- Dec 8, 2010
- 11,897
- 74
- 91
I upgraded my case from a Fractal Design Define R3 to a Define R4 and wanted to try some PWM case fans to see if they would provide a better balance of noise and cooling. I originally went with Arctic F14 PWM fans, but it turned out they would resonate very easily with the Define R4's front fan holder, and they were also higher RPM and louder than the Fractal fans. So I decided to grab some high quality BeQuiet Shadow Wings 140mm PWM 1000RPM fans:
Setup
In all tests, the case's upper hard drive cage is removed, all fan slots not in use are covered, and the door is closed.
i7-3770K @ 4.2GHz cooled by Scythe Mugen 2 with the default fan
Asus P8Z77-V motherboard
Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X overclocked to 1100MHz, default fan profile
Seasonic SSR-650RM power supply
Define R4 Black Pearl case; the upper hard drive cage is removed, the door is closed, and all fan slots not in use are covered (except for the upper front slot)
Methods
I tested three different configurations:
2x Fractals. The default setup: one intake in the lower front slot, one exhaust in the rear.
2x BeQuiet. The same as above but with BeQuiet PWM fans.
4x BeQuiet. Two front intakes, one exhaust in the top and the rear.
The Fractal fans were tested at 12V, 7V and 5V using the case's integrated fan controller and the CPU fan set to Silent. The PWM fans were connected to the motherboard's secondary CPU fan header via a PWM splitter cable that received power directly from the PSU. The BIOS was used to choose between Silent and Turbo cooling profiles for the PWM fans; doing so also altered the primary CPU fan profile.
For the purposes of this test, I increased CPU and GPU voltages in order to raise the heat output and thus emphasize differences between the tests. To be precise: CPU offset -0.020V -> +0.100V (and LLC set to default), GPU 1.213V -> 1.250V.
I simulated CPU load with Prime95 Small FFT's for 15 minutes and measured temperatures with CPUID HWMonitor. For the GPU load test, I looped Heaven 4.0 for 10 minutes; Heaven also reported temperatures. I used the Sound Meter app for Android to measure noise levels with the microphone located diagonally in front of the case about 0.5 m / 1.5 ft away. (While I had nothing to calibrate the app with, it should at least estimate differences.) Finally, I estimated RPM by recording audio clips of the fan blades hitting a plastic cable tie, then analyzing them in Audacity.
Idle temperatures were not measured (unimportant) but idle noise levels were measured.
Results and analysis
First, here are the measured fan speeds in the different configurations:
What I'm glad to see is that the BeQuiet fans have a wider range of speeds than the Fractal fans. We should expect lower idle noise levels, and potentially better cooling at maximum speed. Bear in mind though that these are approximations, I don't claim them to be 100% accurate.
When idling, the BeQuiet configurations are quieter across the board. I'm particularly impressed by the low As expected from the RPM estimates, the Turbo and Silent modes are equally quiet on idle (and by extension, the Standard profile would also be).
Using four fans instead of two, we only see an tiny increase of 1 dB. I think this is remarkable, considering that airflow is doubled, and that doing the same by simply increasing the speed of the two fans would result in a much greater increase in dB.
And finally, let's look at the load noise levels and temperatures:
First, the GPU numbers show that the default GPU fan profile tends to be quite aggressive: what would be otherwise higher load temperatures show as higher load noise levels. In all setups apart from the Fractal 12V setup, the majority of GPU load noise results from the graphics card cooler itself; as we saw before, fan speeds in Heaven 4.0 are quite low with the BeQuiet fans due to little processor load. So the graphics card cooler indirectly shows differences in cooling performance between the setups. The best balance here seems to come from Fractal fans at 7V, although the difference to using four BeQuiet fans is not noticeable. With two BeQuiet fans on Silent, only running at 470 RPM, the graphics card tends to get quite noisy. Using the Turbo profile, the BeQuiet setups are quieter than the Fractal Design setups at 12V, but the GPU also gets a few degrees warmer.
The CPU numbers are more interesting: with the PWM fans regulated by processor load, the effectiveness of using PWM case fans is emphasized. However, since I didn't test the Fractal setups with the CPU cooler set to Turbo, the Turbo tests with BeQuiet fans are difficult to compare to the Fractals; undoubtedly, the Fractal setups with the CPU fan on Turbo would both perform better and make more noise than shown here.
So if we just look at the Silent tests, it's a clear win to BeQuiet. Two BeQuiets on Silent perform better than two Fractals on 5V while making the same noise, or perform the same as two Fractals on 7V while making less noise. And four BeQuiets on Silent perform better than two Fractals on 12V while making much less noise, and only very slightly more noise than two Fractals on 7V.
Conclusion
Based on the RPM readings, cooling performance and noise levels, the BeQuiet Shadow Wings 1 140mm PWM fans move a nice amount of air for the amount of noise they make. The CPU load test demonstrates this most effectively: at 740RPM, two BeQuiet fans ended up being just as quiet as two Fractal Design fans at 510 RPM, while narrowly outperforming them. Using four fans instead of two barely increases noise levels while roughly doubling airflow. Finally, perhaps the most important aspect of the fans for friends of quiet computing is the idle noise which is noticeably lower than when using the default fans.
With a smooth noise profile and a vibration absorbing frame, these make for excellent quiet case fans. Using four of these set to a Silent fan profile in the BIOS is a nice upgrade over Fractal Design's default setup, although it doesn't come cheap. As a bonus (depending on motherboard), you can create your own fan profile to fine-tune their noise-to-cooling ratio, making them even more attractive. It should also be possible to connect the fans to the graphics card's fan header in order to optimize noise levels when gaming; this should be especially useful for multi-GPU setups where the additional cooling of using the fans near the maximum RPM could really help.
Setup
In all tests, the case's upper hard drive cage is removed, all fan slots not in use are covered, and the door is closed.
i7-3770K @ 4.2GHz cooled by Scythe Mugen 2 with the default fan
Asus P8Z77-V motherboard
Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X overclocked to 1100MHz, default fan profile
Seasonic SSR-650RM power supply
Define R4 Black Pearl case; the upper hard drive cage is removed, the door is closed, and all fan slots not in use are covered (except for the upper front slot)
Methods
I tested three different configurations:
2x Fractals. The default setup: one intake in the lower front slot, one exhaust in the rear.
2x BeQuiet. The same as above but with BeQuiet PWM fans.
4x BeQuiet. Two front intakes, one exhaust in the top and the rear.
The Fractal fans were tested at 12V, 7V and 5V using the case's integrated fan controller and the CPU fan set to Silent. The PWM fans were connected to the motherboard's secondary CPU fan header via a PWM splitter cable that received power directly from the PSU. The BIOS was used to choose between Silent and Turbo cooling profiles for the PWM fans; doing so also altered the primary CPU fan profile.
For the purposes of this test, I increased CPU and GPU voltages in order to raise the heat output and thus emphasize differences between the tests. To be precise: CPU offset -0.020V -> +0.100V (and LLC set to default), GPU 1.213V -> 1.250V.
I simulated CPU load with Prime95 Small FFT's for 15 minutes and measured temperatures with CPUID HWMonitor. For the GPU load test, I looped Heaven 4.0 for 10 minutes; Heaven also reported temperatures. I used the Sound Meter app for Android to measure noise levels with the microphone located diagonally in front of the case about 0.5 m / 1.5 ft away. (While I had nothing to calibrate the app with, it should at least estimate differences.) Finally, I estimated RPM by recording audio clips of the fan blades hitting a plastic cable tie, then analyzing them in Audacity.
Idle temperatures were not measured (unimportant) but idle noise levels were measured.
Results and analysis
First, here are the measured fan speeds in the different configurations:
What I'm glad to see is that the BeQuiet fans have a wider range of speeds than the Fractal fans. We should expect lower idle noise levels, and potentially better cooling at maximum speed. Bear in mind though that these are approximations, I don't claim them to be 100% accurate.
When idling, the BeQuiet configurations are quieter across the board. I'm particularly impressed by the low As expected from the RPM estimates, the Turbo and Silent modes are equally quiet on idle (and by extension, the Standard profile would also be).
Using four fans instead of two, we only see an tiny increase of 1 dB. I think this is remarkable, considering that airflow is doubled, and that doing the same by simply increasing the speed of the two fans would result in a much greater increase in dB.
And finally, let's look at the load noise levels and temperatures:
First, the GPU numbers show that the default GPU fan profile tends to be quite aggressive: what would be otherwise higher load temperatures show as higher load noise levels. In all setups apart from the Fractal 12V setup, the majority of GPU load noise results from the graphics card cooler itself; as we saw before, fan speeds in Heaven 4.0 are quite low with the BeQuiet fans due to little processor load. So the graphics card cooler indirectly shows differences in cooling performance between the setups. The best balance here seems to come from Fractal fans at 7V, although the difference to using four BeQuiet fans is not noticeable. With two BeQuiet fans on Silent, only running at 470 RPM, the graphics card tends to get quite noisy. Using the Turbo profile, the BeQuiet setups are quieter than the Fractal Design setups at 12V, but the GPU also gets a few degrees warmer.
The CPU numbers are more interesting: with the PWM fans regulated by processor load, the effectiveness of using PWM case fans is emphasized. However, since I didn't test the Fractal setups with the CPU cooler set to Turbo, the Turbo tests with BeQuiet fans are difficult to compare to the Fractals; undoubtedly, the Fractal setups with the CPU fan on Turbo would both perform better and make more noise than shown here.
So if we just look at the Silent tests, it's a clear win to BeQuiet. Two BeQuiets on Silent perform better than two Fractals on 5V while making the same noise, or perform the same as two Fractals on 7V while making less noise. And four BeQuiets on Silent perform better than two Fractals on 12V while making much less noise, and only very slightly more noise than two Fractals on 7V.
Conclusion
Based on the RPM readings, cooling performance and noise levels, the BeQuiet Shadow Wings 1 140mm PWM fans move a nice amount of air for the amount of noise they make. The CPU load test demonstrates this most effectively: at 740RPM, two BeQuiet fans ended up being just as quiet as two Fractal Design fans at 510 RPM, while narrowly outperforming them. Using four fans instead of two barely increases noise levels while roughly doubling airflow. Finally, perhaps the most important aspect of the fans for friends of quiet computing is the idle noise which is noticeably lower than when using the default fans.
With a smooth noise profile and a vibration absorbing frame, these make for excellent quiet case fans. Using four of these set to a Silent fan profile in the BIOS is a nice upgrade over Fractal Design's default setup, although it doesn't come cheap. As a bonus (depending on motherboard), you can create your own fan profile to fine-tune their noise-to-cooling ratio, making them even more attractive. It should also be possible to connect the fans to the graphics card's fan header in order to optimize noise levels when gaming; this should be especially useful for multi-GPU setups where the additional cooling of using the fans near the maximum RPM could really help.
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