Fans on my radiator

gunnerzz1008

gunnerzz1008

gunnerzz1008

Associate
Joined
8 Aug 2012
Posts
92
Location
Plymouth, UK
Quick question.

I don't know much about fans and their specifics, but i am aware that there are fans suited to different jobs.

I currently have an xspc kit installed and have the stock xspc fans attached to my rad. However, i don't have a fan controller and they're quite noisy, i'm also sure they don't need to be running full whack either.

Would it be a reasonable option to change these for my spare Antec Truequiet fans? Would this affect cooling performance an amount to worry about?
 
The most important thing for radiator fans is static pressure... as that is often misreported by the manufacturer I tend to find the only way to accurately comment on performance is to actually try a fan on a radiator myself.

Your truequiet fans are probably not going to make "great" radiator fans - but then I suspect the stock xspc fans don't either. Realistically I wouldn't expect you to lose much performance by swapping them. Any performance you do lose will like be more down to a difference in RPM than anything else, and at worst that difference will probably only be a couple of degrees.

The long and the short - the best thing you can do is try them for yourself.

Long term it is probably worth looking at some fans specifically designed for radiator use. Some well known / respected ones are:

Scythe Gentle Typhoon - 1450 or 1850 rpm - sadly now discontinued but worth keeping an eye out for second hand

Noctua NF-F12 - Slightly noisier than the Scythes imo but similar in performance. The colour scheme leaves something to be desired though...

Corsair SP120 - Good performance but I personally didn't get on with the amount of noise they made. It might be the frequency or something but I just don't like them personally. Don't let that put you off though, plenty of people will vouch for these. Plenty of people will also tell you the Scythes' motor noise is annoying - the bottom line is all of these things are subjective.

Noctua NF-P12 - These used to be the best Noctua fan for radiator / restricted airflow use before the F12. It is still a personal favourite of mine. Subjectively one of the quietest fans I have ever used to date and still solid performers though not quite up there with the aforementioned.

Noiseblocker Eloops - I have never used these personally but others seem to like them.
 
Last edited:
gunnerzz1008 said:
I have been contemplating it. I haven't got a free bay for an internal one and have heard bad things about the nzxt external touch screen ones. Any experience with these?
Click to expand...

That is the NZXT Sentry LXE.

I used one for an mATX build for my sister, never gonna use it ever again.

Horrible build quality, and you need to stick a terribly built PCB in one of your PCIe slot - really not my taste.

As for controlling though, they did the job.

But for automatic control, you need to connect a temperature sensor to each control channel for the controller, which add another level of ugliness..
 
gunnerzz1008 said:
I have been contemplating it. I haven't got a free bay for an internal one and have heard bad things about the nzxt external touch screen ones. Any experience with these?
Click to expand...

No sorry. I almost bought one myself not long ago but decided against it - for no particular reason other than I didn't want yet another thing cluttering up my desk :p

If you don't have a free bay then you could look at something like the aquaero 5 lt which is what I use. It can be mounted anywhere inside the case you have room and is controlled completely with software from within windows.

Another out of the box idea would be something like the zalman fan mate 2... although that solution could get quite messy depending on how many fans you have

If you were purchasing new fans you could also look at PWM controlled ones - assuming you had enough PWM connections on your motherboard. You could always use splitter cables though I suppose.

Hope that helps
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom