After much chasing about I finally got my hands on the following from Bitfenix (thanks kul1!) to review:
4 x 120mm Spectre PRO White LED
2 x 140mm Spectre PRO White LED
1 x 230mm Spectre PRO White LED
Packaging & what's in the box!
Packaging as you can see gives a clear view of the fan, nice simplistic design with specs on the rear side. Happy everything came in card boxes, though not the most protective material available its not a complete pain to open *Looks at CM Megaflows' plastic box that cut my finger*.
What you get in every box...Set of self tapping mounting screws, rubber AV mounts (For the life of me couldn't figure these out? ended up using some spare Akasa ones), a 3pin to 4pin Molex adaptor and a handy cable for hooking the fan up-to existing LED switches on select Bitfenix cases.
Front of all the boxes:
Rear of 120mm:
Rear of 140mm:
Rear of 230mm:
Things to note:
I didn't see this mentioned but despite the shape of the 140mm it does in fact have both 140mm and 120mm hole spacing available which is in its self a nice touch. Also Bitfenix are one of the few manufacturers that follow true hole spacing on 200/230mm fans of 54mm spacing, its also worth nothing that the 200/230mm fans come with hole spacings all the way around the fan so it WILL fit in pretty much any case designed to take such a fan.
Lets have some more pics of these shall we:
The new and the old (140mm):
140mm's in position:
230mm In position:
120mm Front intakes:
120mm's on an H80:
The lighting! The Noise!
I originally had 2 x 140mm 'original' spectres in the top of my 500R exhausting, to be honest noise wise they were brilliant, but the white light seemed pretty dull in comparison to other fans in my case....not any more, you probably won't be able to tell so much from my half-assed pictures (thank you HTC) but the lights on all of the fans are a very crisp clear pearl white, not a whole lot of light leakage but certainly more than my AP121's. Sorry I couldn't take some pictures of the case open with fans on, I couldn't find anything to use as a jumped on my PSU to save powering the system up.
The fans are pretty quiet, one of them does have a little whine which with my fan controller I've narrowed down to being the 230mm fan, this could just be down to the surrounding mesh and the fan pushing through nearly 160cfm
not complaining as I use headphones and for the cooling benefits (see GPU temps below) its worth it.
So some pictures of the system powered up with lights on.
Side and H80:
Front:
May well add a picture or two later of the system powered up with the lights off to get an idea of how bright they are
Cooling performance!
The part most will be interested in, and some good - some not so good...
Firstly I'll start with the not so good, CPU cooling via Corsair Hydro H80. Testing against the Akasa Vipers I had installed previously, the test is 5 heavy runs on IBT with spec in sig though on both runs voltage has increased slightly from sig as the extra 8GB of ram I put in the other week appears to have pushed my VID up. All testing was done from cold boot with an ambient room temp of ~20c.
Viper Results:
Spectre Pro Results:
As you can see on average across all cores and package temps have risen around 4c, not a 'bad' result which is why I said 'not so good' but I still think on Monday when I fit a sound card the vipers will be going back in, mainly for PWM control and slightly better temps. Though the Spectre PRO's do look nicer (I think only noctua fans beat vipers in the ugly contest)
Now for the GPU temps, this is where the fans started to shine, results are against the 200mm CM Megaflow and 2 x 120mm Silverstone AP121 fans I had in before. The test is from cold boot, both cards at 840/1325 clocks running a Kombuster 'Extreme' 1080p pre-set bench, temps monitored in MSI AB. No custom fan profile set just using what is set as default in CCC.
CM Megaflow + 2 x AP121 results:
Bitfenix Spectre PRO 230mm + 2 x 120mm:
Impressed? I was especially with the temp reductions on the bottom card, along with the idle temps is very very impressive. Not much gain on the top card load temps but I will look into that on Monday and check for obstructions and the likes. It did how-ever manage to shave 6c from my bottom card at load and at idle taking 18c and 20c respectively from top and bottom cards!
Final Impression
Superb fans for almost everything, you won't find a higher CFM 200/230mm fan on the market today and the rest quite silently keep pushing air through my system, there is that much cool air being pushed out of the top two exhausts that due to my desk its making my hands cold
120mm I give a 8/10, good performer just a shame about the radiator tests.
140mm I give a 9/10, quiet, look good, not overly expensive, excellent airflow.
230mm I give a 10/10, Just wow, I knew these were going to be good and should have made a dent in existing GPU temps but I certainly did not expect these results!
Any questions or requests for other pictures just let me know.
Thanks again to Kul1 and the bitfenix team
4 x 120mm Spectre PRO White LED
2 x 140mm Spectre PRO White LED
1 x 230mm Spectre PRO White LED
Packaging & what's in the box!
Packaging as you can see gives a clear view of the fan, nice simplistic design with specs on the rear side. Happy everything came in card boxes, though not the most protective material available its not a complete pain to open *Looks at CM Megaflows' plastic box that cut my finger*.
What you get in every box...Set of self tapping mounting screws, rubber AV mounts (For the life of me couldn't figure these out? ended up using some spare Akasa ones), a 3pin to 4pin Molex adaptor and a handy cable for hooking the fan up-to existing LED switches on select Bitfenix cases.
Front of all the boxes:
Rear of 120mm:
Rear of 140mm:
Rear of 230mm:
Things to note:
I didn't see this mentioned but despite the shape of the 140mm it does in fact have both 140mm and 120mm hole spacing available which is in its self a nice touch. Also Bitfenix are one of the few manufacturers that follow true hole spacing on 200/230mm fans of 54mm spacing, its also worth nothing that the 200/230mm fans come with hole spacings all the way around the fan so it WILL fit in pretty much any case designed to take such a fan.
Lets have some more pics of these shall we:
The new and the old (140mm):
140mm's in position:
230mm In position:
120mm Front intakes:
120mm's on an H80:
The lighting! The Noise!
I originally had 2 x 140mm 'original' spectres in the top of my 500R exhausting, to be honest noise wise they were brilliant, but the white light seemed pretty dull in comparison to other fans in my case....not any more, you probably won't be able to tell so much from my half-assed pictures (thank you HTC) but the lights on all of the fans are a very crisp clear pearl white, not a whole lot of light leakage but certainly more than my AP121's. Sorry I couldn't take some pictures of the case open with fans on, I couldn't find anything to use as a jumped on my PSU to save powering the system up.
The fans are pretty quiet, one of them does have a little whine which with my fan controller I've narrowed down to being the 230mm fan, this could just be down to the surrounding mesh and the fan pushing through nearly 160cfm
not complaining as I use headphones and for the cooling benefits (see GPU temps below) its worth it.So some pictures of the system powered up with lights on.
Side and H80:
Front:
May well add a picture or two later of the system powered up with the lights off to get an idea of how bright they are
Cooling performance!
The part most will be interested in, and some good - some not so good...
Firstly I'll start with the not so good, CPU cooling via Corsair Hydro H80. Testing against the Akasa Vipers I had installed previously, the test is 5 heavy runs on IBT with spec in sig though on both runs voltage has increased slightly from sig as the extra 8GB of ram I put in the other week appears to have pushed my VID up. All testing was done from cold boot with an ambient room temp of ~20c.
Viper Results:
Spectre Pro Results:
As you can see on average across all cores and package temps have risen around 4c, not a 'bad' result which is why I said 'not so good' but I still think on Monday when I fit a sound card the vipers will be going back in, mainly for PWM control and slightly better temps. Though the Spectre PRO's do look nicer (I think only noctua fans beat vipers in the ugly contest
)Now for the GPU temps, this is where the fans started to shine, results are against the 200mm CM Megaflow and 2 x 120mm Silverstone AP121 fans I had in before. The test is from cold boot, both cards at 840/1325 clocks running a Kombuster 'Extreme' 1080p pre-set bench, temps monitored in MSI AB. No custom fan profile set just using what is set as default in CCC.
CM Megaflow + 2 x AP121 results:
Bitfenix Spectre PRO 230mm + 2 x 120mm:
Impressed? I was especially with the temp reductions on the bottom card, along with the idle temps is very very impressive. Not much gain on the top card load temps but I will look into that on Monday and check for obstructions and the likes. It did how-ever manage to shave 6c from my bottom card at load and at idle taking 18c and 20c respectively from top and bottom cards!
Final Impression
Superb fans for almost everything, you won't find a higher CFM 200/230mm fan on the market today and the rest quite silently keep pushing air through my system, there is that much cool air being pushed out of the top two exhausts that due to my desk its making my hands cold
120mm I give a 8/10, good performer just a shame about the radiator tests.
140mm I give a 9/10, quiet, look good, not overly expensive, excellent airflow.
230mm I give a 10/10, Just wow, I knew these were going to be good and should have made a dent in existing GPU temps but I certainly did not expect these results!
Any questions or requests for other pictures just let me know.
Thanks again to Kul1 and the bitfenix team
