What are the best case fans you can buy that aren't ridiculously expensive?
I don't know you may classify as "ridiculously expensive", but for me there's only one answer to that question, Noctua. Yes the colors are a bit diarrhea like, but they work extremely well. Their industrial line has ones that are black but cost a bit more, IIRC.
Here's a link to Amazon showing Noctua products: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Noctua
http://www.blacknoise.com/site/en/products/noiseblocker-it-fans.php
Good looking, silent, German fans with reputation.
I'm assuming you've used them before, if so what's your experience been like?
They're going in my next case but I've been watching quite some videos and one of my favorite casemoders uses them.
There are lots of very good fans for relatively cheap. Noctua are not cheap and aren't particularly good, their industrial line are great fans but they are earbleedingly loud. By case fan I will just assume you mean airflow optimized fans. some of the best AF fans I've ever owned/seen are Silverstone's AP122/123 fans they move alot of air and are fairly quiet. Corsairs AF fans are decent as well, and they are often on sale for around 12$ a piece. If you are not willing to spend 15+ per fan but want improved fan performance over the horrible standard case fans look into Yates loons they are around 5$ each and have very good performance with many choices for RPM, colors, and LEDs. Otherwise Noiseblockers are great fans, cougar makes good fans, Most water-cooling company's sell re-branded Noiseblocker fans at a lower price so make sure to check.
Thanks man, I might buy the AF 120's from corsair because they are on a discount in the town that I live in, plus don't have to pay for the shipping.
No problem! good luck with your build as a side note the quiet edition corsair AF fans are a little light on performance; while I have used them and like them. For myself, in the future, I would buy the performance version and use a fan controller to curb the noise (or Mobo fan controllers like Asus fan expert). In truth they are the exact same fan, the quiet version just has a limited RPM.
Good thing I bought the performance editions xD