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Quiet 120mm Fan with decent flow

F

firewolfsm

Golden Member
I'm trying to decide between two fluid bearing fans and I can't tell which would be better for me. There are two versions of the S-Flex I'm looking at, the 800RPM and the 1200RPM models, but if the performance hit on the 800 is too much then I can stay with the 1200. Then there is the Arctic Cooling AF12, which has a nice frameless design that will reduce vibrations (which should help because I don't have any pads) but runs at 1500RPM. That might be too loud but the fan could be quieter because of the design. I'm perfectly fine with a 38mm fan.

Then there's this "magnetic bearing" fan I found, it seems really quiet but the airflow it too low. Some searching showed me that there's a version with a knob to control the RPM and raise it higher than the stock 1000. If I could find that I'd get it right away.

Would 44CFM be much worse than 54?

I really want the quietest solution but then again I want low temps too 😀 any recomendations?

http://jab-tech.com/Arctic-Cooling-...12-pr-3297.html

http://jab-tech.com/Scythe-S-Flex-F...1E-pr-3256.html

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...format=2&style=

And since my motherboard can't do it's own undervolting and I don't have a controller I will be running at full 12V
 
Your links don't work.

Let's see, 49CFM @ 20.1dBA for the S-Flex SFF21E, 33.5CFM @ 8.7dBA for the S-FLEX SFF21D, 56.3CFM @ 24.5dBA for the Arctic Cooling AF12...

All three of those fans seem rated rather optimistically, but all should be pretty low noise. I suppose the question is, how much airflow do you really need,and how sensitive are you to noise?? Inside a typical chassis running a single HDD, dual-core CPU, and a 7900GT/X1900XT or similar, with relatively clean internal work, 33CFM intake and 33CFM exhaust (assuming a 120mm intake and a 120mme exhaust) oughta be enough, assuming your CPU cooling is adequate.

OTOH you can grab a faster fan and 7volt it, if you're not adverse to powering fans off of the molex connectors. I personally find Panaflo 120mm L1A's @ 7v to be quiet enough and my Nexus 120mm is inaudible to my ears when installed in my case, but I'm not exactly super demanding as far as noise goes. 🙂
 
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