A comment/suggestion regarding fan speeds in reviews

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ermi
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A comment/suggestion regarding fan speeds in reviews

Post by ermi » Sat Sep 21, 2013 1:19 am

In short: I would like to see lower fan speeds when you're testing (CPU) coolers. 500rpm or even lower, to see how the heatsinks perform with that kind of airflow.


Here's the thing... I have a Mugen 2 with two fans in push-pull and a P183 case with two fans (middle and back). All four are 12cm Scythe Slipstreams.
The CPU is an i5-750 (slightly overclocked and slightly undervolted). Even with Prime95 stress testing the temp doesn't go over ~40 degrees delta. So at 20 ambient it will top at 60 degrees, which I believe is perfectly acceptable. In normal use it usually doesn't reach that temp and I mostly keep the fans at around 400rpm.
Unless I was doing some extreme overclocking I can't imagine ever needing speeds over 1000rpm, for example (which is not even quiet anymore).

Now, my specific cooler/case/airflow might be very well optimized for cooling that CPU.
But I don't think it can be discarded as an extreme or unrealistic example. Especially when we're on SPCR and often talking about CPUs and systems specifically designed for silence. Also there are newer CPUs which are more power efficient and run cooler than the i5-750 I use.

And, perhaps more importantly, 600-700rpm is not completely silent (at least for the case fans in my case), while, say, 500rpm is.

MikeC
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Re: A comment/suggestion regarding fan speeds in reviews

Post by MikeC » Wed Nov 20, 2013 8:03 am

Judging from the absence of any further posts on this topic, you're in a very small minority & the rest of our readers are happy with our fan testing system as it stands.

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