What good fans? (Cool, Quiet, Temp Sensing)

Westyfield2

Westyfield2

Westyfield2

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What good fans? (Cool, Quiet, Temp Sensing) OR Controller

I'm planning to get some new fans for my rigs, and I liked the look of the Thermaltake Smart LED
  • Blue LED's
  • Quiet
  • Temperature control
  • Manual Control
  • Available in 8cm, 9cm, 120cm
  • & Doesn't cost the earth

Is there another fan range that fits the bill?
TY
Ed
I never thought I'd be post about what fans to get :)
 
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Those fans are not that quiet. They start out very quiet, but as the temperature rises, so does the noise. They can be VERY loud indeed. Why not get some proper quiet fans and use a fan controller to keep them quiet?

Thermaltake Thunderblades are a good quiet LED fan, especially the 92mm and 120mm versions.
 
WJA96 said:
Why not get some proper quiet fans and use a fan controller to keep them quiet?
Click to expand...
Ok, what's a good fan controller that can control 5 fans? It would need to be relatively flat, as both cases in question have doors, so manual knob controls are a no-no.

TY
Ed
 
WJA96 said:
mCubed T-Balancer is your friend.
Click to expand...
Which one (&/OR extensions) would be best for a 3 fan rig & which for a 5 fan rig?
And the important question, How much?
I've found the Thermaltake A2349 Hardcano 12 SE for £30
TY
I Appreciate it ;)
 
Well, you've got 3 ways of doing it.

The first is to buy the TBAN-XL (T-Balancer Classic for upto 4 fans) and the analogue sensor hub (adds 2 fans) which will cost about £70 all in with sensors.

The second is to buy a TBAN-BigNG (4 fans) and a TBAN-MiniNG (2 extra fans) which will cost about £90 with sensors but these work with analogue sensors too so you can hook up a water flow guage or a light sensor (mine turns the fans on at day-break)

Finally, you can just buy 3 TBAN-MiniNG which gives you the same as the above, but in 3 small boxes rather than 1 big box and 1 small one. Again - £90 including sensors.

At this point you are thinking 'kin 'ell that's a lot more than £30 for a Hardcano 12 and it is. But the Hardcano only does 4 fans at 4 intensities and it's a piece of junk.

The way the Hardcano works is you set a temperature for each fan. From memory you can have 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70C.

50C, 60C and 70C are effectively useless as if anything other than a hard drive or the processor is exceeding 50C your room is on fire anyway.

But let's say you set the HDD to be at 50C. And you couple up the big fan in the front to that control. If the HDD measures 40C then the fan will spin at 5V. Your LED's will be very dim. If the temperature rises, then the fan stops up in a linear way, to 12V at 50C. At this point all hell breaks loose as the alarm goes off and you cannot silence it unless the temperature drops below 50C again. So you set it to 60C at which point the fan never spins over 5V as it's very unlikely to trip below the next set-point.

You lack control of the set-points and the fan speeds.

With the T-Balancer, you have pulse-width-modulation (PWM) control rather than variable voltage. PWM always supplies 12V so your LEDS are always really bright. PWM just turns the power on and off REALLY fast so the fan spins slower. In the supplied software you can decide the set-points, you decide the shape of the temperature curve and you have complete control of your fans.

I've been there, done that with automatic fan controllers and I've sold them all except for 1 TBAN-XL with the analogue sensor upgrade and I have several manual fan controllers because actually, they're fine.
 
I know the Akasa Amber range come highly recommended on these forums.

They don't light up or anything though. Just slightly orange. :D
 
The Thermaltake Thunderblade 12 cm aren't "silent" they do shift quite a bit of fair, the noise is mainly air movement and not motor noise. They're much louder than stock Coolermaster 12cm case fans, the 12cm on on the Ninja. Slightly louder than Liberty fan, the Seasonic fan is totally silent.
 
squiffy said:
The Thermaltake Thunderblade 12 cm aren't "silent" they do shift quite a bit of fair, the noise is mainly air movement and not motor noise. They're much louder than stock Coolermaster 12cm case fans, the 12cm on on the Ninja. Slightly louder than Liberty fan, the Seasonic fan is totally silent.
Click to expand...

Are the Coolermaster/Liberty/Scythe/Seasonic fans LED? The Thunderblades are the quietest LED fans I know of. And you're absolutely correct, they're not silent, but they do move a lot of air, even at 5V (at which point they are extremely quiet).
 
No, all those are standard fans. All are quieter than the Thunderblade, which is a LED.

Thinking about using the Thunderblade instead of the Ninja fan. Got the TT and a Coolermaster space, might fit the CM 12cm to the Stacker top fan (8cm with 8cm to 12cm housing)
 
squiffy said:
No, all those are standard fans. All are quieter than the Thunderblade, which is a LED.
Click to expand...

Then you'd need to be comparing it with a Thermaltake SilentCat (the one they use on top of the Big Typhoon) and that is nearly silent.

I'm not sure why an LED fan can't be as quiet as a stock fan as I would have thought only the bell housing would be different, but it obviously make a big difference, embedding 4 LEDs in the bell-housing. The SilenX LED fans have the LEDs in the central hub, but even those aren't as quiet as the non-LED ones.
 
WJA96 said:
Well, you've got 3 ways of doing it.

The second is to buy a TBAN-BigNG (4 fans) and a TBAN-MiniNG (2 extra fans) which will cost about £90 with sensors but these work with analogue sensors too so you can hook up a water flow guage or a light sensor (mine turns the fans on at day-break)
Click to expand...

Hmm. That seems like the best option, as Rig 1 has 3 case fans and 1 CPU, so that could just have the TBAN-BigNG (4 fans). Rig 2 has 5 case fans and 1 CPU, so that would have TBAN-BigNG (4 fans) and a TBAN-MiniNG (2 extra fans).
WJA96 said:
At this point you are thinking 'kin 'ell that's a lot more than £30 for a Hardcano 12 and it is. But the Hardcano only does 4 fans at 4 intensities and it's a piece of junk.
Click to expand...
Kudos to Mystic Meg
 
Skillz. The software claims to work on X64.
It doesn't use much CPU/RAM does it?

Just read of all the stuff it can do on case displays, is there a plugin for the Logitech G15?

TY
Ed
 
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