The reason why that fan has 9 blades is because it is only 22mm wide to fit in the middle of the Dark Rock Pro cooler, the standard 7 blade fan is 25mm wide.

The main thing I noticed about the Dark Rock 4 is the improved mounting system which is now a cross bar fitting like Thermalright and Scythe.

CPU coolers using different fans than the normal retail offerings are not that much of an incongruity. Arctic Cooling, Noctua and Scythe amongst others have done this. Some of them are continuing to do it. Maybe it's because they are willing to modify an existing product to get the best possible per...

Thanks Abula, that's very useful information. Looks like my next motherboard is going to be an Asrock...

...AsRock has no limits per header, you can place it at 0% if you wish The issue is if you do this does it actually turn the fan off with a fan that has 0 rpm at 0% duty cycle like the Silentwings 3. Or does it detect that the fan is not running and simply increase the % PWM duty cycle until it doe...

...Do they use real ball bearings? They have a fluid bearing. ...is 600rpm the minimum you can get them on PWM? is this the same for 120 and 140? With Asus BIOS tuning the turn on point was 31% PWM duty cycle which is around 600 rpm. I did notice that after taking off load there was a short period ...

@lodestar Interesting. I hope you'll report your experience, particularly comparing the more subjective aspects of how good or bad they sound at turn-on and under loads. What do you think of Arctic's fans at 800 rpm? Noise-wise with the 120ER I could not detect the change from off to on under load ...

So does that mean Arctic's fans operate from 800 to 1320 rpm? The jump from 0 to 800 might be jarring, but at least that should only happen under load.... right? Yes, that's correct. Are there any other semi-passive fans that could be combined with this or other heatsinks? Or other semi-passive coo...

Is my understanding correct? At <55C (or <66C) the CPU fan would receive 20% PWM (or 40%) from the motherboard. At the threshold, the fan would start at 800 rpm, slow to a lower rpm and ramp up from there until 100% PWM? In other words, it would be silent, then max on, then a gradual ramp? That see...

...After reading more carefully, the Arctic Freezer 33 mentions this about its fans: they do not spin at below 40% PWM. How is their startup though? The startup speed is around 800 rpm. However with Asus BIOS fan control you do have some ability to influence the CPU temperature at which this point ...

...a system that is powered on 24/7, and sleeping within 2m of it. As a compromise and to keep costs down, I can accept sounds under load. I'm not sure that even under idle/low system stress conditons any CPU cooler running fans at minimal levels would still be quiet enough in this scenario. You co...

dan wrote:is there only 3 msi gigabyte and asus left?

There is Asrock of course. Also EVGA and ECS Elitegroup make motherboards.

I already replaced all fan with Noctua... Here are my current specs: Single SSD 850 EVO with M/2 added after the upgrade. The Fractal Define C as suggested by CA_Steve would probably be a better fit if you don't need all the additional drive slots of cases like the R6. You would also be able to re-...

PCI-Express lane management is still necessary even with the latest generation of Asus (and other makes) Intel Z370 boards. On your particular board it was designed to be AMD Crossfire compatible. So if both the PCI-E 16x slots were occupied with AMD graphic cards it would auto-select 8X speed for e...

The main issue for me with Scythe CPU coolers (and incidentally I own two of them) is the almost complete absence of information on motherboard compatibility. This is the one factor that I think will hold back Ninja 5 sales. It is a very big cooler depth wise and I suspect many potential buyers will...

At least you have been spared the "delights" of Windows 8 and 8.1...

Asus don't list any Windows 10 drivers for the P5K. Despite that some users of early Asus boards report that Windows 10 installs all the necessary drivers.

The Asus P5K is definitely what is now called a Legacy BIOS. Bearing in mind that the latest BIOS update available for it is over 10 years old the BIOS clearly dates to a considerable time before UEFI appeared. So it can't be updated. Clover EFI and Duet are presumably designed to load a software-ba...

Thanks for the link, I note that the results on an Intel 201x platform at maximum stress are not so good, to me it looks like the 800 rpm fans are just not fast enough. I think it would have been better to have provided 2 of the standard 300 to 1200 fans rather than the 300 to 800 fans.

is there a 2tb limit for ssd as boot drive like there is for hard drives, for MBR? This is what Microsoft have to say on the subject . As far as SSDs go, take your pick. Samsung's Evo 860 is a popular drive but there are alternatives. Most SSD manufacturers also offer freedownloads of utility softw...

The Asus P5K has 2 PCI-Express 16X slots. On most current motherboards using both of these slots would reduce speed to 8X but I'm not sure this is the case with the P5K. It's possible that using both would drop the speeds to 16X + 4X. The adaptor you are proposing to use specifies 4X PCI-Express 3.0...

Yes that's an interesting development. I must say the Mugen 5 Rev. B looks to be a lot easier to fit on most motherboards, and I am not sure that it's performance is that far behind the Ninja 4 or 5

I am familiar with that type of case. The one change you could make is to fit a PWM exhaust fan using a PWM Y cable to run it from the CPU header. From your local PC store the cheapest PWM fan should be around $15 and a PWM Y cable around $5. So for $20 this setup will give an exhaust fan which will...

btw do i have to worry about overheating if the only fans is a PSU fan 120mm, a cpu fan, and 1 case fan? Using Asus motherboard thermal fan control there will be a set CPU temperature, normally around 70-75Cm, where all fans will be set to run at full speed. The Core 2 Duo CPU in your motherboard w...

This thread from win-raid.com may help . Agreed the benchmarks for NVME drives are impressive but I do wonder whether in actual use under Windows there is that much difference in speed between NVME and SATA SSDs. And if that's the case is all the potential hassle with Clover EFI really going to be w...

thanks for info its helpful. i guess sata ssd it is :( do i need to load any additional drivers ? No, installing the SATA chipset drivers is all you need to do. one thing i notice is bios has an option that says "plug and play operating system" disable, so i enable since windows 7 and 10 are plug a...

I agree with your point about USB-C if only because I have a phone that uses USB-C which I do on occasion charge from the PC using a USB-C to USB-C cable. As far as PWM fans are concerned, to get the lowest idle speeds you should look for PWM fans with speed ranges starting around 300 rpm. Assuming ...

The best source for a NVME drive is normally the manufacturer of the hardware. Samsung for example. It might be worth noting the content of the SPCR article on the Samsung 950 Pro NVME M.2 drive . And what Samsung say are the minimum system requirements needed for their NVME driver ( from the PDF do...

This sounds really good. Is that something the MSI Mortar doesn't do? It doesn't but it is not a major issue if you prefer the Mortar in any case. And is the standard rear fan not already a PWM fan? It seems to me all fans had better be PWM fans, right? Or is it the 120mm instead of a different siz...

Asus ROG Strix B350-F Gaming (has better audio, everything else I can think of except wifi, bluetooth and USB-C. Not the cheapest, though. Does seem to have excessive programmable leds which are pointless in a closed case.) At current UK prices this seems to be extremely good value for money. It do...