What fan can I replace this one with?

Tickles14

Tickles14

Tickles14

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13 Feb 2014
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8
Hi,

I appreciate this is a PC forum, but the principles are still the same for my question.

I've just took apart my noisy micro refrigerator, it's an insulin cooler that keeps medicine at a temperature of 2-8 degrees celsius. It's good apart from the noisy fans. Now I was confused when I took it apart as I'd never heard of a DC brushless fan before. So I'm now wondering what can I replace it with? Can I replace it with a standard fan that's the same size as it? Or do I have to replace it with another DC brushless fan of the same specs? I want to find a near silent replacement, will this be possible? Is it the fan that actually makes the noise?

Here's a few pics of the fan and motherboard:

http://oi61.tinypic.com/o8ij52.jpg

http://oi62.tinypic.com/14dezqx.jpg

The fan size is 50mm x 50mm x 10mm and it's 5V 0.18A. So finding a fan of these specs is hard enough, let alone finding a near silent one. I've seen a few fans I like on this site but I'm not sure if they'd work as they're not DC brushless fans, they are standard fans of the same size.

Thanks, really appreciate any help.
 
Morfinel said:
Is it must be 10mm due to placement or can u fit 25mm? Whats the connection like?
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I think it can be slightly bigger than 10mm, but the 50mm dimensions can't change as the mounting is fixed into place. But I think I could go for 25mm rather than 10mm. Also as for the connection, it's just a red and black wire soldered from the fan to the motherboard. I'm aware I'd have to do some cutting and soldering, but I'm fine with this, I just don't know what kind of fan I can replace it with to achieve my near silent aim.
 
The majority of pc fans are 12v so even if you found one dimensionally suitable it's possible it would not even run at 5v.
 
PC fans are design to push a lot of air very quietly, and if the motherboard is feeding only 5v, at this rate any fan will be silent. The only problem is that most pc fans operate on 12v and your motherboard probably only feed 5v to the fan, the lowest 50mm fan I found start at 7v so it might not start on such a low currency. You can maybe look at delta electronics they make lots of weird fans and they might have this type of fans or try
Akasa 50mm x 10mm but they start on 7v, on ebay you have few 50mmx50x10mm 5v fans but not sure how quiet they would be as they run on 6000rpm
 
Tealc said:
The majority of pc fans are 12v so even if you found one dimensionally suitable it's possible it would not even run at 5v.
Click to expand...

Morfinel said:
PC fans are design to push a lot of air very quietly, and if the motherboard is feeding only 5v, at this rate any fan will be silent. The only problem is that most pc fans operate on 12v and your motherboard probably only feed 5v to the fan, the lowest 50mm fan I found start at 7v so it might not start on such a low currency. You can maybe look at delta electronics they make lots of weird fans and they might have this type of fans or try
Akasa 50mm x 10mm but they start on 7v, on ebay you have few 50mmx50x10mm 5v fans but not sure how quiet they would be as they run on 6000rpm
Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies. Believe me the current fan isn't what I'd class as quiet by any means and it's running off 5v of power :)

So the next question is how do I feed 12 volts of power to the fan? I'll need to do this externally, so is there such thing that can power a fan with 12 volts externally? I've got my eye on the Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XS1 - 50mm, at 16.3 dB(A) I'll make this work lol :D
 
You can use Portable cd or dvd player chargers, they are usually 12v. connect the cables to fan and this will work, but it would be better to find 5v fan and safer.
 
Morfinel said:
You can use Portable cd or dvd player chargers, they are usually 12v. connect the cables to fan and this will work, but it would be better to find 5v fan and safer.
Click to expand...

I've just had a thought, I can power it off my PC's PSU :)

The next and last question is, what's the quietest 50mm fan? Is it the Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XS1? There's no reviews for that fan on this site, or at least I can't find any, do you think it will really be 16.3 decibels? Or is this a gimmick?
 
Tickles14 said:
I've just had a thought, I can power it off my PC's PSU :)

The next and last question is, what's the quietest 50mm fan? Is it the Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XS1? There's no reviews for that fan on this site, or at least I can't find any, do you think it will really be 16.3 decibels? Or is this a gimmick?
Click to expand...

Well Noiseblocker are named so because they are awesomely quiet, so even if they are a bit higher they will likely be near silent.
 
tbyeah said:
Well Noiseblocker are named so because they are awesomely quiet, so even if they are a bit higher they will likely be near silent.
Click to expand...

Perfect, just what I needed to hear. The last and final concern is will the Noiseblocker be powerful enough? I can't find any airflow or RPM specs of my last fan, I wouldn't have a clue what to even guess them at, it was a cheap rubbish Chinese fan so I can't imagine it being very high spec but you never know.
 
You can find 5v fans which will be quieter than the one you have. If you don't know the rpm then the amp rating is a good indication of how loud it will be.

If you go for the noiseblocker you should probably run it at 12v. 3,000rpm is a pretty low speed as it is for a 50mm fan, at 5v it will spin too slow and not give decent cooling.
 
spixelspixel said:
You can find 5v fans which will be quieter than the one you have. If you don't know the rpm then the amp rating is a good indication of how loud it will be.

If you go for the noiseblocker you should probably run it at 12v. 3,000rpm is a pretty low speed as it is for a 50mm fan, at 5v it will spin too slow and not give decent cooling.
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It's 0.18A. What do you think the RPM is roughly?

If I go for the Noiseblocker, I will definitely run it at 12v. It's just a case of whether or not 3000rpm will be enough?
 
Tickles14 said:
It's 0.18A. What do you think the RPM is roughly?

If I go for the Noiseblocker, I will definitely run it at 12v. It's just a case of whether or not 3000rpm will be enough?
Click to expand...

I think 3,000 will be enough but you wouldn't want to go lower. I can see a couple of 5v fans with 0.12A but can't link here. Also see one with 0.14A and the RPM says 3,800... 0.21A 5,500rpm
 
You can run a 7v or even a 12v fan using 5v, it will just run slower. It employs the same principle as an in-line fan resistor, or even a fan controller.
 
Ok thanks for the replies.

Is there any such thing as fanless cooling? I've just noticed there's such thing as a fanless PSU and fanless CPU cooler, is there no silent alternatives to fans?
 
Bryan Kortez said:
A bucket of mineral oil :p
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LOL I could do that, but I've had another thought.

What I didn't realize before is that the thing below the fan (the silver metal thing) seems to be a heatsink which would make perfect sense because I think this fridge works using the peltier effect which needs a heatsink in order to work. So this got me thinking, there's such thing as a fanless heatsink cooler, right? So can't I just fit a fanless heatsink cooler?

My problem here is that I don't know anything about heatsinks coolers, can any work? Or do they have different heatsinks coolers for bigger and smaller heatsinks? What do I connect them to, can I connect it directly to the power supply (600w)?

Thanks, sorry for all the questions, it's a sudden brainwave and it's got me thinking about a lot of different questions :)
 
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