The lack of standards is a real problem. Having been steadily making my PC quieter over the last few weeks, and tried a few blind alleys, I now think about products in 4 categories :

1. Snake Oil. Products that are no better than some standard or default option. Given that there are enough genuinely quiet and inexpensive ones about to suit most tastes, many fans must fall into this category.

2. Overpriced rebadge. Products that work as claimed, but you can do something identical or almost as effective for (sometimes much) less and with no more trouble - eg, some of the case damping / soundproofing products, where roofing tape / carpet foam / melamine foam seem to be just as effective as any of the branded products.

3. Expensive, but good - eg, the Nexus PSU.

3a. Expensive, but may be worth it to save messing about - eg the Novibes rack.

4. Gems - costing little or no more than the competition, but much better for the purpose in hand - eg Evercase 3242, Panaflo fans.

Obviously only products in categories 3 or 4 will make it to the recommended list ...

Your categories make much sense, but the problem is figuring out how to tell the difference... I'm running into such an issue right now, while trying to pick fans.

Unfortuneately my airflow requirements fall outside the fans currently on the reccomended list, so I can't go by that.

Looking at MFGR web pages to evaluate specs, it appears that I have found a couple of DELTA fans that look like they beat the corresponding NMB models by a slight but significant margin. The margins are small enough that they could be real (no snake oil level claims) Details here:Any experiences with DELTA 120mm's?

That there are 'not to noisy' Delta's is amazing given the companies reputation, but it's possible. So how does one determine whether the claim is true without spending a bunch of money on different fans? Or does one just buy something and hope the result is acceptable?

Gooserider[/url]

Seriously, I HATE vantec and all the shit they produce. I think they should be sued for false advertising. I got the vantec "stealth" power supply. Its more like vantec - sonic ass ram.

god i hate that company. I think it should be boycotted.

Vantec - Sonic Ass Ram. I believe that is their new slogan..

The thing with the Vantec fans is, they move a LOT of air relative to other "super quiet" 5v modded fans favored by users in this forum. So yeah, they're a bit more noisy.

For what its worth, I bought a Vantec 520 Watt Stealth PSU. It is the LOUDEST PSU I have EVER owned, even though it has manual and automatic speed settings. I consider them Loud, Very Loud, and Automatically Loud.

I recommend to everyone to stay away from it.

Absolutely hilarious but sadly true.

Clearly false advertising: Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lights (CCFLs). To me, cold means not hot, not warm, not tepid, but cold. Not generating any heat, or even cooling stuff down. Some CCFLs are not too bad but many get really quite hot. Maplins even put a warning next to their in store displays!

Seems like LEDs are the only solution, or just no lights.

so how hot is cold fusion?

hmmm well in cold fussion u produce more energy than u put into it, so probably really cold i would guess, like below sub zero. Thats why its impossible because you arent loosing any energy to friction or heat

Cold fusion takes place at room temperature. Cold cathode lights can't even claim that, they are actually quite hot.

MoJo

Overpriced Rebadge

My nomination goes to the Vantec "Stealth" 80mm fan. I bought one for a computer build for my daughter. The motherboard, an ECS K7VTA3 turned out not to have an option in the bios to turn off the cpu fan protection. I already had a 92mm 2-wire Panaflo mounted above the heatsink, but had to put in a 3-wire fan to allow it to boot.
The Vantec is a rebadge of a common fan manufacturer, obvious by reading the fine print on the label on the fan's hub. (Nidec). It is merely an 80mm "L", or low speed (about 2000rpm for an 80mm) standard fan, and it's not particularly quiet.
It would not lead me to buy any other Vantec products.

I've got loads of Papst 8412NGL and their gzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzrzr noise is getting on my nerves They're really quiet when you hold them in your hands, but as soon as you attach them to the case, the noise changes completely.

You need to use a rubber surround or grommets to isolate the fan from the case metal, so that vibrations are not transfered. Another reason for the noise could be that the intake or output of the fan is partially blocked and is creating turbulance.

MoJo

The case is cut so that the airflow is not blocked. I don't even use fan guards at all !
You're right about isolating the fans from the case. At first, I used the fan brackets that came with the Antec SX830, but the noise was intolerable, so I cut the case, removed the brackets and attached the fans using velcro. It's a cheap solution and makes a real difference. But after a few month I'm getting tired of it. Yesterday, I tried to power up each fan individually using an old AT PSU, and found that they still made that buzzing noise.
As the holes in the case that are normally used to hold the plastic fan brackets are too big to use screws, I don't think I would be able to use rubber grommets.
I could glue the fans to the case using silicone, but I wonder if it would stay in place and be hard to remove cleanly or just fall in a few days...
I was also thinking about using compressed foam or earplugs to make them stick in place.

I've got loads of Papst 8412NGL as well as other Papst fans. I never noticed any such sound from them, let alone any noise that would be getting onto my nerves. If your fans are mounted onto one of those very restrictive fan guards though, you may have the noise. I would recommend cutting out nice holes for the fans and using wire fan guards. Also using rubber mounting like the one shown here will help against the vibration.

On the cold cathode subject I'd just like to point out where this comes from. It's not really snake oil, but rather a technical term that really only an electronics technician could care about.

If you look at a standard household fluorescent light, you will notice that there are two pins on each end of the tube. Inside, these pins connect to what looks like a light bulb filament in each end of the tube. And indeed if you apply power to the pins on one side of the tube, that filament will glow in the end of the tube.

This filament is known as a heater, and it is specifically there to warm up the gases inside the fluorescent tube. Fluorescent lights are hard to turn on when cold, but start easily when warm, so the filament in each end helps quickly heat the gas up to operating temperature.

In vacuum tubes where direct current (DC) power is used, the positive pin is called the anode, and the negative pin is called the cathode. Since fluorescent tubes use alternating current (AC), both sides of the tube are cathodes (there are no anodes). The whole heater assembly and the two pins are a cathode.

Now, you CAN turn on a standard fluorescent tube without using heaters. It just takes more voltage and current to get the tube to start producing light. Most portable fluorescent lights powered by batteries actually use bi-pin tubes with heaters in them, but the heaters are not activated and instead a higher voltage than normal is used to start the lamp.

Fluorescent tubes with only a single pin on each end do not have heaters, and obviously cannot heat the gas prior to starting. These are the cold cathode tubes you hear about.

The team cold cathode has nothing to do with how warm the bulb gets in operation. For case mods it's just a small and compact design where you don't have much room to begin with, since heaters would necessarily make the tubes bigger and fatter.


The snake oil aspect for me is that I really don't think most case-light tubes are fluorescent at all. Instead many such as the the red ones seem to be neon tubes where the gas itself produces light rather than a phosphor coating making the light. Fluorescents actually contain a mercury gas that produces UV light, which the phosphor absorbs and converts into visible light.

I've never heard of a neon tube with starting heaters, so as far as I can tell, all neon tubes are cold cathode by default and the term is meaningless for them.

-Scalar

http://svc.com/mge360w.html
I have a feeling that many of us know the online vendor SVC and have bought products from them. They have a pretty good reputation among online forums. However this power supply that I recently purchased from them falls perfectly in the category of dubious marketing.
"This entry level power supply makes a great choice for a budget system or for use as a backup power supply. It supports all the latest AMD and Intel P4 Platforms, is very silent, and comes with a 1 year manufacturer warranty." -- see how they snuck the term silent in there? The fan in there is nowhere close to silent. It's even louder than a panaflo at 12V. Ultimately, for $9.99 its the garbage you would expect it to be. Still, the two-line production description stinks.

On reflection, the heading of this thread -- "Dubious Marketing" -- probably falls into the category of nonsensical repetition, much like smelly dung or windy tornado or corporate greed. Marketing by its very nature is always at least a bit dubious.

Yes you can, and it works. This is how I've done it:



The fan is very well stuck in and won't come out. It's a bit of a pain to remove them, but a sharp knife is all that is needed. It's a very effective and cheap way to isolate the fans from the case - I've done it to all mine.



And just to be a bit pedantic you can't have something that's "very silent" either it's silent or it isn't! (I know, it's their quote, not yours!)

I suspect this might qualify for dubious use of the word "silent."

See the story I posted here for a tale of two companies, both apparently defrauded by the same supplier in the same way, at about te same time.
See how one OCZ) appears to be trying to do the right thing by it's customers, while the other (CompUSA) seems determined to continue ripping it's customers off.

If true, this report seems to me like it earn's CompUSA a place of high dishonor in the CPSR dubious marketing hall of shame!

Gooserider

"Antec Sonata - Hear the Silence"

Hahahhaha.....

I like this fanless PSU.

That's not a fan silly, it's a specially designed, static "air diffusor" so the convectively moved air is guided to exactly the correct spots inside the fanless PSU.

Boy is my face red! I saw that "fan sensor" typo and just assumed...

Er, Ralph didn't put a smiley, but he was kidding.

Ehhh, I guess my humor is just too dry for some folks...

I like this even better: (from the same PSU page)

Would that be the entire computer, or just the fanless PSU?

Cheers,

Jan

That's not a fan, I tell you, it's an aggitative macroscopic object filter. Any rotational movement is designed to dislodge objects stuck in the filter, thus reducing the unit's maintenance requirements.

Come now, they're being completely truthful, the PSU definately doesn't have any fans. Everyone who has it hates it.