Gelid Wing 12 Fan - good or not?

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zgundam
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:01 pm
Location: NSW, Australia

Gelid Wing 12 Fan - good or not?

Post by zgundam » Thu Sep 11, 2008 4:06 pm

Has anyone tried this fan?

Interesting features of this fan is that you can remove the entire fan impeller for cleaning and there are little "winglets" on the fan blades which are supposed to improve airflow / static pressure.

None of the online reviews say how quiet this fan is unfortunately.

Image

Some reviews I found so far:
http://www.jcxp.net/reviews/gelid_silen ... php?page=9
http://chillyreviews.com/gelid_wing12_index_1.php

Official fan specs:
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/ ... id=2&id=21

Wondering if these are actually any good or just hyped as usual.

shathal
Posts: 1083
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:36 am
Location: Reading, UK

Post by shathal » Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:50 am

I do have to chuckle at some of those statements.
The WING case fans are premium quality, UV reactive, ultra- quiet, dust and water proof cooling fans for gaming enthusiasts.
... water proof? Just where/how do they think we'd use these things. Anyone have their cases immersed in water? If we did, I'd doubt we'd need fans... :P. Dear lord, what nonsense...
Only the highest quality materials have been used to manufacture this state-of-the-art cooling fan.
... and this is why it's vomit-neon green?
Nanoflux Bearing (NFB)
Patented Nanoflux bearing incorporates a clever magnetic design, very high precision manufacturing and runs friction-free and operates noiseless. Electromagnetic fields are exploited to keep solid parts from touching. The load is carried by a magnetic field.
This sounds actually interesting. How much of that is marketing BS though is the question. Maybe I'm cynical, but I'd suspect most of it is...
- Ultra-soft silicone polymer will not break or tear during installation
... what kind of installation does it take to break/tear a fan? Sledgehammer mechanics? Seriously...
- Universal-Design fits most open chassis fan sizes (80mm,92mm,120mm) and PC cases
... the usual sizes to be expected.
- Quick & Easy Tool Less Installation
... like every other fan out there.

Looking at the chillyreviews article - good find - my first concern is the packaging. It's like Thermaltake vs Thermalright. Normally the more "frilly" packaging is not exactly what we're after.

Not that I'd mind being pleasantly surprised (their patent does strike me as interesting) ... we'd need to see if does work.

The air-flow figure is to be taken with a pinch of salt, since we can't verify it (yet), and the 25 dBA should be taken with some care as well. We all know how "certain" manufacturers like to come up with creative measurements.

5 year warranty is very nice though, got to say that. Don't think I've seen that long warranty on a fan before... maybe some more faith in their new patent?

Being able to remove the fan to remove the dust-build up is very neat, no question there. Only annoyance is (as is expected) that you need to open the case up for that, but 'til we get self-cleaning fans somehow, this is a pretty decent idea so far. Well - in theory at any rate :).

It certainly seems that the fan pushes through quite a bit of air ... but that's going to be at 1500 revs I would barter. And most of us are interested in less than that ... does the fan's performance hold up linearly when its undervolted?

Important questions for us SPCR'ers.

... I'm somewhat hesitant about chillyreviews "compatibility" shall we say with SPCR on account of them giving a "pro"-point for the vomit-neon green colour choice.

That said, I can live with a vomit-neon green if it *IS* quiet, and gives a good performance in pushing through its CFPM.

... so ... how do we get one to SPCR to be reviewed? Since they're claiming to be quiet, shouldn't be too hard to get one in as a sample, I'd hope?

Certainly their patent is a very interesting idea... :)

zgundam
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:01 pm
Location: NSW, Australia

Post by zgundam » Fri Sep 12, 2008 6:13 am

yeah, it does sound a bit hyped but at least their figures don't look as inflated as stuff from SilenX :p

...looks like they have a "Silent" series too but doesn't look any special.

According to the official website they don't have any distributors in North America - only Europe / Asia, so maybe ChilledPC or something will probably stock it eventually.

whiic
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2006 11:48 pm
Location: Finland

Post by whiic » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:04 am

shathal wrote:
Only the highest quality materials have been used to manufacture this state-of-the-art cooling fan.
... and this is why it's vomit-neon green?
Where have you seen matte black UV reactive computer pimping parts?
- Ultra-soft silicone polymer will not break or tear during installation
... what kind of installation does it take to break/tear a fan? Sledgehammer mechanics? Seriously...
I think it means that fan is mounted with ultra-soft silicone pieces (decoupled from computer case) and that these silicone pieces don't break or tear. Many of the rubber made decoupling straps actually break as you have to pull real hard to fit them to the fans (fitting the other side of rubber strap to case is usually not that hard).
- Quick & Easy Tool Less Installation
... like every other fan out there.
Bullshit. Many fans are still screwed to case chassis. Are YOU able to screw them with your bare fingers? Because I sure can't do that.

Screwdriver = tool. Screws = not toolless.

shathal
Posts: 1083
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:36 am
Location: Reading, UK

Post by shathal » Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:06 am

whiic wrote: Where have you seen matte black UV reactive computer pimping parts?
My point was made by you - it's more about the "target audience" than an actual quality of the fan. More "bling" to sell, as opposed to actually try and be quiet(-er) while pushing out more CFM's.

Most folks on here don't particularly care about bling - heck, I'd use pink fans at a push, if they'd silently guarantee a cool running system. I'd just be very surprised if anyone who's "serious" about quiet cooling uses vomit-colour neon-green (or pink, for that matter), as it were.

It's distraction, that's all it is. A "bling" system is hardly intended to be quiet now is it? :).
whiic wrote:
shathal wrote:
- Ultra-soft silicone polymer will not break or tear during installation
... what kind of installation does it take to break/tear a fan? Sledgehammer mechanics? Seriously...
I think it means that fan is mounted with ultra-soft silicone pieces (decoupled from computer case) and that these silicone pieces don't break or tear. Many of the rubber made decoupling straps actually break as you have to pull real hard to fit them to the fans (fitting the other side of rubber strap to case is usually not that hard).
Huh - interesting. I've not run across this myself (but then I tend to have a penchant for high-quality stuff as opposed to "cheap & cheerful" approaches. It will remain to be seen in an actual review whether the quality is any good I suppose.
whiic wrote:
shathal wrote:
- Quick & Easy Tool Less Installation
... like every other fan out there.
Bullshit. Many fans are still screwed to case chassis. Are YOU able to screw them with your bare fingers? Because I sure can't do that.

Screwdriver = tool. Screws = not toolless.
Fair point - maybe I should've specified "like every other fan I've used" - I regard the screw-less installation as "a necessary thing" these days, on account of the whole vibration dampening matter.

So yes, maybe I should've qualified that statement more. I don't think many systems built by SPCR folks are likely to be running on screws alone though, on account of the vibrations that get passed along. :)

whiic
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2006 11:48 pm
Location: Finland

Post by whiic » Tue Sep 16, 2008 10:13 am

Yeah, bling is typically targeted for other people. But as we've found ourt that some performance enthusiast equipment (SSDs, Velociraptors, heatpipe coolers, watercooling) can be used for silencing as well, it may be possible to one day find something that blings and is quiet.

Also we should remember that vast majority of non-bling products are made of fail too.

If pink or neon-green doesn't drive you off, then you can always use Nexus (bright orange or while blades on black frame) or Noctua (purple-brown fan blades, tan-beige frame)... I wish they would make black fans too. Especially Noctua since I can get Nexuses in black... just have to buy them with the original brand name: YateLoon.

The legendary Nexus has the flaws of all sleeve bearing fans (lust lacking the extra flaws present in some bad ones). One of them being the orientations it can work quietly. Tilt it the wrong way and the plastic ring that "keeps the blades from falling off" will make a dragging sound and fan rpm will also drop. I got pissed off at my Nexus because of the noise and removed that ring. And it doesn't fall off. The magnets in the fan hub are strong enough to pull against gravity even when used horizontally. Noctua's bearings aren't sleeve bearing and it doesn't have flaws of the sleeve bearing fans. Also fan blades are quite daring... low-pressure high-airflow type not commonly seen. Too bad the colours of both of these fans are quite horrible...


shathal: "Fair point - maybe I should've specified "like every other fan I've used" - I regard the screw-less installation as "a necessary thing" these days, on account of the whole vibration dampening matter."

I guess you're new to computer-building... as these rubber / silicone / other elastic mounting pieces are relatively new thing. The rubber ones I bought (3 sets, total of 12 pieces) were a bit brittle. They did stand quite a lot of torture BUT fitting them in required quite a lot of pulling too... meaning that despite their strength, 2 or 3 of the pieces just snapped. (I did manage to fit them using thin pliers, though.)

Nexus fan I bought recently came with something quite a bit softer. I didn't need to use any violence to fit them.

I don't use decoupling for all of my fans. Only the ones I've found to have poorly balanced blade assembly. The best thing to do would be to re-balance it instead of decoupling the fan frame. This is of course difficult... but still, considering how far some silencers go and what odd methods we use (compared to regular computer enthusiasts) I'd be surprized if none of us hasn't tried to re-balance them by sanding the blades. Some of us probably even cut fan blades so that their geometry would fit better for undervolting... well, I guess someone probably does that. I haven't tried.

There's so much to try, so much to experiment. And SPCR community is collectively a huge load of TMST... too much spare time.

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