NEW Arctic Cooling Super Silent 4 Ultra TC

anthonysimilion · Post by **anthonysimilion** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:17 pm

Anyone seen this?

http://www.pccasegear.com.au/prod1593.htm

"Arctic Cooling Super Silent 4 Ultra TC for Pentium 4 up to 3.6GHz. The Super Silent 4 Ultra TC uses a thermally regulated fan system and anti-vibration fan mounts to deliver a highly effective low noise cooling solution at an incredibly low price. Recommended for applications that require increased cooling performance while still keeping noise levels to a minimum."

It's so low profile - it's almost unbelieveable that it will be quiet for long. Thoughts?

It does weigh quite a bit, so maybe it really is good performance?

I'm pretty interested in getting something around this price.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 12:11 am

Arctic cooling fans have typically god very good reviews when you are concerning price/performance. They do work great for cooling fairly normal processor power with the TC solution.
At lots of heat they become a bit noisy, but nothing extreeme. Cooling performance is acceptable, but it does not match the best coolers.

What they did here is to make a special fan, that is essentially a 92mm fan. Ofcourse they also increased the size of the cooler a bit. For a 100W CPU you should expect it to speed up to full speed when you got lots of CPU load. A 92mm fan running at 2500 RPM will not exactly be silent, but not awfully loud either.

I would expect this cooler to be similar to a beefed up version of the normal 80mm fan things they already got. So you can expect a decent cooler with a very good price tag. Don't expect that it will be less noisy than the top coolers when cooling hot CPU's.

Kingcow · Post by **Kingcow** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 6:47 am

But the fan is based on "creamic bearing" not old style "ball bearing"! They should be around 20db in max speed and the noise will not increase after year of use, so AC give customer SIX years of warranty - Any so call top cooler makers can make such offer?

I suspect their fan may "blow away" Pana fan with wuietness and CFM!!

Seem a big bargain!

Kingcow

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 12:32 am

They should be around 20db in max speed

It would be a miracle if they could run a 92mm fan at 2500RPM with only 20dB. Maybe if you measure from the next room... I believe the noise level when MikeC has measured it.
Ceramic bearings is nothing new. In fact they are an older invention than the hydro bearings used in many Panaflo fans. I believe that ceramic bearings will degrade more than hydro bearings over time. Not to say that ceramic bearings are bad. Tests has prooven that they work about on pair with hydro bearings noise wise.
If I remember correctly many Papst fans use ceramic bearings.

Fan warranty is IMHO a marketing thing only.
If you nurse a fan well (e.g. dust filters etc) as you should (but very few do), then it will last for a long time. Note that even if the fan becomes quite noisy it is still not a case for warranty. It usually needs to fail to become a warranty issue. Even quite poor fans usually live at least 3 years before they fail.
Lets assume you have a crappy fan, and you stand the noise when it becomes worn. Lets say it does fail after 5 years. What is the chance that you are interested in an identical cooler after 5 years?
It is likely that you want a new CPU with a different CPU socket after 5 years anyway. So I would say it is safe for any manufacturer to give lifetime guarantee on CPU fans, as long as they are carefull on what they write in the fine print.