Inspired a bit by the thread about the different bearing types and not wanting to derail the conversation there, I thought I’d make one here. Also, since I am now swearing off AIO’s for the foreseeable future and I don’t know if I will ever get up the stones to build a custom loop, case fan’s and air cooler’s will be my go to.
I saw many good brands tossed about in the aforementioned thread, Corsair, LianLi, Phanteks, etc. but most of those are in the $15 - $40 each price range. Let’s talk about more budget options for people.
I am currently using 3 Asiahorse FS9002 that came in a 3pack for $30-ish when I got them. They came with their own controller which is proprietary(sad face), but they have updated versions that are 4-pin standard now. These little 120mm fans do a really good job airflow wise, the rgb looks great and has given me no issues whatsoever, except for the controller that is needed for their proprietary connectors.
So let’s see your other options for budget case fans and add budget cpu coolers in here as well. Let’s see what ya’ll got.
Arctic are one of the first companies to offer 6 years warranty on their fans, alongside Noctua.
Right now Arctic are one of the only companies to offer 10 years warranty on their fans, alongside Noctua.
Arctic are quiet and push a lot of air even at low RPM.
Arctic fans are usually 5-6-7$ a pop. Not 50, 5$… In my country I can get Arctic 120 fans for as low as 4 euros.
Since Arctic started sending review samples, there are quite a lot of videos, talking about them fans. They are literally best price performance there is.
less than 10$ for a fan - nobody is anywhere near the quality for the price.
I’ve seen plenty or reviews on their CPU coolers, but not much on their case fans. Though with GN’s new fan tester in house and being learned how to use, hopefully the information on more fan brands will get out there.
When you have 6 intake and 5 out in one case… they were on sale for like $5 each
Mildly Off Topic Tangent
I have used the Cougar 4 pack for $20 fans, Corsair something or rathers, NZXT stock fans, Cryorig, EKWB, Phanteks, and Akasa, Noctua, and EKWB fans. I feel like at some point, some surprisingly low point, a case fan is a case fan, brand is almost irrelevant.
There are so many reviews out there salivating over some new fan that has come out at like $30 a pop, but when you look at the test results it’s what, 2C cooler than the $15 fan? Like the second video linked a few posts up the difference between absolute best fan and absolute worst fan in testing was like 4.5C. Or another way to look at it, one could save potentially $100 on a build simply by using cheaper fans and having minimally higher temps.
While this is true, there are those people that obsess over getting the absolute lowest temps, just as there are the XOC people that obsess over getting the highest clock speeds, so there is a market for those people. Unfortunately, that “lowest point” is what gets marketed the most.
For those of us that don’t care that much and just want consistent cooling in their PC’s, the budget brands will work just fine, thus this thread.
Well, you get a fan with two wires coming off it.
So you at minimum need to add a connector to it (either by crimping or soldering).
For speed control, you either need a fan controller capable of DC, or you need to build a simple circuit to turn the motherboards PWM signal into DC (can be done with a MOSFET, a few resistors and a low-pass filter).
