Do you run your case fans at 100% IF they're near silent? Or is that a bad idea?

Removed User 345456

Removed User 345456

Removed User 345456

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SO TLDR, got 3 BeQuiet's in my very well ventilated/mesh'ed mid tower... I don't personally use PWM on case fans, don't like varied ramping up and down.
I decided to mess around earlier and turn them up to max just to see if they got loud, I was pleasantly surprised...

They're so easy on the ear at full whack with a fixed RPM/voltage, so I figured maybe I'll just leave them on full speed as it can only benefit the GPU/CPU if we get another hot summer?

I never usually run them higher than 40-50% fixed rate as my temps have been stupidly impressive with my case and the HSF/GPU cooler, and at that point you'd have to have the house 'drop a pin' quiet to hear them as with the PWM I set my PA120SE too...

Will they end up dying pretty quickly? They were like a £10-12 each at the time and IIRC have a 2 or 3 year warranty anyway, as I say the hardware doesn't need them to be on this much, but I do love it when stuff runs even cooler and prolongs the lifespan more, and the fallback of IF it ever got hot I wouldn't even need to check my temps, however, I 'could' just turn them up in the summer IF required, but it wasn't an issue last year...

Just wondered if fans were meant to be run at full whack all the time or if this was a silly idea/kills them off quickly? I have set them just above what they were now anyway but I was mainly interested to know if this is something everyone does with quiet big fans anyway? Or just like me you set a sweet spot around half way or above?
 
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I'd have to try and find a datasheet but usually higher RPM decreases lifespan, but so does PWM if the speed is changing beyond a certain amount regularly so there is a trade-off point somewhere.

Usually fans like this are rated to the 100s of thousands of hours at ~50% (nominal voltage) and lifespan will decrease by about 50% at full RPM so you'd still get like 15+ years use of them on constantly.
 
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Rroff said:
I'd have to try and find a datasheet but usually higher RPM decreases lifespan, but so does PWM if the speed is changing beyond a certain amount regularly so there is a trade-off point somewhere.
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Yeah this is what I was thinking, as it's asking more of them all the time isn't it. I'll just stick to having them around half way like before and enjoying literal silence and silly good temps under gaming load - 32C system/54-56C CPU/64-72C GPU :) Not bad for a stealthy sly looking £60 meshy Antec case, 3 £12 BeQuiet's and a £36 PA120SE, eh!
 
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Difficult to find a proper datasheet :( heat is also a factor with generic datasheets showing an approx. 50% decrease in lifespan for every 10C hotter the fan is running (but that also meshes with RPM).

BeQuiet! Silent Wings 3/4 are rated to 300,000 hours - probably at 12V, 25C though it doesn't give that information (EDIT: what passes for a datasheet does say 25C) - they've probably fudged the failure rate a bit so in reality under normal PC operating conditions at 100% you'd probably still get around 10 years out of them on average.
 
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Rroff said:
Difficult to find a proper datasheet :( heat is also a factor with generic datasheets showing an approx. 50% decrease in lifespan for every 10C hotter the fan is running (but that also meshes with RPM).

BeQuiet! Silent Wings 3/4 are rated to 300,000 hours - probably at 12V, 25C though it doesn't give that information (EDIT: what passes for a datasheet does say 25C) - they've probably fudged the failure rate a bit so in reality under normal PC operating conditions at 100% you'd probably still get around 10 years out of them on average.
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Niiice, I only run mine at 6V no PWM, and no joke only at night in a dead silent house IF you sit dead still/don't breathe, you can 'just' hear them!

Not bad for £9.82 per fan with free delivery from another supplier, my cheap case came with good enough fans but I wanted silence, but for £65 posted for the case I wasn't going to complain to get me started...

After laughing at people paying £30+ per fan, I wanted to see what an underdog reasonable brand's fans would do... I'm very glad I did! As you can tell from the aforementioned temps above, they're ridiculously good/silent!

I have 2 Pure Wings 2 or 3 (I forget) 140mm and then a 120mm for the rear exhaust, the PA120SE is set to 30% PWM at 20C then 50% at 68C (which it never has reached) - it's happy at 38-42C at the desktop doing casual stuff and then 54-56C in any game, the system temp is 32-35C.
So yeah silent bliss with £30's worth of fan's and a £36 delivered cheap CPU HSF in a £65 delivered budget full mesh front/meshed top sly looking black on black glass windowed case, that sits nicely on my tv stand and doesn't look in your face - tbf it just looks like speaker with a mesh front on sat sideways. Happy days.

I even put the 92mm and 120mm version of these BeQuiets into my MITX 2nd rig as I was so impressed, so all in £50 delivered has cooled 2 rigs, so glad I didn't blindly go spend £30+ a fan now! Didn't want RGB either due to being in eyesight infront of the tv and the MITX build under my monitor on my desk.
 
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keef247 said:
I don't personally use PWM on case fans, don't like varied ramping up and down.
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You can just set a constant fan curve if you don't want them ramping up and down, PWM fans are superior.

keef247 said:
Will they end up dying pretty quickly? They were like a £10-12 each at the time and IIRC have a 2 or 3 year warranty anyway
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I don't think this should be a concern when you can get high quality fans for so cheap. Something like a 3 pack of Thermalright TL-C12C can be bought for £12.69 (£4.23 each) and performance is roughly equivalent to a Noctua NF-A12x25 (£28.95).
 
Eddie99 said:
You can just set a constant fan curve if you don't want them ramping up and down, PWM fans are superior.


I don't think this should be a concern when you can get high quality fans for so cheap. Something like a 3 pack of Thermalright TL-C12C can be bought for £12.69 (£4.23 each) and performance is roughly equivalent to a Noctua NF-A12x25 (£28.95).
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They are PWM fans mate, I just set them at a fixed rpm :)

Yeah I only paid about £9.88 posted per 140mm/120mm Be Quiet PWM, and as I the temps/silence I've achieved is ridiculously good.
 
Eddie99 said:
I don't think this should be a concern when you can get high quality fans for so cheap. Something like a 3 pack of Thermalright TL-C12C can be bought for £12.69 (£4.23 each) and performance is roughly equivalent to a Noctua NF-A12x25 (£28.95).
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Something I rate the Be Quiet! for, the noise they make is low intrusion wise even when audible and they are usually far quieter within a certain useful range than most other fans - though other fans can potentially beat them on performance and if you turn them right up a lot of that benefit goes out the window without them being able to reach the highs of performance of some other brands.
 
Rroff said:
Something I rate the Be Quiet! for, the noise they make is low intrusion wise even when audible and they are usually far quieter within a certain useful range than most other fans - though other fans can potentially beat them on performance and if you turn them right up a lot of that benefit goes out the window without them being able to reach the highs of performance of some other brands.
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Yeah, it's such a gentle noise, even at full whack it wasn't remotely intrusive, I was genuinely shocked, hence making this thread.
Definitely just going to keep them at half way, even in the heat of last summer my temps were the same. Very impressed with this case/cpu hsf/gpu cooling/bequiets.
 
I have mine temperature controlled from the motherboard, running silent / slow speed most of the time. Fan speed is also related to case air-flow and fan size, I'm using an older Silverstone FT-02 with 3 x 180mm fans at the bottom, this case does not require high fan speed.
 
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