I am somewhat confused by this announcement does it mean that the blades are attached to the frame and the whole frame moves?
If so i'm not sure i see the acoustic advantage.

http://www.legitreviews.com/news/12599/

The design isn't really mentioned by HOCP though

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2012/03/13/ ... ro_120_fan

It's just a case of bad editing of the press release by Legit reviews. Here's the antec product page.

Looking at the rpm/cfm/dBa comparison to the TrueQuiet120, this doesn't look like a better fan for low rpm use...unless the 17.8dBA is a typo and it's really 7.8dBA....

TrueQuiet 600rpm/21.5cfm/8.9dBA
Truequiet Pro 600rpm/21.1cfm/<17.8dBA

Difficult to see how two 120mm fans both at 600rpm could be so different in noise... To me the TrueQuiet Pro looks worthy of investigation, as long as the bearings are OK 600rpm on 120mm fan should be pretty quiet and, like many Scythe fans, the support struts curve the right way to meet the fan blades perpendicular, something that's often noted in SPCR reviews as desirable.

Seb

Yes. See it in action in this video.

aha.

Looks expensive with the excessive amount of vibration dampening, but I'd love to try one. If it's as expensive as I fear then I'd prefer a PWM version nowadays.

Interesting, so they plan to make it quiet by using a smaller motor, interesting.

Not just that.

All-round it looks to be a good fan........ but for the price, which I expect to be extortionate.

But as always, the only way is to read the SPCR review of this new creation.

I have high hopes for its design being a good one because 2 things will always follow a good design.

Obviously an improvement of that design (or its implementation), and other manufacturers copying the design to compete with it, which will drive down cost and give a much larger quantity of choice to us consumers.

Watch this, this is a much better explanation why this fan design is of interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYciaOeuEU4


Andy

God, there are so many new fans coming about now, we really need a bid fan-roundup by SPCR.

Indeed... we need another fan roundup!

(or at least from Xbitlabs or someone...)

Hardware.fr will release fan roundups soon I think

MikeC told me that he has one coming very soon. What that probably means is that this fan is likely to late to be included.

That shouldn't be particularly surprising or noteworthy. The bearing design really doesn't have as much to do with the demonstration as the rotational mass. It just means the motor has to work harder when the fan is actually on, which could prove problematic. I somehow doubt these fans are going to be as efficient as my 1450RPM Gentle Typhoons which don't even use .04A at 12V.

This fan design idea was shared with me ~2 years ago by Antec's chief of product development. (We worked together on the P180 and some other case designs.) The basic concept is really simple, but still exciting because it doesn't seem to have been tried before: We all know that the outer blade edges of a spinning radial fan are the primary sources of turbulence noise. The idea is to eliminate that noise by eliminating the edges. The circular rim attached perpendicular to the blade outer edges acts as a flow guide (like the box frame in a conventional fan) while keeping the individual outer edges of the blades from "beating" the air. I've actually examined a couple stages of development (samples) before this final release.

Two points:

1. At very low speed, like the 600rpm spec'd for the low setting, turbulence is usually not the main cause of noise, but bearings and commutator. Hence, the design may not really help lower the noise any further.

2. It is at higher speeds that the new design should/might help, as turbulence noise becomes much more significant in most 120mm fans at ~800rpm & higher.

I did a quick test a while ago between our old favorite Nexus 120 at full speed (~1070rpm) and a new Antec at the same speed (slightly less than 12V). I had only one sample of the latter.

Subjectively, the Nexus sounded higher pitched. A close examination of the spectrum readout showed it has a bit more output (1~2 dB) in the midband, 800~1300 Hz. The Antec had a bit more chuffing noise -- all this with the fans less than a foot from my ears. The measured SPL was a bit higher than 21 dBA/1m for the Nexus and around 2 dBA lower for the Antec. So at least at the higher speed, the Antec design seems worthwhile. This is w/o any consideration of airflow.

The long time for the fan to stop spinning is indeed due to the higher mass at the periphery and its effect on centrifugal force. The flip side is that it also takes longer to accelerate to full speed than other fans -- or change speed when voltage is changed. I doubt there will be much effect on longevity unless it is turned on/off frequently.

Before get to a full review, I need to get many more samples of the new Antec. And yes, a new big roundup is coming.

(Hi everyone, I've been a lurker since, oh, at least 2003.)

Fry's Electronics is selling these for $9.99, so I picked up a few and installed one last night. On low it is harder to hear than the Scythe Slip Stream SY1225SL12L (800rpm) that I had in there, which was already quiet enough for me. On high I can hear the air moving from 1m but it's a very smooth sound IMHO. I'm not sure what "chuffing" sounds like.

Sound good Mike, I look forward to the review

You say that the speed change is slower than many fans due to the design and extra weight that is being rotated when there is a voltage change, IMO this should be a good thing for those who have a fan (e.g. CPU) that is controlled via speedfan or Mobo as the change should be less noticeable than many when the fan speed can go up/down by several hundred rpm in ~1 second which can obviously be annoying, although I am sure that such things will be covered in the reviewing process.


Andy