Magnetic Floating Bearing (MFB)

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 11:31 am

8025 Magnetic Floating Bearing Axial Fan (Second one down)

Anyone ever heard of Magnetic Floating Bearings (MFB) before? Or is this just some marketing hype. They don't mention anything about them being any more quiet.

SometimesWarrior · Post by **SometimesWarrior** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:04 pm

Interesting idea, so I hit up the ol' SPCR search. Check this link: http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=10604

Also search for "Maglev" for more hits. I've read through most of the results and haven't seen any listening results, although Ed Ng had a thread where he looked like he was preparing to report on how they sounded. If you are more diligent, maybe you'll find some listening tests. If so, please link them here!

daba · Post by **daba** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:48 pm

Maglev fans have always been around, albeit in small sizes. Thanks for the link, as this is the first Maglev fan that I've encoutered with a diameter greater than 70mm.

The Sunon 40mm fan for the Swiftech MCX-159 is a MagLev fan. Nonetheless, it is very small.

Odd how they don't post the sound dBa.

ferdb · Post by **ferdb** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:08 pm

I've played around with a Sunon Maglev fan before. It was not any quieter than other fans, about average really. Still had significant bearing noise.

PaulShapiro · Post by **PaulShapiro** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:09 pm

Passive magnetic bearings can only be made stable in 2 dimensions, so you still need a mechanical bearing for the 3rd dimension. In this case, it looks like there is a mechanical thrust bearing in the axial direction. So you don't eliminate mechanical noise, you just have the potential to change it.

Pjotor · Post by **Pjotor** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:42 pm

PaulShapiro wrote:Passive magnetic bearings can only be made stable in 2 dimensions, so you still need a mechanical bearing for the 3rd dimension.

How is that? What exactly makes it impossible (or just too difficult to be worth the trouble) to use passive magnets in all 3 dimensions? Please explain -- I'm a curious SOB.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:07 pm

I think I recently saw that a new DFI mobo,NF4,has a maglev chipset fan-but being small and high rpm it won't be quiet. Once the tech has been around some fan outfit may use the concept to do a real quiet 80 or 120 but not yet. YS tip driven fan tech still has not shown up in a low speed low rpm version. I hunted for quiet fans a year ago for my rig,recently I'm helping someone else do a build and the Quiet fan selection is much beter,as are other quiet parts. In another year, The best quiet stuff probably will be even more evolved