synphul :
I think you have to come to a balance between quiet and budget. Also consider where the fan is going to be mounted. The 140sp phanteks fan that came with my enthoo pro case has good airflow and is nice and quiet - when it's mounted vertically as a rear exhaust. Mounting it horizontal as a top exhaust with the weight of the fan hanging on the bearing creates a vibration and audible bearing noise. Sort of to be expected since their ufb (updraft floating balance) bearing is a sleeve bearing. By contrast, I picked up two noctua redux 140mm pwm's with sso bearings and they don't make noise mounted horizontally. Something the silentpcreview testing doesn't account for, most of their tests are strictly as vertically mounted cpu cooler conditions.
I had the same noise until I fixed it.
There is a marked difference between the fans that come with the case and the ones that come separately in a box. If you don't use water cooling, you may not have noticed. When I laid them in place and tested them before screwing them to rads, I noticed that the ones in that came in the boxes were dead silent, the ones that came with the case made some noise.
The 10 fans I bought in boxes were equipped with vibration isolators .... little black triangular shaped rubber pads in each corner. I noticed because when installing the top radiator the screws were too long for one of the fans as I had 2 from a box + 1 from the case. So I called Phanteks and they sent a baggie full of the vibration isolators which completely solved the problem. I have 10 installed horizontally )on radiators) and 5 vertically and not one of them makes a hint of a sound at operating speeds. Not a hint of noise from either. If ya case to translate (I used google transllate) they talk about the effect of the vibration isolators here:
http://www.hardware-factory.com/reviews/luftkuehlung/2247-phanteks-ph-f140xp-und-ph-140sp-led.html?showall=&limitstart=
My son has 4 installed horizontally, 3 installed in the top of his Enthoo Luxe and 1 on the bottom along with the vertical 200mm in front and rear fan. Same issue.... luckily my baggie had some leftovers. His box being air cooled has the 3 on top and 1 on bottom as updraft.... none makes a sound at speeds up to 850 rpm .... above that you can hear some air noise but nothing from vibration .... once the isolators were installed.
With both the 15 fan water cooling build and the 8 fan air cooled build (2 cooler / 6 case), no sound is observable under normal operating ranges 325 - 850 rpm. I have to go into FanXpert and manually push up rpm to hear the fans. The fan control utility manages to keep max cpu temp at 65 and max GPU temp at 39 or so during demanding gaming. You can not tell if the system is on or off with your eyes closed, side panels off and sitting 18" away from the box.
http://www.hitechlegion.com/reviews/cooling/heatsinks/37419-phanteks-f140?showall=&start=3
I have been fortunate enough to have been using seven of these in a build for the last month, and time has done nothing but make me like them more...... As case fans, the 140SP and 140XP are very controlled, and able to move excellent amounts of air through the case. This would be expected given the specs, but what is not expected is how quietly they manage to do this. First off, there is no discernible mechanical noise from either iteration of the fan. The bearing is dead silent, and there is no ticking, buzz or hum often associated with PWM present in the 140XP. The other factor is the actual pitch of the fan, which is lower than most 140mm fans we have encountered. There is no whine or high pitches of any kind. This makes the 140SP and XP far less intrusive even at higher speeds. At lower speeds, the air movement is substantial, but even in the front intake position there is no real discernible noise until ~850rpm, and they never become distracting when pushed beyond that.
While the fans are essentially the same with PWM added to the F140XP, that also adds some perks. The PWM control allows the F140XP to be run all the way down to 300rpm for absolute silence. The lower speeds also allow the static pressure to increase ~15%, making them an excellent choice for 140mm factor radiators. The 140SP serves very, very well on radiators also with good static pressure and low noise.
There are two promotions on the newegg fans:
1. There is a $5 MIR thru phanteks that runs like every 3rd week; limit one per address so if ya have some cooperative nearby relatives / friends, you can get it for each one....since shipping is free doesn't cost anything but the effort.
2. The is a $5 instant rebate that newegg sponsors every 2 or 3 months. No limits, still free shipping. That's how I bought mine.
Despite what pcpartpicker says .... newegg is not listing either as available at this time.
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