What 120mm fans should I get?

[CurseTheSky]

I'm looking to replace the stock Antec Tri-Cools in my P182 SE. I love the fact that I can set them at high, medium, and low, but at high and medium they're too noisy, and at low my temperatures sky rocket.

Right now, I'm thinking of grabbing these Yate Loons, but I have a few concerns: http://www.petrastechshop.com/12yalod1cafa1.html

1. They might be too loud - I'd like the ability to undervolt them if needed, but I don't want to clutter my case with fan speed controllers. Expansion slot / front panel rheobuses are out of the question. If they are too loud, is there an easy, reversible way to undervolt them? Having a switch similar to the Tri-Cools would be absolutely ideal.

2. I'm looking to sleeve the cables to keep a clean look, so I'll probably grab a sleeving kit off of Petra's as well. Any experience with sleeving fan wires? Is it a PITA, or generally pretty easy?

3. As far as I know, they use sleeve bearings - will there be any problems running some vertical, and some horizontal? I heard sleeve bearings shouldn't be kept one way or the other. I don't care if they burn out in 2-3 years, but I'd prefer not to be replacing them in 6 months.

Thanks.

 

[Eureka]

You could always jam a resistor into the power pin to undervolt it. I would go for low speed fans... 33dB is rather loud (about 10x as loud as the low version). Either that or spend a little more and get Scythes or other fans that will run at a lower dB.

 

[zagood]

Along those same lines, if you don't want to solder a resistor yourself, you can get some of these:
http://www.quietpcusa.com/Zalm...stor-Cable-P102C0.aspx

With the Yates (or any other fan with a 4-pin molex) you can do a 5v/7v mod - 7v can be hard on your PSU though.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=372297

There are other options as well, take a look at some of these (PCI slot and esp. the SilenX internal 4-channel)
http://www.performance-pcs.com...b9b44ea0938ef83b507d6c

 

[Tullphan]

Sleeving isn't really that hard to do...of course i've never sleeved anything that both molex & 3-pin connectors.

 

[zagood]

I never read 2 & 3:

2. I highly recommend not getting one of those sleeving kits. Unless you're going to do a PSU, then you'll need all those different widths. If you're just doing fans and assorted bare wires, then order sleeving and heatshrink by the foot. It's usually better quality that way anyway. Sleeving fans is easy. Sleeving some PSU connectors is hard. Good guide here: http://www.highflow.nl/forum/f...e-sata-fan-cable-1252/

3. Sleeve bearings can have a different (annoying) sound when horizontal. You've got about a 50/50 shot. Sony FDB fans (like the S-Flex and the Thermalright fans) are very good for horizontal mounting. Noctuas are ok.

 

[Eureka]

Originally posted by: zagood3. Sleeve bearings can have a different (annoying) sound when horizontal. You've got about a 50/50 shot. Sony FDB fans (like the S-Flex and the Thermalright fans) are very good for horizontal mounting. Noctuas are ok.

I never understood this horizontal and vertical description. What is horizontal, the frame of the fan or the rotational axis of the fan??

 

[zagood]

I see what you're getting at - I'm referring to the frame.

 

[wolfman11]

I just replaced some Antec tri-cools (2) in my case. Added this to the rear as an exhaust: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835185005 and this to the front as an intake: http://www.svc.com/d12sl-12bl.html. Believe the Nexus is basically a Yate Loon. Anyway, these fans are a lot quieter than the antec tri-cools were on low. Each is mounted with silicon mounts. Of the two, the Scythe S-Flex E's seem to be a real winner for air flow / noise...

 

[CurseTheSky]

Hmm, I'll probably order at least one of the Scythe S-Flex E's for the top slot (horizontal mount), and maybe Yates for the rest. I would go with all Scythes, but $68 for four fans is too much for me. I'll never order another Scythe Slipstream though... I got the quiet one, and while it was certainly quiet, it hardly moved any air (way less than a Tri-Cool on low). It also stopped working after about 2-3 weeks, but I didn't feel like paying the shipping to RMA a $10 part.

Good advice about the wire sleeving. I can't imagine it's difficult (slip the sleeving over the wires, shrink heatshrink over both ends AFAIK), but I wanted to make sure there weren't any unforeseen difficulties, like with sleeving a PSU.

 

[Phew]

I try to avoid sleeve bearing fans at all costs; they have the most annoying sound once they start to fail (which can be less than a year in my experience). Fluid bearings (Scythes, Panaflo, etc) or quality ball bearings (San Ace) is the way to go.

 

[Tullphan]

Originally posted by: zagood


2. I highly recommend not getting one of those sleeving kits. Unless you're going to do a PSU, then you'll need all those different widths. If you're just doing fans and assorted bare wires, then order sleeving and heatshrink by the foot. It's usually better quality that way anyway. Sleeving fans is easy. Sleeving some PSU connectors is hard. Good guide here: http://www.highflow.nl/forum/f...e-sata-fan-cable-1252/

That was an interesting article. I don't know why one would want to sleeve their flat, modular SATA cables, but to each their own.
I noticed in the article that the author took the ends off of his fans & used 1/8" sleeving & 1/4" heatshrink. If you didn't want to go to the trouble of taking the end off, get some 1/4" sleeving & 3/8" heatshrink. The trick with the sleeve is to stick a pen down it and feed the pen closely followed by the 3pin female end.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
2. I'm looking to sleeve the cables to keep a clean look, so I'll probably grab a sleeving kit off of Petra's as well. Any experience with sleeving fan wires? Is it a PITA, or generally pretty easy?

It's not hard, but can be time consuming depending on how thorough you are. I'm a bit neurotic about it...

My method is:
- slip on the sleeving
- use electrical tape to secure the two ends of the sleeving to the cable
- tie a nylon cable tie around the middle of the sections of electrical tape, and snip off the excess length after tightening it
- an inch or so of heat shrink over the electrical tape + ring of nylon

You might have seen that "heat shrink over nylon tie" method used by some PSU manufacturers. I've had issues with sleeving slipping out from underneath heat shrink, so that's why I take those additional steps.

I buy 1/8" and 1/4" sleeving and heat shrink by the foot from CableOrganizer.com. 1/8" is tighter, but harder/impossible to slip over fan connectors without removing the connectors temporarily.

 

[Zepper]

The inline resistor (first item suggested by zagood above) is fan specific for Zalman fans. Not for use with just any fan. You have to know the resistance (direct relationship to the current) rating of your fan and the resistance of the resistor to know what effect it will have on your particular fan. The Zalman resistor is 56 Ohms. It just so happens that the current ratings of the Yate Loon and Zalman F3 are about the same (0.3 A), so it should have a similar effect on them. The SFlex E models use about half the current of the others (0.15A), so the resistor would have about half the effect it does on the others (assuming relatively linear RPM to Amps ratio). It has always struck me as strange that all three models of the YL D12Sx-12 have the same current rating, while most others that have several models in a series have different current ratings for each.

Yes, standard sleeve bearing fans (like the Yate Loon D12SL/M/H-12) do have difficulty operating in other orientations than vertical. That is at least partly the reason that Seasonic stopped using Y-Ls in some of their PSUs (though they claimed it was too much variability in quality, but we old hands know that Seasonic's tech people made a poor choice (probably a cost-driven choice) of part for a mostly horizontal application. However, admission of same would mean a loss of face...).

.bh.

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: Tullphan
That was an interesting article. I don't know why one would want to sleeve their flat, modular SATA cables, but to each their own.
I noticed in the article that the author took the ends off of his fans & used 1/8" sleeving & 1/4" heatshrink. If you didn't want to go to the trouble of taking the end off, get some 1/4" sleeving & 3/8" heatshrink. The trick with the sleeve is to stick a pen down it and feed the pen closely followed by the 3pin female end.

I've gone the 1/4" - 3/8" route, and it just looks sloppy if you have any bends. I'll take the extra 30 seconds to use 1/8".

After re-reading this article, I actually sleeved one of my sata cables. Doesn't do anything for airflow and actually hinders routing choices because of the added stiffness, but gosh darn it, it sure looks good. Had some problems with slippage...

Originally posted by: AmberClad
You might have seen that "heat shrink over nylon tie" method used by some PSU manufacturers. I've had issues with sleeving slipping out from underneath heat shrink, so that's why I take those additional steps.

Have you tried adhesive lined heatshrink? I'm thinking about picking some up for the sata cables, but since I've got plenty of zipties may just go that way.

@Zepper - doh! That's funny...I've only used those resistors on YLs.

 

[deimos3428]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
I'm looking to replace the stock Antec Tri-Cools in my P182 SE. I love the fact that I can set them at high, medium, and low, but at high and medium they're too noisy, and at low my temperatures sky rocket.

Found the same thing with my Sonata III. I'd recommend the Noctua P12 1300 RPMs as they're excellent quality. They push a ton of air, and are silent. However, that build quality doesn't come cheap so if you're on a tight budget look elsewhere.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...08004&Tpk=noctua%20P12