Best performing silent fans?

[Sinthoras]

Hi Guys!

The noises from my pc are making me crazy and I'm looking for silent and good fans to replace the old.
After searching on the web, I've found 2 praised fans:
- The Be Quiet! silent wings 2
- The Aerocool Dead Silence fans

I really can't decide which one to take.
I found some reviews on the web, but all of them find both very well:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/cooling/zardon/aerocool-ds-dead-silence-fan-120mm-and-140mm-review/
http://blackholetec.com/drupal7/article/review-aerocool-dead-silence-vs-be-quiet-silent-wings-2
http://www.play3r.net/reviews/be-quiet-silent-wings-2-120mm-fan-review/

Do any of you have experience with one of them and can recommend me the best one? I'll probably put some of them on my Hyper 212 EVO as well.

 

[Tweakin]

Those two are not on my list:

#1 NB e-loops
#2 GT -14/15s

 

[Sinthoras]

Those two are not on my list:

#1 NB e-loops
#2 GT -14/15s

Thanks! I'll see on the web for some reviews of these 2!

 

[mikeymikec]

I did a bit of reading up on this recently, and Sharkoon's Silent Eagle series appeared to do pretty well. I'm going to try one in my setup to see whether it helps reduce noise.

I've also used their fans before and they didn't produce any annoying whine or anything similar.

 

[Sinthoras]

I did a bit of reading up on this recently, and Sharkoon's Silent Eagle series appeared to do pretty well. I'm going to try one in my setup to see whether it helps reduce noise.

Yea, they look really nice to!

 

[BrightCandle]

The primary factor to determining the noise a fan makes is its RPM. They all get louder as they spin faster and as they spin slower they can get very much quieter but at much reduced airflow. Some fans at particular RPMs have better tones and lower volumes (RMS measured) than others but by and large the differences are relatively small and most fans are clustered within a few Db of each other at the same RPM.

So the key to quiet is to get slow spinning and low CFM throughput fans. No way around it that is the trade off. Around 600rpm is whisper quiet, 800rpm is audible from a few feet but pretty quiet and it gets louder from there.

 

[mikeymikec]

Yup. The Silent Eagle series are nice in the respect of RPM and being able to tell which is which easily - if it says 'Silent Eagle.... 1000' then it's a 1000 rpm fan.

I'll be curious to find out how the Sharkoon Silent Eagle 12cm 1000 turns out for me because I'll be replacing a Cooler Master fan that is currently running at 800rpm (Asus fan management).

There's more to it than just RPM though. This was the review that I read:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cooling/2009/09/28/what-s-the-best-case-fan/1

 

[PliotronX]

I refuse to pay $20+ for a fan so I've scouted around and have been impressed by the Arctic Cooling F series, the Gelid Silent, and Antec TrueQuiet fans. I have the latter two in a NAS box and I cannot hear them over the faint hum from the hard drives. Best of all they go for around 10 bucks, almost into Yate Loon territory but come with rubber fan mounts and in the case of the Gelid Silent a nice sleeved cable.

 

[Tweakin]

I refuse to pay $20+ for a fan so I've scouted around and have been impressed by the Arctic Cooling F series, the Gelid Silent, and Antec TrueQuiet fans. I have the latter two in a NAS box and I cannot hear them over the faint hum from the hard drives. Best of all they go for around 10 bucks, almost into Yate Loon territory but come with rubber fan mounts and in the case of the Gelid Silent a nice sleeved cable.

If you don't want to spend hard earned cash on the nice fans, why not just go with some dependable Yate Loons...around $8 and come in all kinds of speeds.

 

[BrightCandle]

Basically if you buy pretty much any fan and step the voltage down so its 800rpm it will most likely be quiet. A few of them tick or have other problems but Yate loons are cheap and don't tend to tick and also perform above average in performance for the noise.

 

[Sinthoras]

Thanks for all the replies guys!
I think I'm going to buy a pair of aerocool Dead Silence fans and a pair of these new sharkoon shark fans.
Both look awesome though. And according to reviews, I can't go wrong with the aerocool fans.

 

[mikeymikec]

I swapped out my CoolerMaster chassis fan (which was doing ~800rpm) for a Sharkoon Silent Eagle 12cm 1000 fan, which is currently doing 680rpm and there is a subtle yet noticeable noise reduction. I think I can say "my work is done" on my own PC, which surprises me a bit because I'm pretty fussy about background noise.

What I find odd is that my current computer builds had the same model CM fan in, yet the board was pushing it at 1000rpm pretty much the whole time. Swapping it out for an SE fan and the rpm has dropped to about 600 the last time I checked, along with an obvious level of noise reduction.