Are all case fans created equal?

I bought 2 sickleflow fans a few years back. One died within 6 months. As for the specs they list, I'm calling BS because they are louder than the stock H100i GTX fans that are right next to the sickle flow. The corsair fans arent bad but they arent good either for the price.

Well, just consider the physical endowment of the average male of Chinese heritage, it's no wonder they exaggerate sizes.

Or they think they can compensate with extra wind making in marketing for the wind making deficit of their fans? Anywho, one look at the stator of the fan motor assy of a Papst fan, and you just know these fans mean business lol, it looks like a weapon, where on a consumer fan, the motor parts look like they accidentally fell out of a Bic lighter or something lol

But if a user doesn't need overkill, going with a 5 EUR Arctic fan is OK, it's as good as any consumer grade fan, looks nicer than a fecal brown Noctua, and the price is right. For the price of a single Papst you can get 3 Arctics. I would only go with Arctic though if I wanted a white themed case for instance, or wanted to mount RGBW LED's pointing at the blades for effect, with the white blades that's totally rad, literally radiant, not hipster rad, not a measure for radioactivity lol
But 25 bucks for a crappy Corsair fan (and those really are crappy as fuck) or a Noctua outhouse-deco fan, no fucking way lol...
An alternative to Arctic that's also good and reasonably priced if gotten from the right vendor, is Antec. They also have pretty good fans around the 5 EUR mark, or even Enermax, which are not quite as good but decent enough, also around 4-5 EUR.
But please please please, don't spend 20-25 bucks on Noctua or Corsair or whatever-gamer-brand fans, they are not worth more than 5 EUR, and even if they were 5 EUR, I would still prefer the Arctic or Antec fans because they last longer, and quite honestly, I would expect to get paid hundreds of dollars to build Noctua fans into my system if the fans were visible, because the craphouse-rotors are really unacceptably ugly.

1 Like

Just got done clean in one of these. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DWIB15A/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_392.ybEK81P5N

This thing lives in the back of a CNC lathe in a filthy environment. I pull it off of the machine and clean it about twice a year. At which point the fan guards are almost completely occluded with gunk. Not only that, this fan is the original to the machine, 16 years old.

I'm glad to know they make fans in standard sizes for PCs. This is what I'll be looking at.

2 Likes

I have those same Corsair fans with white LED's. They are very good and reasonably quiet when set to 60% speed at idle and ramping up as needed. The only problem I've had is after 3 years I had to peel the label to oil them cause they started making rattle noises.

However I recommend the be quiet! SilentWings fans that came with my case. They are pricey ($20 ea) but totally quiet even at full speed. I think they are much better and definitely quieter than my Noctua SP fan.

I am a Noctua Snob. They are pricey but will last you a lifetime.

1 Like

i am a delta snob cost an arm and a leg require a fan controller but last a lifetime. and are overkill for 99.9 % of average PC's.

Fuck Corsair SP and AF's. I've got one of each of the 140mm size and they're terrible. The motors in them makes a stand-out annoying noise as they ramp up and down, its bad. Grab noctua NF-F12's, or the NF-P14 Redux's. I would recommend the Noctua NF-S12 Redux's for airflow. Alternatively, if your down to buy 2 for one, consider the Cosair ML120 non-pro. Its $40 for a pack of 2, and the maglev bearing in those is worlds better than the POS Sleeve bearing in the SP and AF series.

I've learned one thing, don't bother with cheapo fans. I bought a bunch of Fractal Design's GP14 fans, and they all started making a noise as they all eventually seemed to loosen in the bearing. The blades would wobble and the noise was the most annoying thing ever. The GP12 fans don't die as quick, but its the same story. Slowly I'm in the process of removing all my cheap fractal fans and replacing them with Noctua Redux series.

I'll take a look!