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80mm case fans

I

ImDonly1

Platinum Member
Looking to buy an 80mm case fan for the front of my case. Something quiet, but also with good air flow.

So far I was thinking some of these...
ARCTIC COOLING Pro TC 80mm Case Fan - Retail
Rosewill RFA80-K 80mm Case Fan - Retail
SILVERSTONE FN82 80mm Case Fan - Retail
and people seem to be buying a lot of these MASSCOOL FD08025B1M3/4 80mm Case Fan - Retail

Also how loud is actually loud/annoying/bad. I have a Vantec Stealth as my read fan right now and it runs at 27 CFM and 21 dBa and it is silent. Is 26 or 28 dBa much louder or bad?
Thanks.
 
this is the best 80 mm roundup I am aware of...

as for sound anything under 21 dba is pretty inaudiable, and ive read that every 5 dba is a doulbing in sound noice. I consider 30 dba at the level where a pc fan starts to get a little loud and starts to get a little annoying.

80 mm silent review

 
I have a few Masscool fans in my case. If they are spinning at full speed, you can definitely hear them move air... Now that being said, the sound is of air moving not of mechanical noise... I put a small fan controller (from ComPUSA of all places) that slowed it down... Now it's nearly silent. In fact, now I hear is the annoying sound of the Intel C2D's stock fan (which is as loud at 1000 RPM as it is at 1600 RPM!!!#@#@$#).
 
The Silverstone mentioned above with the 92mm blades on an 80mm mounting or bump it up with a fan adapter (works best on the exhaust side with the fan sucking air out rather than trying to blow air in thru the smaller hole). The A-C fan that G-Y mentioned is a good one too, but may only be useable as exhaust depending on your case design.

.bh.
 
Well as has been said earlier SPCR did an excellent review on Case fans. At this point I since you don't want something inaudible the absolute best fans that money can buy for your needs are the Panaflo fans. You don't get much better CFM😀ba ratio.

As for sound increasing every 5 Dba...it depends on what level you are at. The sound card is an exponential increase (Inverse Logarithmic). Because it isn't linear there is only one spot where perceivable sound doubles every 5 dba. IE: Testing that theory at 2 dba would be much different than testing at 50dba due to the slop of the curve. Generally for what we are dealing with; however, I have heard that perceivable sound doubles anywhere from 2dba - 5dba.

-Kevin
 
Panaflo has changed Kevin. Japanaflo>>>>>Chinaflo 😛 Japanaflo=unobtainium.
The Arctic Cooling I linked above has ceramic bearings and 28cfm@20dBA. 😉
But it is 38.5mm thick.
 
A 3dBA change is about the smallest change that is perceptible as a change to the average ear. A 10dBA change is perceptible as a doubling of the sound level to the average ear. Yes the dB scale is a log scale, but then so is the sensitivity of the ear. The A weighting scale was designed for just this purpose. Need to go back to the books there GP.

The quality (pitch, timbre, etc) of the sound is equally important in the irritation area as the volume. That is why the sound of the fountains in some malls, waterfalls, etc. is soothing rather than irritating even though its absolute level can be quite high. And sound level operates on the inverse square law so double the distance to the source and cut the level at your ear to 1/4th.

.bh.
 
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