I stumbled upon them first when I bore witness to a case from a company called "Super Flower." It was some horribly oversized behemoth with 5 80mm case fans. The fans were awfully quiet, though I never heard any other case designed to be quiet, and so I looked closer and saw that they said "ceramic axis." Unfortunately, Super Flower does not sell the fans retail. The case also had an Ante Truepower supply, and was wired so that the fans were thermally controlled by the PSU. So that was part of it. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to look for some ceramic axis fans on the web and have only found a couple of hits.

http://www.usereasy.com/product_5794.html

in the USA and

http://www.cpucityshop.co.uk/product_in ... cts_id=234

in the UK. They are all 80 mm.

Is ceramic axis a revolutionary and underused technology? It would certainly be nice to have some more fans that were quiet because they were well made rather than being quiet because they had a very low RPM. After all my searching I have decided to wait for the Acoustifan Dustpoof models to be available, so I am not exactly happy with what the market has to offer.

if they're the same ceramic bearings that arctic cooling claims to use in many of its vga card silencers, the noise they make is often complained about on this site.

arx claims their ceradyna bearing fans are as quiet as sleeve-bearings while lasting much longer and retaining the noise profile. does anyone have some hands-on experience?

I'm not sure but I beleive most papst fans have some sort of ceramic axle bearing...

I've also seen PTFE mooted, but Papst say Sintec is "metal"

http://www.ebmpapst.us/Documents/Bearings.pdf

My Sapphire card had a ceramic fan..... It started out really quiet, being barely able to hear it, after awhile, it just started grinding like crazy. It spins properly and keeps things cool, just loudly though.

The Ceredyna C bearing is brand new because ARX's catalog just says "call for availability" for Ceredyna C versions of all their DC fans. I don't think Ceredyna is anything proprietary to ARX, I think that is the type of bearing used on ceramic axis fans. I suppose Ceredyna A didn't work so great. I would try to order a Ceredyna C bearing fan, but I bet it will be painful to do so and I am fed up with fan searching.

I'm not really too sure about the ceramic bearing issue. A lot of people seem to complain about ceramic bearings "wearing out" quickly, and then making a TON of noise. I have an Arctic Cooling Silencer 64, and it has a ceramic bearing fan. It is by FAR the best fan I have ever used, and after about 6 months of owning it, it still works as quietly as the day I got it.

I hear no bearing noise or anything of the sort from the fan on my silencer 64, even when I turn it way down using speedfan, although this might be because of orientation as much as anything..

Anyways, I know not about ceramic bearing fans in the average orientation within a case, but if you want to try it out, ADPmods has a large selection of CeraDyna fans - up to 92mm, here

They are mainly higher-speed fans, but it could be worth a shot - who knows, maybe they undervolt really well. ADPmods says they are rated for 300k hours of life, which is over 30 years of constant use..

Just hope you don't get stuck with a horrible fan that will last damn near forever.

I must have 120 mm for case fans.

Do you own any Japanflos, Nexuses, or any other SPCR standard? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but it might be the best thing you've ever heard simply because you haven't heard a sufficent amount.

I will say I did have a positive experience with a Arctic 80m case fan a while back. It was fairly quite, but hardly pushed any air. i.e. a good Japanaflo was a better choice as it pushed more air when at the same noise level of the Arctic fan. ...I'm sure Arctic fan model lines are as diverse as any other though.

DrCR

___________

Japanaflos suck. Add a glob of grease to the axis and call it "Hydro Wave bearing." Give me a break. And they only sell one 3 wire (L1B) model, and it's 92 mm. I think people are nuts for using them for CPU fans.

I was just waiting for someone to say it

I currently use Coolermaster 120mm UV fans, the same as reviewed here. You added it to the "top 120mm fans" sticky yourself

The fan on the heatsink is only an 80mm fan, but it is better, in comparison - if Arctic cooling made 120mm case fans, I would have surely bought them.

In free air, there is audible chatter from the coolermasters that just does not exist in the arctic cooling. Maybe I got a particularly good sample, but I honestly can not hear any bearing or motor noise from it, when I can easily hear it from the coolermasters, in the same environment. The coolermasters spin super slow - they are rated at 0.05A, and in the review the bearing noise is listed as "none". I own 4 of them, and I can still hear it in the best sample of all of them.

If I turn the arctic cooling way down from its max speed of ~1500rpm, I still can't hear anything in the way of bearing/motor noise. The only difference is the reduction in the small "whoosh" sound of air going over the heatsink. I can reduce the speed down to 20% or so in speedfan and have it still spin, and while I admit I haven't done THAT in a while, I don't recall hearing any bearing noise from it then, either. Honestly, I am really, really impressed with it - I couldn't be happier with it, especially considering it + the heatsink cost about $20CAD.

Sorry to hear that yours aren't silent at 5V. My 80mm 'flos are.

I found with Japanaflo's - Some are silent , some are quiet , some just plain suck.
But that is pretty much the best fan available where I live .
I have a couple of sleeve bearing low speed Delta fans that are OK and I use them because they work very well with P.W.M. fan control - but they were scrounged from old ex government IT hardware that I stipped for parts.

I am half eating my words - I bought a Japanflo. But I am using it as a case fan and it has a fan monitor wire (or I wouldn't have bought it).