise.com/site/en/products/noiseblocker-it-fans/nb-eloop-series/120x120x25mm.php

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA68V46Y1206&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

 

[Punkster217]

After some thinking I think I'm gonna go with the Phanteks SP lineup. But for the NZXT Noctis 450, should I go with the 3 120mm or 2 140mm for intake?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Since you indicated sound levels weren't a concern, I'd go with three 120mm's. Personally I like the 140's as mentioned by Jack. Two 140's still move a LOT of air when necessary, are quieter when it's not necessary and if you go with PWM models, they're quieter still. Plus, the difference between 3 120's and two 140's isn't really that much unless you're running them through radiators where the higher static pressure is more of an issue. There's a pretty in depth thread on this we had a while back and I'll see if I can find a link to it for you. Sort of interesting reading.

For the exhausts, if you're getting those as well, I'd be less concerned with static pressure as there is basically no resistance for exhaust fans. Two 140's up top would work well.

 

[Karadjgne]

The specs tell me that my Dodge station wagon will do 0-60 in 5.5 seconds. That's impressive by any standard. What they don't say is that's on a test track, with stock continental tires at sea level on regular gas at 72°F. I've run that car at 80°F, with yokohama tires, 93 octane on a rough surface blacktop Highway and done 0-60 in 4.7 seconds using the auto-stick instead of just drive.

Stats are fine for basic analysis, but that's as far as it goes. There's a multitude of variables that can and do change the results. It may just be that the psu used for the tests was so overpowered that at load it didn't change voltage, as is common with many cheaper built psus, going from 12.2v at idle to 11.7v at load, which can affect fan performance. Or maybe the test lab was very low humidity, almost sterile, whereas in real life performance, that humidity is much higher and can affect noise travel through air.

There's a multitude of variables, all which will affect performance of a fan, most so small that they are almost unmeasurable, but added up can be a rather large impact. Stats don't take this into consideration in any way. There is only 1 thing you can honestly rely on to be accurate. Personal opinion. Most ppl will be rather quick to point out any shortcomings, like the excessive noise of an AMD stock cooler etc, as they have probably had some experience with that. JackNaylorPE has several Phanteks fans, run 24/7 for over a year, and has nothing at all negative to say about them. Darkbreeze has used the Cougars, and has had several negative things to say.

Believe the stats if you wish, its your prerogative, but considering the level of knowledge and experience those two ppl have, I'd be more inclined to believe the Phanteks are better fans for the money.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Here's that thread for some reading on the differences between fan configurations.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2482161/h440-enthoo-luxe.html


I'm not sure we ever came to a conclusion but I for one found that on my pretty moderately modified Storm Enforcer, I got pretty great temps on my fairly decently overclocked FX chip when I modded the case to accept dual 140's in front rather than the dual 120's or 200mm Megaflow and the sound levels are non-existent at idle, well within tolerable limits at full GPU and CPU loads.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2528266/140mm-rear-exhaust-storm-enforcer.html

 

[Punkster217]

Here's that thread for some reading on the differences between fan configurations.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2482161/h440-enthoo-luxe.html


I'm not sure we ever came to a conclusion but I for one found that on my pretty moderately modified Storm Enforcer, I got pretty great temps on my fairly decently overclocked FX chip when I modded the case to accept dual 140's in front rather than the dual 120's or 200mm Megaflow and the sound levels are non-existent at idle, well within tolerable limits at full GPU and CPU loads.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2528266/140mm-rear-exhaust-storm-enforcer.html

Yeah I'm just gonna go with the 3 120mm for intake, 2 140mm up top for exhaust, and 1 140mm in the rear for exhaust as well

 

[Darkbreeze]

That will, of a certainty, provide plenty of high performance cooling for whatever you decide to throw at it.