Can anybody recommend a quiet fan that moves a lot of air?

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opio

opio

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I'm looking at fans on newegg, can anybody recommend a good 120mm and 140mm fan that is still quiet at full speed?

Also, can somebody please explain static pressure to me?

I've already got a couple Noctua fans and 5 Fractal Design silent series fans. Wondering if there's anything better out there.
 
Solution
synphul
Using the corsair fans as an example, there are 'airflow' fans and 'static pressure' fans. Looking at the design differences, the airflow fans have more spacing in the gaps between the blades and are better suited for situations where there are no obstructions like rear exhaust, case fans etc. The static pressure fan designs use wider more swept (curved) blades with less spacing in the gaps between each blade and are suited for use in places where the fan needs more 'horsepower' to push the air past/through restrictions. Uses would be radiator fans, front intakes blowing past hard drive cages etc.

Both types move air but sp fans are designed to keep providing airflow when facing restrictions or obstructions that might otherwise drop...
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Static pressure is simply unimpeded air moving into and out of the fan. Think of it as 'standing alone' in operation on your workbench.

Residual pressure (it may be called velocity pressure) is when the fan is affixed, and there may be more (or less) pressure applied at input/output.

Fans are a personal choice --- some have better 'acoustics' and some move more air. Some reside in the middle ground between the two.

 
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Using the corsair fans as an example, there are 'airflow' fans and 'static pressure' fans. Looking at the design differences, the airflow fans have more spacing in the gaps between the blades and are better suited for situations where there are no obstructions like rear exhaust, case fans etc. The static pressure fan designs use wider more swept (curved) blades with less spacing in the gaps between each blade and are suited for use in places where the fan needs more 'horsepower' to push the air past/through restrictions. Uses would be radiator fans, front intakes blowing past hard drive cages etc.

Both types move air but sp fans are designed to keep providing airflow when facing restrictions or obstructions that might otherwise drop the air flow of a non static pressure optimized fan. Usually sp fans aren't quite as silent as their airflow designed counterparts.

Noctua uses similar naming in their fans, they have nf-p14 for example - the "P" indicates a pressure optimized fan in 140mm size. Compared to an nf-a14 "A" air optimized. Noctua also has an nf-f12 where "F" models have additional vanes built into the frame that help 'focus' the airflow. I believe their nf-s12 series, the "S" is for silent though I could be wrong. Like corsair's af series, the blades are wider spaced compared to the others to help make them quieter and feature antistall knobs to help the fan keep spinning at low rpm's allowing it to be run slower (and quieter).

For a radiator, you want static pressure fans. I'm not sure they're the most silent fans you can use, but given the amount of air they produce and push the air to noise ratio is a pretty good one and that's the scythe gentle typhoon ap-15. Similar in price but might be a little tricky to find in the u.s. are ek vardar fans (similar to the gentle typhoons). Both run around $25 give or take a couple dollars.

Another option with good static pressure might be the cooler master jetflo 120 but at full rpm definitely lives up the 'jet' flo name.
 
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Solution


Thank you much for the explanation, I understand this all a lot better now, on a radiator, if I had a fan on both sides, would it be better to have a SP fan pushing and an air flow fan pulling, or just static pressure on both sides?
 
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That's some good stuff, right there. As far as 'push-pull' I'm of the opinion, "The Jury is still out" and I volunteer Synphul to do some science for us :)

I suspect cooling impact will be minimal, if any -- 1C maybe 2C ?

A single nice fan on the cooler, well-managed case air flow, small fan blowing directly across the FETs (they call me, Mr. Zip-Tie the Riveter), etc., can easily gain that, or more.

Not to mention simply knocking-back a couple volt settings -0.0125v

 
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So static pressure fans on both sides of the radiator or static pressure as the pushing fan and airflow fan as the pulling one...?

Which volt settings should I put back a little? I assume it's because less voltage means less heat..?
 
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Essentially, the entire concept of multiple fans in 'Push-Pull'

'Push' itself should work just dandy will little gain from the pull (IMO).

"Less voltage means less heat" is absolutely correct. Use the minimum voltage necessary to crank that 'K' --- when you have to hit the VCore hard for a 100MHz gain, it just ain't worth it in terms of heat.

And I'm not really up to speed on this but others likely are ... does your 4770k have the "solder thing' going on? Did it change from the Ivies?



 
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Unfortunately the Haswell still uses the same crappy thermal interface material the Ivy Bridge uses instead of the fluxless solder like the Sandy Bridge had, a lot of people have de-lidded, but... that's a bit outta my league. Maybe some day, we'll see. Other than that I've loved my CPU, I wish I would've built my PC a couple weeks later then I did though, cause then I'd have a 4790k and a Z97m, but oh well, can't complain, I've got a kickass rig :)
 
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I'm no water cooling expert, there are a ton of people who water cool though. The gentle typhoon's aren't the only fans capable of static pressure for radiators by any means but have a pretty healthy following in the overclocking community for cooling their rads. As for push/pull, I don't have a verdict on that one or know of an absolute source for an answer. There are lots of folks who swear by it but there are many times (in air cooling for instance) where push/pull has almost no gain over single push. Push seems to be slightly more effective in general compared to pull.

Again I'm no expert but I think it may have to do with fan design. This is just a guess so don't shoot me if I'm wrong lol. Most fans seem to be tested/rated and designed for push. The sweep and curvature of the blade designed to 'blow' air and it's possible that there's a slightly different engineering formula to maximize a fan for 'suction'. By all rights, if you were to theoretically divide the two sides of a fan, you have 'blow' and 'draw'. Where air is pushed to the left it's drawn from the right. Aerodynamics or whatever of the fan in it's design differ though since you can have two fans, both have rotating blades, both technically moving the same volume of air (say 50cfm) but one has a static pressure of 1.2 and another has a static pressure of 1.8. Similar, but subtle differences affect their attributes. It may have something to do with why fans tend to be a bit less effective (pc fans) when in pull rather than push. People have seen around 2-3c or so less efficiency from the same fan in pull on a 212 evo cpu cooler than they do from push. Similar results have been seen using 2 fans on a 212 evo in push/pull vs 1 fan in push. Depending on your expectations, a couple of degrees c doesn't justify the cost of a second fan to most people.

It may also have to do with thickness of the radiator, push/pull may be more effective on thicker rads. I don't know how well they work, but there are also shroud extenders out there that mount between the fan and radiator to give an air gap with the intention of overcoming loss of air at the hub area when a fan is directly against a radiator. That's the theory anyway and I'm sure due to space limits a lot of people don't bother. It's already tricky enough in some places to fit a radiator and fans on either side (50mm worth of fans + rad thickness) without adding more bulk in the form of spacers.

If doing push/pull I would assume static pressure for both sides. I've heard of some people using airflow on the pull side but again I'm not experienced in water cooling. The idea of airflow fans is they work well in an open free-air environment. I would think that means both sides conflict free and obstructions like radiator fins interfering with either side may reduce the airflow design fan's cfm to 1/2 of it's rating or so.

Here's a couple interesting vids. The first one tests different configurations and while push/pull won out (sp push, af pull) it only won out by like 2c. Not sure if it's worth the cost of the extra fan(s).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk7JMOcypus

Same guy (linus) but a different vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyC3lZ5WFMk

And if you're bored and up for a bit of a chuckle with 20min or so to kill, here's a corsair h100 I believe with 40 fans in push/pull (10 deep either side, dual fan rad). 😛

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbpb23yTK8
 
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