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Next Generation Fans
Tweaker writes "We just posted the first installment of an ongoing article dedicated to the latest designs and innovations for cooling your PC. The Next Generation Fans roundup starts off with five different models from four different manufacturers." I would have liked to have seen the dB rating for each fan- I've had some fans that really were great, provided I was wearing noise cancelling headphones while sharing a room with them. I have the Antec Tricolor fans they review in my case- they are gorgeous, but audible.
Seem to remember an article on /. about those, where they had a magnet at the tip of the blade and the "drive motor" in the four corners of the fan casing?
Anybody seen any comparative tests of those?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I was really disappointed when I read the article. I thought it was going to be about fans of Star Treg TNG. I guess I'll have to put the vulcan ears back in the closet. *sigh*
Where no fans have gone before.
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
I really appreciate these diversions. Keep it up.
With five different fan models from four different manufacturers, there is no real way of comparing one to another, although I can definitely give my opinion on certain features or aspects. For instance, I found the LEDs on the Antec Blue and TriLight fans to be much brighter and colorful than the LEDs found on the Cooler Master Blue LED fan
The fact that the first comment the authors make in their summary regarding the various merits of the fans deals not with performance or cost, but rather completely superfluous colored lights says something about this review in general.
...a setup that would allow me to put my computer 20-30 feet away in another room, but still have the things I need in front of me. Powerswitch/reset button Monitor Mouse Keyboard CD/Burner/DVD/Floppy/whatever extra firewire/usb storage device and a USB 2.0 hub for extra hardware If I could have that (and be able to use graphic intensive apps, like games) for a good price, they'd have my money in a heartbeat! Especially if one day it could be done wirelessly, or with just one wire to run to wherever I wanted my "desktop". Who cares how noisy the fan is if it's in another room???? -Chris
I bet these things sound like a hovercraft at take-off. Sound cancelling? Sure...as soon as you go deaf, you won't hear them anymore.
Other than that, kinda nifty.
Sent from your iPad.
Well, right now, I'm personally using this for my fan, and it works really well.
I've also been looking for a good liquid-cooling system, but has anyone solved the problem of getting rid of condensation yet? I don't want to have to mae a runoff tube leading out of my case to a bucket. *g*
I rate this article (-1, Worthless).
Is it really possible to have zero-noise fans? I realize noise from the electric motor contributes to (relatively) high dB levels, but they're moving air with a spinning fan. Is it really that important, or conceivable, to have a fan with virtually no noise level? Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on sound-shielding materials for the exterior?
Fans? What's the point? I thought we were on to vapochill now...
My conclusion : this article is an embarassment to online journalism (and that's rather difficult to accomplish), don't read it.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
Are the silent flower heatsinks worth getting (non-overclocked 2Ghz)? I might, but they're pretty expensive.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
How can you miss the YS tech TMD fans?
They removed the rotor from the center and put the magnets on the outside so more air blows where the CPU die is and it also is quieter.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
No, because sound shielding isn't going to account for the noise coming from the case fans, which are exposed to the exterior. Some exterior baffles, maybe.
I just bought an Antec power supply with a temperature-regulated fan. It's quiet. Only problem is, if you let the Antec also control the case fans, the PSU ends up doing all the work dissipating heat. It ends up funneling all the heat through the PSU (which has a big intake fan on the bottom in addition to its exhaust fan). Like I said, it's quiet but I can't imagine the PSU lasting very long this way.
Having just fitted the noise reduction kit to my Ultra 30, I can confirm it makes a hell of a difference to noise levels. The total of the kit is:
- A temperature sensor
- A voltage regulator (based on the temp sensor, I assume)
- two fan outputs
- a temperature sensor
- a "through" cable for the power
It didn't cost that much ($35), and I'm pretty sure it could be made cheaper if integrated into a motherboard. Normal users wouldn't even need to know it was there, as all the above parts would be built into the mainboard and the fan outputs would adjust voltage levels as required."if you just like looking at the insides of your PC a great deal, then you're in for a real treat with one or two of these!"
Real treat? Get a life!
A case fan that lights up so you can swap out the processor in the middle of the night while the machine is still running...
Personally, I like my CPUs to be as quiet and unontrusive as possible. I think I'll pass...
The only "next-gen" fans are those with the berings on the outside of the blades as opposed to being on the inside. These are just colored ordinary fans. Lets call them "Fans 0.1"...
I have read a number of the Silent PC stories. I keep wondering why would anyone want one. Ok, I know it's just me but I like the drone of a bank of systems. My preference is to have them in my bedroom, when possible. The whitenoise helps me sleep. There's even a program I found (I think it's on freshmeat) called whitenoise which lets me add to and tweak the overall level and pitch of the background noise.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Well, they will run a P4 up to 2.8Ghz, and they are completely silent. So if you care about noise, then yes.
See here, how to build a silent pc.
Give me some substance! I want to know the db rating on these. I need a way to find out how to make my pc cool, but not make it sound like a frickin jet plane. Also, I would like an honest opinion on whether one fan is quieter then another. I want 3 of the quietest fands I can find with the highest CFM ratings I can get. Somehow, I don't think it's possible. Also, Shuttle has a heat pipe thing in thiers making it possible to have a system with only 1-2 fans in it instead of the 6 my system has (2 in power supply, one on CPU, one in front, one in back and one on side), has ANYONE else made a similar solution that will work in any case??
Gorkman
They need to Split that $500000 up between the families who lost loved ones.
Seems to me like it would have been a good idea to crannk the fan before the processor died.
Hmm, noise cancellation... How about having some local noise cancellation *inside* the box? I've got a hunch that it would work, since its a relatively small enclosed area.
Anyone ever tried this?
When I saw the heading, "Next Generation Fans", my first thought was. "Finally, somebody is starting to use this genome mapping thing properly and they have started breeding better music supporters. (i.e. people that don't slavishly follow everything that gets poured down their throats. Of course nobody on /. does that.)"
Oh, never mind. I guess it was just me.
First of all, he expends about two paragraphs in description of each fan. That's it. No benchmarks. No measurements. Not even, as CmdrTaco pointed out, noise measurements. That's pretty damn sorry.
Furthermore, the token effort that he expended on each fan is comical. Part of his review includes such irrelevant gems as this:
I guess when you're not even presented with the most basic characteristics of a fan, you'd buy it based on the box color too!Finally, I'm appalled by both Slashdot's and Tweakers Australia's misleading and dishonest title. Next generation fans? They're fans with goddamn LEDs on them! Who cares? There is absolutely nothing new, interesting or innovative on display here. Next generation might be those "fans" that wave and are nearly silent, or one of those new fans (researched by Sunon, maybe?) that has the motor run around the outside instead of blocking airflow by driving the blades from the center. But this? This is just flashy crap that is not "next generation" and shouldn't be advertised as such.
Speaking of advertising, how much is this guy making from banner views for taking advantage of Slashdot editors who refuse to read articles before they're posted?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Unless all you care about is how the fan looks and not how it performs.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Wtf, putting blinking LEDs in fans makes them "next-generation"?
The CPU fan I'm using right now is what I'd call next-generation. Why? Because it's actually quite silent. Go ahead and check out Verax (German only unfortunately). There's information on their fan design, including more detailed pics of different models. Verax uses a special fan shape to reduce noise, and, most importantly, ties the fan to the heatsink with a rubber connection, reducing vibration.
Replacing my old fan with one of those babies has greatly reduced the noise level of my box.
True enough, hence the subject line here. I placed an order for 4 Coolermaster TLF-R82 fans yesterday. They're rated ~25db, according to Coolermaster. I read more comprehensive review of this fan elsewhere, and hope they offer a low noise as well as colorful alternative. Otherwise they'll be on eBay or in a junk box, or maybe I'll submit an article here reviewing them and offering to part with them cheep. :-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Next generation fans? Because they are different colors? HELLO?
Intel just came out with its next generation CPU! At approximately 100% the performance of current models, it sports a BLUE color! The industry has been revolutionized!
From CmdrTaco editorial insert after the submitted text, what would cause someone to say that cooling fans are "gorgeous"?
Girls are gorgeous (the good looking ones), some cars are gorgeous (the good looking ones), but cooling fans in a case you only see for the few minutes they are put on a processor are not gorgeous. They are pieces of metal and plastic! What, are you going to try and convince me aluminum cans are gorgeous? Please, spend some time tonight with a girl (or guys, if that's your thing), not fantasizing over cooling fans.
From what I've seen, those YS Tech TMD fans aren't too great. They just spin too fast to be quiet. It's a shame, because the increased blade surface area should mean higher efficiency.
Anyway, the next-generation fans I'm truly drooling over are the ultra-quiet fans from Verax. A power supply with a Verax fan was a part of the Tom's Hardware Power Supply Roundup and they liked it a lot.
However, at $48.00 in the US for one of these babies, I don't think I'll be splurging yet. I thought I was nuts for buying 5 Papst 8412NGLs at $20.00 each.
Ian
I'd like to have a silent PC. If I buy a new cpu, the retail version should include a heatsink - NO fan. If someone wants to overclock, great - get a fan.
When I got my Athlon around the time of the tom's hardware thermal scare, I bought the fastest fan I could - it drove me batty! Sounded like a DataCenter. I had to do the 7V trick just to be in the same room.
I don't understand why AMD and Intel take a breather on the speed race and work on a decent CPU package that can dissapate heat without any active cooler. That would sell. That's TNG... oh wait... Macs have been that way forever... maybe it's patented... :/
The parent post is offtopic, the replies are on-topic to the parent post. All offtopic moderations outside the parent post are unfair and will be voted as such.
So stop being a bunch of spiteful idiots and moderate people UP not down.
Though not a fan, Wesley Refrigeration has a novel cooling method involving dumping crushed ice on the CPU. The Wesley Crusher has not met with much market success yet, though Wesley keeps promising more and better New Generation plans.
Letter To Iran
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.verax.de%2Ftechnik%2Ftechnologie.html&langp air=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flangua ge_tools
Check it out it's an interesting read.
If you're not paranoid, then you're not paying enough attention. - Unknown, Slashdot
The problem is that modern desktop CPUs don't power scale. Why run your 2.4GHZ machine AT 2.4GHZ if the apps you are running at that time of the day do not require it? This is only going to get worse as CPUs get faster, take even more power, and get hotter. We're already basically running supercomputer class machines to do glorified typewriter operations, which is really wasteful. Desktop CPUs should scale the way mobile CPUs do. Then for mom and pop applications your computer wouldn't suck that much juice and the fan could be turned off entirely, but run a zillion apps at once or a raytracer and it will kick into turbo.
I think it has a lot to do with how people perceive sound. Unlike light, which when multiple wavelengths are present is perceived as a single new color, multiple wavelengths of sound are preceived as different pitches.
The thing is, for some people, the pitches are very "close together" - pitches very distant in frequency are perceived as the same pitch. These people don't mind noise because it is not so distracting... it sounds as noise.
For other people, even pitches that are relatively close in frequency sound "far apart" - they're easily distinguished from each other. These are the type of people that have perfect pitch, or perfect relative pitch. These people tend to be musicians. What others would perceive as noise, these people perceive as a complicated chord, which grabs their attention. Also, musicians train themselves to be sensitive to timbre, volume, all sorts of things. Thus, that simple computer "sound" in the background is a strange and distracting symphony, constantly playing.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I want a reliable fan that the bearings don't go out on every year or so. Noise is a secondary issue. Are there any out there? I've started using ball bearing (rather than sleeve bearing) fans and they do last somewhat longer, but still start making grinding noises and vibrating after a year or so.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
I think you'd be fine since P4s run cooler than Athlons. Mine runs at 48C on an overclocked Athlon 1.33@1.53. Even on the highest setting, it's nice and quiet. Unlike other people posting about this, I used Actic Silver II Alumina. 3 bucks at Fry's, there's no reason not to use that paste. Also, the Zalman is well put together and packaged. Comes with its own tool to attach it to the board also. Be careful when attaching ti to the board since those fins can cut you or be broken off. Just read Cmdr Taco's journal for a story about the latter.
This guy is way out there
Why should the CPU or any other computing circuitry even be bothered with monitoring the fan?
Cat hair... Really!
My brother brought his PC over because it would shut down shortly after posting. I powered it up - did not hear a fan, and realized the motherboard's BIOS was shutting down the machine because the fan was not spinning. Saved the duron's life! I poked around a bit and found the CPU fan was wound up with cat hair. Power supply was in pretty tough shape too.
I cleaned stuff off, put on a better heat sink and fan, and sent him back to feed his counter strike addition.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I've had some fans that really were great, provided I was wearing noise cancelling headphones while sharing a room with them.
Hot damn, you must have been *popular* !!!
Let me know when you run an article on TOS fans. Next Generation fans will never hold a candle to the rabid enthusiasm of TOS fans!
"Sorry sir, Bob went home because he got shined in the eye by a laser from his cpu fan."
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Most heating and air conditioning system use Centrifugal blowers because they are small powerful and quiet. It seems that this would be a good solution.
It's really an old idea, and I was wondering when someone would get around to useing them on PC's and what not.
I have a couple of "hot water" based radial coolers from the 1930's made from cast, really huge things to tell you the truth and must weigh 300 pounds but I'll tell you something boy that that sucker heat up a house.
Took me along time to find some and no one wanted to manufacture it, but I do have a boiler(oil) in my house and that thing heats 2 large rooms very nicely.
Om, nomnomnom...
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi ?category=220&item=CF-109&type=store
Panaflo fans are great quality and super quiet (at the expense of some airflow, but most likely you won't need it). I can't tell you about the bearing life of this fan, but I trust the Japanese built "Hydro-wave" bearing fan much more than a cheap chinese "ball bearing" fan.
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi ?category=220&item=CF-106&type=store is a similarily nice 60mm fan.
Figure this:
America:
Guy 1: "There's no biz like showbiz, let's make a next gen fan."
Guy 2: "How that?"
Guy 1: "Oh, we just mold them in see-through plastic and put some cool 'Blinklichter' on. They'll think it german tech and pay a tripple price with no sweat."
Guy2: "Cool."
Germany:
Guy1: "There's nothing like engineering, let's make a next gen fan."
Guy2: "How that?"
Guy1: "We get us five engineers, design, engineer and patent a 'Koaxialfliehkraftluftbeschleunigungstechnologie' and there you go."
Guy2: "No one's gonna buy it. The name's to long and german."
Guy1: Ok, let's just call it 'Verax' then. They'll probably think it's international and pay the quadrippled price with no sweat."
Guy2: "Ok."
Putting the jokes aside I might add:
Verax 'Lüfter' rule! They cost a little fourtune (the equivalent of 50$ a piece), but they *do* rule. Toss your flimsy see-through Blinklicht-airpusher in the bin. Really.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
i thought they were talking about me
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Here's one for us unit-impaired:
<rant>
They measure the fan performance in cubic-fucking-FEET-per-minute
How about measuring in square-acres-per-yard-second?
</rant>
One cubic feet is 28.317 litres. So, one cubic-(fucking)-feet-per-minute translates to 0.472 litres per second.
Now before anyone whines "oh but then litres per second is soooo inferior because something as simple as 1 cfm translates to some 0.472 litres persecond which is just soo much more difficult to remember", let's see what the *actual* airflows of the fans was. Oh, and one litre per second is 2.119 cf/m by the way.
Antec Blue LED Fan:
34.0 cf/m => 16.0 litres/second
Antec TriLight LED Fan:
34.0 cf/m => 16.0 litres/second
Cooler Master Neon LED Fan:
32.0 cf/m => 15.1 litres/second
Enermax Adjustable fan:
94.92 cf/m => 44.80 litres/second
> I thing you're missing the capability of Makefiles.
It takes several _hours_ to do `make' a second time on my
machine with the latest glibc sources (and no files are recompiled a
second time). I think I'll remove `build' after changing one file if
I want to recompile it.
-- Juan Cespedes
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