Well considering only 1 of the top 3 can be bought on newegg, i would personally call it the best one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835185004

$15 is a little high, but considering its newegg and 99% of everything else computer related i buy from their, its worth it IMO.

Its been SOOO long that ive wanted a quiet fan available from newegg, and finally i have one. Thanks MikeC

Dude, there are a lot of solid vendors out there. Don't limit yourself to whatever newegg happens to have. I realize not everyone is always making IT purchase though. Resellerratings.com should be a good resource for you, and/or you can always post concerning a vendors reputation.

Anyway, glad you're happy. :)

P.s. Please take my reproach from the perspective of one in the IT-Procurement areana. :-)

I have a question actually. Someone said that the Noctua fans seem to blow air in all directions which explains the poor static pressure.

So, do you guys think this would make it a good candidate for a fanswap on the Zalman 7700? - It blows air all around which can only be advantageous to this heatsink. Would the low static pressure affect the Zalman 7700? [it doesn't need to push air very far.. probably 3-4cm?]

Thanks in advance.

That's a very good question [F]bernZ. To be honest I really don't know. I would venture, however, that it would also be too restrictive an environment, and you would get better noise/temp with the alternatives.

Yes, the Noctuas make more noise when I increase their speed in speedfan, although their efficiency is not much higher. I saw no point going more than 55% cause it was subjectively very noise for me.

I know that the Sonata is a case with very bad airflow, but with my older papst fans in push/pull configuration I found a solution that worked. Inaudible @1m (subjectively for me) and good temps with the phantom fan never turning on. It doesn't work with noctuas.

If it is helpful, I will add that when I put the hand in the intake of the fan I notice lots of air getting rebounded from the grill.

Sorry, I can't test them anymore as I have RMAd the fans. As my HDs are packaged in cool packs the time needed to stabilize the temps of the hard disks is long, more than 2 hours to see the real temp. I didn't check these temps.

I've recently bought a P180B and as you can see by the link, the way its encloused in a wood cabinet makes it tricky to buy fans. The three Tri-Cool do great with some tinkering (one in the back, one in front of the middle cage since its where the hdds rattle less and cool better, and one in front of the psu proved to yeld the best results) although for sleeping, even with the wooden door closed (only increases temps by 3º), its still a bit too loud for me..

As i'm in the process of gettin the 520w Corsair i'm also buying some fans to replace the stock ones and i'm between the best i could find here, 1200rpm S-flex (15€) and the 800rpm Noctua (19€).
Since I'm stuck with an AN7 board until the new conroes and 'budget' dx10 cards arrive in feb and i don't want to shell out for a controller, the noctuas with the U.L.N.A. cable look pretty good right now. Having only 1 dvd, 2 hdd and an FX5200 i doubt the corsair will need help from the case fan since my shitty oem psu runs hot and the fan can't cope but the corsair doesn't send air back into the case, so i'm hoping it will work.

My fears are with static pressure when the door's closed, the front noctua doesnt need to create a big airflow (although it might help cool a future gfx card) and the higher dissipation might even cool the hdds better. My concern is mostly with the P180 grills restriction and if the back one will do the trick although im guessing the scythe on the ninja should help minimize the effect of negative pressure impedance.
Sorry for the long-winded post, more of a rant on having to spend 38€ on two fans :] although opinions are more than welcome.

Get two Yate Loons from Silencio on Ebay, he also sells resistors to lower fan speed, I reckon two fans + 2 resistors = 25.08 euros including shipping (additional items get free shipping). If you tell him you are a SPCR member he will probably give you a discount.

good choice for fan swap for zalman cnps9700 nt ?

I just ripped apart a new Antec TriCool. It has a sleeve bearing.

Photos at:

http://yarchive.net/photos/tricool/1.jpg
http://yarchive.net/photos/tricool/2.jpg
http://yarchive.net/photos/tricool/3.jpg
http://yarchive.net/photos/tricool/4.jpg

Of the six TriCools that came with three new cases, two were quite quiet, one made some intermittent bearing noises, and three had constant bearing noises. This one I ripped apart was the loudest of the three.

Unless I positioned them vertically, they all made scraping noises. Looking at the bearing, I'm not surprised. If you look at the first photo, it even looks like the fan was rubbing against the coils. If that occurs in use, it'll produce fan failure in short order. But please don't jump to condemn the fan too quickly; for one thing, I'm not sure that I didn't do that while ripping the fan apart; for another, there's plenty of axial play, and the reaction force of the airflow tends to widen the gap, eliminating the rubbing. If the fan is positioned blowing up, gravity also tends to widen the gap. Only if the fan is positioned blowing downward -- a rare orientation for a fan -- would I expect quick failures.

I agree with previous comments asking for a review of SilenX 120mm fans. I think they really deserve to be tested seriously, may it be for confirming their awesome marketing features that make them potentially the quietest fans in the world by far, of to tell everybody they're simply not worth the try.

I am particularly interested in two precise models :

IXP-74-11 (120x120x25, 11dBA)

IXP-76-11 (120x120x38, 11dBA)

How much can they score against the Noctua and co. ? Let's hope that a SPCR test will soon show us all the truth on that matter.

Thanks in advance !

Hope you realize silenx has done some very underhanded, deceitful tricks on this forum to try to sell their products. They're never to be trusted and I don't think I could ever buy one of their products. Especially with how many lies their product marketing is full of. You could never be able to tell when they have an actual good product because all their bad ones are just as marketed. I don't think they know what the concept of truth or honesty is.

Yes, I do perfectly realize. That was really bad. And I think that's one more reason to really test their products throughfully. I think every professional, including SPCR prople, must separate marketing from facts and people from products.

If SilenX is just about marketing, then just review the products and let all people know about it, because people keep being influenced by SilenX marketing right now.

And if SilenX do really make some good products, then let all people know about it also. The deceiful tricks you're talking to have already happened some time ago. Maybe the concerned people have left SilenX. Maybe there are some new products since then that deserve to be tested. Etc.

Let's don't be naive enough to believe that SilenX is the only company in the world to use lies and tricks to sell their products. Unfortunately almost every company out there does the same. "that's business" they say, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I think it's really SPCR's duty to test SilenX products just like any other products, just because SPCR's readers deserve to be informed.

I'd love to read SPCR's opinion on this matter. Thank you.

PS : of course I have nothing to do with SilenX. I'm just a single customer based in France. Feel free to ask me for any additional information if you wish.

That was a long time ago and there was one occasion of a rogue employee of SilenX using unethical techniques to promote their products; we don't even know if he was doing it on his own, or management told him to do it.

Anyway, their track record really isn't relevant; the only thing we care about is whether their fans are sufficiently quiet to deserve an SPCR recommendation, and we won't know that until they are reviewed.

Exactly !

And like I said : "I'd love to read SPCR's opinion on this matter". I hope a SPCR mod/admin reads this soon and is willing to answer. Thank you !

Um, no, that was one rogue employee of EndPCNoise (IIRC), who then went on to start SilenX the company.

SPCR's opinion has been stated time and again, and it reads something like this: since these fans are specified to both push more air and do so more quietly than competing fans from Nexus, Scythe*, etc, and given that in decent fans most of the noise comes from air movement rather than the motor itself, then one or more of these numbers has to be pulled out from a nearby rectum. We don't know how quiet they really are, but given that the founder of the company attempted to scam the SPCR forums**, I can understand any and all unwillingness to really check. An SPCR review is a validation; witness the much-increased interest in Noctua fans after the 120 mm round-up. Given that in all likelihood, the fans in question are not quieter than the current baseline, why would SPCR want to give the company that tried to screw them over recognition and increased business?

Further, I remember one of the mods, can't remember who right now, say this: if these fans were really this good, every equipment manufacturer, every quiet PSU maker, every systems integrator would be lining up at SilenX's doors and you'd never see any of these fans in retail. Unfortunately it takes more than "11dBA" to convince these people.


* Scythe's outrageous "8.7 dB" fan notwithstanding
** and these numbers suggest he hasn't changed much

The vast majority of PC fans out there have numbers which bear little or no relation to reality. OK, SilenX's numbers are probably bogus but so are everyone else's (just about).



Is SPCR interested in quiet PC components or punishing some guy who probably doesn't even work for the company anymore for something he did 4+ years ago?



That's not true at all. Excellent noise per CFM characteristics come a very distant second to price in the list of priorities for most PC equipment manufacturers; even if SilenX made the best fans in the world they wouldn't necessarily be ubiquitous if they cost £100 a pop. They would an expensive niche product, for people who are interested in and are willing to pay for the lowest-noise product on the market. So just saying "no-one uses them, so they must be cr@p" is a logical fallacy.


There's one simple way to find out: test them.


Disclaimer: I have all the Yate Loons I will ever need, so this doesn't affect me one way or the other, but I find it disturbing that SPCR would not review an arguably promising product just out of spite or old grievances.

This ruckus about silenx is amusing... as we've already tested one of their 80mm fans (which did not fare very well) and have said nothing about NOT testing their other ones. We do have a number of their fans, courtesy of Vancouver retailer www.anitec.ca. The reason for their exclusion in the last 120mm fan roundup was the same reason for excluding a bunch of other 120s. It's just too much work to try and do it all in one go.

[EDIT : sorry MikeC, we have posted at the same time ]


I understand qviri's arguments, but I agree with jaganath @ 100%.

SPCR is a serious site, with some valuable reputation. But if SPCR wants to maintain its reputation, there is only one way : to keep testing as much "silent" products as possible, without discrimination of any kind.

Trying to put SilenX (or any other brand) aside from the tests, whatever the (non-technical) reasons, is simply NOT serious and would logically harm SPCR's reputation. Of course we're not talking about "giving SilenX over recognition and increased business" : we're talking about finding out the TRUTH about SilenX fans, plain and simple.

Don't you want to know that truth ? Then...



What's wrong with that ? Nothing !

Right, and interestingly enough, Peter Kim doesn't work anymore for a company he started, and the "Contact: peter@silenx.com" field in WHOIS information for silenx.com doesn't refer to this Peter. Gotcha.

Mike, that's great news, because it means that you'll be able to test them one day or another. Can you please tell us if among these models there's the "famous" 74-11 (120x120x25) and 76-11 (120x120x38) ?

These two models, marketing-rated @ 11dB , deserve to be tested in order to know the truth about them. However, I understand that they shall be very difficult to test if the ambient noise itself is of 18-19 dB !

(unless of course the fans are really noisy, in which case they will be quite easy to test )

I think it would be good to put an quick end to all this buzz about SilenX fans. Either they deserve some serious recognition, or they simply don't. Please let us know ASAP.

Thank you.

Look, let's cut right through the BS. There are no spinning propellers that break free of physical limitations on earth. Any axially mounted set of blades spinning at >1000rpm is going to produce some 20 dBA/1m. Just the air turbulence alone seems to do this, never mind bearing / commutation noise. We have yet find find any exception to this rule of thumb.

I threw on the 120x25mm "11dBA" ixtrema (no 38mm depth samples) at 12V. Ambient was 19 dBA. When the fan was turned on 1m away, the SLM jumped to 24-25 dBA. It was clearly audible from across the room. IMO, it sounds fairly typical for a low speed fan. Not bad, but I've heard better.

OK?

Howdy all,

performing a high quality fft on the recording of the nexus fan, file nexus120-1ft, shows blade passing frequency is 132hz, which equates to an rpm of 1131rpm.

either rpm measurments are off, or 12volts wasn't measured correctly.


the reviews really need to show an fft of the recorded noise, for example the nexus has a very diferent noise spectrum to the noctua.

nexus


noctua

1131 vs 1080 reported in the review. uh yeah, we're so wrong & misrepresentative!

Why do you think we spend so much time / effort describing the quality of the sound and offering high res recordings?

People can do an fft if they want using the recordings -- like you did. But anyone can hear the difference easily by listening to the recordings instead. We certainly don't "really have to show an fft" >Half the audience wouldn't understand the significance anyway.

Thanks Mike, now THAT'S clear about SilenX 74-11. And I think it deserves to be said "officially". Maybe in SPCR news ?

Hello Mike,

Please take my post as constructive criticism. You wrap up the Noctua with the following:

“….The "presence" was noticeable as a change in the background noise when the fan was turned on or off. The change was felt more than heard; it was impossible to put a finger on just what changed, but there was no doubt that something had. In short, Noctua did a very good job of finding a noise character that blends easily into the background. The subjective "quietness" of the fan can be attributed as much to the fact that it is difficult to localize as to the amount of noise that it generates…..â€

I don't understand those charts.

How does the shape of the waveform in each picture equate to the sound of the fan?

Hello Ralf,

this is not the shape of the wave form but the frequency response, a plot of amplitude on the vertical scale and frequency on the horizontal scale

the area filled in on the graph to the left, like in the noctua graph, are bass frequencies.

it is of importance as lower frequency sound is harder to attenuate then mid frequencies, and can excite cases panels and case cavity resonances, but conversely, mid range sounds are more annoying to humans due to their sensitvity to mid range frequencies (matches up with frequency range of the human voice)

Sorry if I knee jerked. Your rpm quibble was very trivial.

[quote]You wrap up the Noctua with the following:

“….The "presence" was noticeable as a change in the background noise when the fan was turned on or off. The change was felt more than heard; it was impossible to put a finger on just what changed, but there was no doubt that something had. In short, Noctua did a very good job of finding a noise character that blends easily into the background. The subjective "quietness" of the fan can be attributed as much to the fact that it is difficult to localize as to the amount of noise that it generates…..â€