Is there any fan that gets a better cooling / dBA ration than this?

Phryq

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http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/casefans/venturi-series/venturi-hp-14-pwm



Looks like the Venturi is among the quietest, and it excells at 'high-restriction airflow scenarios', so should be good in a small case with a heatsink.

I'm looking for a fan to pair with a passive cooling system (most likely a vapor chamber and some heatpipes going to case-fins).
 
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Raxe

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Mar 3, 2017
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Personally i don´t trust the db/cfm that manufacturers show. These are tested with their methodology and differs a lot between them.

I prefer to stick with a review website like : http://www.coolingtechnique.com/recensioni/air-cooling/ventole.html

It´s in Italian, but it´s easy to understand( at least the tech words) and the most important, they test the fans with the same test and methodology so their comparisons are close to perfect measures.

In a quick research, it appears that the current top on super good fans(140mm) ratio cfm/db ratio mm2hopressure/cfm are :

Ratio cfm/dba Fractal venturi hp-14 PWM: http://prnt.sc/eu90ue

Ratio mm2ho/cfm Bitfenix spectre pro 140mm PWM( i don´t think this is alright...)

Corsair ML120 and Enermax D.F Pressure are awesome if you need pressure.

And the best of all, you can listen all the fans reviewed in their youtube channel ;)
 

Phryq

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Wow, really great info. And you can click on that British flag to get English btw.

So now I'm thinking about the Ventui

It says it's particularly good in low-airflow situations... so a small case with a heatsink. And a peak noise of 24dB is good, just barely enough to hear it and now your CPU might be frying :p

I wonder if I shoud edit the OP with the Venturi as the new King. Thanks!
 
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Raxe

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Mar 3, 2017
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Wow, really great info. And you can click on that British flag to get English btw.

So now I'm thinking about the Ventui

It says it's particularly good in low-airflow situations... so a small case with a heatsink. And a peak noise of 24dB is good, just barely enough to hear it and now your CPU might be frying :p

I wonder if I shoud edit the OP with the Venturi as the new King. Thanks!

So there are different languages, i didn´t know until now, Lol.

Remember to check the videos for the sound, but in the case of the Venturi seems pretty laudable even at 12v


And another tip, the more restricted your case/airflow/fins of the heatsink, better pressure of the fan is the way to go.

If your passive case is going to be "open" or simply there is enough space for the fan to perform freerly, then only cfm is the important matter
 
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Phryq

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Ok thanks. I have difficulty with the Youtube vids because how close the mic is, or the quality of mic recording the fan would really change how loud in sounds, no?

So I guess a graph comparing 'pressure' is also important.... I'm considering putting as many holes as possible in the case for maximum airflow, and then covering all the holes with anti-dust-mesh. Part of me would like to have something water-tight, but I don't think it's at all practical. I had an idea before to make a passively cooled/airtight system, and just put it on top of a laptop cooler, but I don't think I could get the heat to move into the case efficiently enough.
 

Runamok81

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So, the NB-eLoop B14 are 29mm thick.
At 25mm thick it looks like a tossup between
  • EK Vardar F1-140
  • Be Quiet! Silent Wings 3 140



The Vardars from EK may be great, but batch quality looks hit and miss. EK has had some recalls on them. Also quite a few folks complaining about their noise profile. Update: The recall didn't apply to the F1-140 tested above, so check them out!

Smart money is on the newly released Silent Wings 3
. Review here.



The SIlent Wings are made by Be Quiet! in Germany. Just like Noctuas. They have a solid 5yr warranty and a strong following. They outperformed the Noctuas in this hardwareluxx.de head to head. Better performance at lower decibels. Very nice showing.

 
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|||

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Sep 26, 2015
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So, the NB-eLoop B14 are 29mm thick.

Yep, it is thicker. I've also heard the PWM motor can be noisy, so it is best to go with the B14-3 model.

The Vardars from EK may be great, but batch quality looks hit and miss. EK has had some recalls on them. Also quite a few folks complaining about their noise profile. Update: The recall didn't apply to the F1-140 tested above, so check them out!

I'm pretty sure EK took the fans subject to recall off the market when it happened. If they've rereleased them, the problems should be resolved.

The SIlent Wings are made by Be Quiet! in Germany. Just like Noctuas. They have a solid 5yr warranty and a strong following. They outperformed the Noctuas in this hardwareluxx.de head to head. Better performance at lower decibels. Very nice showing.


This comparison chart is meaningless without airflow data. The Corsair's spin up to higher speeds, so they can indeed get up to higher volume. But what about airflow...you can see that it is competitive in the chart below. Using the methodology of decibels at highest RPM, this chart would have the ML140 way above all of the others, even though it is just about as good as the NB-eLoop.

 
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Phryq

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PWM motor? I thought there would just be a fan motor, and PWM just meant the voltage could be set by the motherboard?

Are PWM fans generally louder than 1-speed fans? I'd like a PWM fan because, I feel comfortable hearing something when I push my PC too hard.
 

zovc

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Jan 5, 2017
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I think they are saying the motor is prone to make a lot of noise when PWM tells it to go certain speeds. The thing about a PWM fan is it might end up going way faster than a non-PWM fan when the motherboard is telling it to go at, say, 100%. Maybe you get more cooling, but you probably are getting more noise, too.

So I don't want to hijack your thread or impose my interests here, but I'm also looking at trying to choose the optimal fan for whichever heatsink I end up going with, too. I see a lot of discussion and comparison of 140mm fans, but don't 120mm fans normally have better static pressure? If I'm not mistaken, static pressure is the most useful measurement of a fan's ability to circulate air through a turbulent area, like a radiator or a heatsink or even just a space with limited airflow.

What's more, I believe the 'dead zone' in the center of 140mm fan is a bit larger than it is in a 120mm fan, which might mean it ends up making sense ofsetting the center of the fan from the center of the heatsink?
 

Phryq

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I think they are saying the motor is prone to make a lot of noise when PWM tells it to go certain speeds. The thing about a PWM fan is it might end up going way faster than a non-PWM fan when the motherboard is telling it to go at, say, 100%. Maybe you get more cooling, but you probably are getting more noise, too.

So I don't want to hijack your thread or impose my interests here, but I'm also looking at trying to choose the optimal fan for whichever heatsink I end up going with, too. I see a lot of discussion and comparison of 140mm fans, but don't 120mm fans normally have better static pressure? If I'm not mistaken, static pressure is the most useful measurement of a fan's ability to circulate air through a turbulent area, like a radiator or a heatsink or even just a space with limited airflow.

What's more, I believe the 'dead zone' in the center of 140mm fan is a bit larger than it is in a 120mm fan, which might mean it ends up making sense ofsetting the center of the fan from the center of the heatsink?

I'm prone to drifting off-topic myself, so maybe it's better someone else hijacks it before I do it myself :p

I was just assuming the bigger the fan, the better the noise/cooling ratio, which is what I was seeing from specs. And the Venturi appearently specializes in high pressure with tubulent areas. But isn't there an objective way to measure that?

I also had the thought however about offsetting the fan. If the fan is fastened to the case lid, rather than the heatsink, it wouldn't be a problem to have the deadzone slightly away from the CPU. The ASRock MicroSTX has the CPU (and GPU) of center anyhow, so I would simply keep the fan centered in the case, and it would cool both.
 

zovc

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Jan 5, 2017
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I was just assuming the bigger the fan, the better the noise/cooling ratio, which is what I was seeing from specs. And the Venturi appearently specializes in high pressure with tubulent areas. But isn't there an objective way to measure that?

It's not quite so simple. A bigger fan can normally push more air with less RPM and will normally be quieter. So there's the difference of airflow and air pressure and they are similar but different.

Big fans, in general, are great for airflow, they can push a greater volume of air given their larger size. Smaller fans are sometimes better at air pressure, because they are pushing air harder than the bigger fan. Air pressure is usually given precedence over airflow when you're talking about fans used in conjunction with heatsinks or radiators, because the objective is to force air through the often tightly packed fins.
 

zovc

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Jan 5, 2017
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An example of applications would be:

In my Fractal Design Define R5, I had a airflow-optimized 140mm fan at the bottom of the case. The idea behind it was to push the lowest (coolest) air in the room up into the case, just a lot of it. In the front of the case, I had 120mm fans optimized for static pressure, because the fans needed to pull air in through the case's front panel and push it through all of my hard drives.
 
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Sean Crees

Airflow Optimizer
Jan 1, 2017
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A thread about the best 120mm fan airflow/pressure for the noise, and no one mentions the God of all fans, the Gentle Typhoon?

The originals from Scythe are a little hard to get a hold of, and some don't like the grey fan blades. A different company managed to convince Nidec (the OEM of the fans) to re-release them under a different brand, with an all black fan blade this time, and a PWM version which Scythe never released.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/120mm-fans/shopby/brand--darkside/
 
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