Case Fan??

[avijay]

I'm looking for some good quiet case fans. Anyone got any inputs???

 

[stevty2889]

What size fans?? If you can use 120mm fans, the vantec stealths are quiet and move a decent amount of air..

 

[avijay]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
What size fans?? If you can use 120mm fans, the vantec stealths are quiet and move a decent amount of air..

I'm looking for four 80mm and one 120mm fans.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: avijay

Originally posted by: stevty2889
What size fans?? If you can use 120mm fans, the vantec stealths are quiet and move a decent amount of air..

I'm looking for four 80mm and one 120mm fans.

You want quiet yet want 5 fans?

I would go for Panaflos. Pretty much everyone else around here will say the same. However, there are other options. You have Sunon, Nexus, Vantec and Papst. How much do you want to spend? Do you want RPM reading?

 

[avijay]

how do i find out the amount of air these fans move? is it the CFM value that corresponds to that?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yes. Apparently the Germans measure it in cubic-meters per hour. Something I just found out this evening.

I've got rid of 80mm fans entirely. The ones that move up to 75 CFM are too noisy, and the ones that have low dBA values move an anemic amount of air.

The Panaflo's we discussed here in the last week or two -- both the 120mm and 92mm, I think -- move an adequate amount of air with low noise. the 120 is worth between 86 and 89 CFM, as I recollect.

But there are several varieties of fans to choose from, and the trade-offs between CFM and dBA are a matter of personal preference and how you intend to deploy them. I said earlier that a very important consideration would also be MTBF -- mean time between failures, or life-expectancy, in hours. 100,000 hours is a very reliable value, and some fans are rated as low as 30,000.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

There is something else -- somebody mentioned the choice of four or so 80mm fans with incredulity.

Decibel levels are not cumulative, like the CFM measure. You can cut the noise level in your case by adding fans and running all of them at lower rpm. That is, a single fan running at 4,000 rpm pushing 70 CFM will have a louder noise level than two of the same type of fan running at 2,000 rpm each, possibly pushing an equivalent amount of air or in that "neighborhood". And figure that CFM's are more or less proportional to RPMs for the same fan.

 

[avijay]

I'm actually looking for 5 case fans altogether, its a system I'm building for a friend. He wants blue LED fans which are not too noisy. and the case takes 4 80mm and a 120mm fan. I've checked the Vantec and Panaflos on newegg. they seem ok. I couldn't find the nexus or the papst fans though. anyone u'd recommend apart from the one's i've looked at.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: avijay
I'm actually looking for 5 case fans altogether, its a system I'm building for a friend. He wants blue LED fans which are not too noisy. and the case takes 4 80mm and a 120mm fan. I've checked the Vantec and Panaflos on newegg. they seem ok. I couldn't find the nexus or the papst fans though. anyone u'd recommend apart from the one's i've looked at.

FrozenCPU. Got to the "Fans" section.