My nephew asked me for some quiet 120mm LED fans and, at first glance, I boggled.

Well, they should replace some Slipstream M, so currently which fans I could look for?
Please take note that Enermax Cluster and similar designs (I mean, halo/batwings) have to be avoided.

Thanks in advance for any informed advice.

If the Enermax are ruled out, there are no more options left. Every other LED fan i have heard of is more noisy than any Scythe.

You might get away with some chinese LED strips from ebay or something similar from case modding shops.

Thanks for your suggestions, Pappnaas: unfortunately I've already tried the Enermax Cluster as intakes on that case, and I know those fans cannot be used for the job.

To be fair, I don't know the Enermax Apollish/Vegas, but as I currently don't know if the primary noise cause was either the batwing blade profiles, or the halo frame, I don't want to give them a try.

I am currently looking for info about the Bitfenix Spectre Pro Led and the Antec TruQuiet 120 Led, but I still haven't found anything conclusive about them: and as the Nexus Basic Led are fairly noisier than the white/orange one, I'm not so confident that those led variants share the very same sound qualities of their "not-illuminated" counterparts.

The Vegas and the Apollish are essentially the same fans as in http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1280-page5.htm (T.B. Silence product line)

Haven't read anything about the Cluster before, but it is derived from the Twister product line, which was tested as noisy with audible bearing noise. The Twisters are not spcr suited, opposed to the T.B. Silence.

Just to be a tad OT...



I take the liberty to disagree:

T.B. Silence (9 blades, Batwings profile)
Vegas/Apollish (7 blades, Turbine profile)

Eventually I just said that I don't know which design feature (between blades and frame) mostly matters: if it were the frame, then both types should sound similar when used as intake fan.




Sorry, I don't understand your reasoning: "The Twister fan's acoustics are excellent through most of its range... it has a very smooth, pleasant sound... The fan has no audible tonality... The noise generated is distributed fairly evenly frequency-wise, giving it a smooth broadband profile."

At any rate, IME all those Twister, T.B. Silence, Cluster, Magma are basically the very same fan (as they use the same bearing, frame and blades), where different plastics and peak speed mark the relevant differences among them (very often not so pronounced).

Well, JFY, I've given a try to the 120mm Phobya Nano-G PWM Silent LED.

I'm quite disappointed, noise wise: they are sold among the lowest spinning LED PWM fan on the market, but that was not enough.

Rated at 600-1500, I found them costantly over those limits, 650-1750rpm on average (I picked three of them), and while being PWM, they costantly spin even at 0% duty cycle.

Despite of their name (PWM Silent), while mostly turbulent at higher speeds, they're plagued by an unbearable howling character at their lowest ones (which becomes more like a dull droning note when the fan is spinning faster), which let you aware of their presence even in a closet under the desk, and acoustically they suffer a lot the presence of dust filters, when used as intakes.

At any rate, they also seems to have a fairly good pressure, as they managed to beat the Slipstream PWM on the CPU heatsink (temp-wise, I mean), but definitely those fans are not suitable for any wannabe quiet rig.

I've been happy with the inexpensive Cooler Master 1200rpm sleeve bearing non-led fans and I see they make a blue LED version. The ones I've had are no more noisy at 12V than the Nexus 120 fans.

There are many variation on Cooler Master 120mm fans, and my experience is only with the ones specifically 1200rpm sleeve bearing (spec'd at 19dBa). Most of their LED fans are something called SickleFlow and 2000rpm.

Here's a link to them at Newegg::: Blue LED fan 2-pack at Newegg, $16