Recommend me a solid 120mm high airflow intake fan/s

[Obie]

Hey guys and girls!
So as the title says, I'm looking for a good pair of 120mm intake fans for my case that doesn't cost an arm and a leg but also manages to move a good amount of air with reasonable noise levels to boot.
I apologize if this is in the wrong section mods (I wasn't too sure where to post this).

Thanks!

Brad

[jag272]

I'm personally a fan of the Arctic F12 PWM fans on my build. They're £5 a pop on Amazon and really impressive IMO, not audible but seem to be doing a great job cooling.

[Ttaskmaster]

In my opinion, if you need decent performance, it's worth paying out the cash for decent fans.
Likely the fans will carry through across several other builds and still be going when we're buying DDR-9 RAM!

Keeping it below 28dB:

I'd personally favour Noctua - The S12B Redux versions are about £12 and very high airflow. Others are better, but more expensive.

Other good ones are the Corsair AF120 and the Blacknoise NB e-Loop (B12-PS or B12-3).
EK-Varder fans are OK, but significantly lower performance at that noise level.

[Obie]

In my opinion, if you need decent performance, it's worth paying out the cash for decent fans.
Likely the fans will carry through across several other builds and still be going when we're buying DDR-9 RAM!

Keeping it below 28dB:

I'd personally favour Noctua - The S12B Redux versions are about £12 and very high airflow. Others are better, but more expensive.

Other good ones are the Corsair AF120 and the Blacknoise NB e-Loop (B12-PS or B12-3).
EK-Varder fans are OK, but significantly lower performance at that noise level.

Thanks, one question about the corsair AF's, I've heard they don't really move much air?

[Ttaskmaster]

Thanks, one question about the corsair AF's, I've heard they don't really move much air?

They're not amazing and the 140s are better, but they're still reasonably top-end. They were a benchmark fan at one point and still do well overall... but as mentioned, I'm a Noctua fanboy!

[Obie]

They're not amazing and the 140s are better, but they're still reasonably top-end. They were a benchmark fan at one point and still do well overall... but as mentioned, I'm a Noctua fanboy!

Haha cheers man, those noctuas look super sweet but I doubt I will need that much performance, I just need better than stock performance. I ended up going with two of the Arctics mentioned by jag earlier.

[jag272]

Haha cheers man, those noctuas look super sweet but I doubt I will need that much performance, I just need better than stock performance. I ended up going with two of the Arctics mentioned by jag earlier.

They're really solid fans IMO, they're massively better than the stock fans my Carbide 300R came with.

If you end up using the daisy chaining capability of them, as a general rule use 2 fans per header at most, 3 at a push. Boards can generally handle 1A and each fan at max load is 0.26A. You're unlikely to ever need that many anyway, but since the info isn't officially stated anywhere I thought I should pass on the information. Alternatively there are the Akasa and other PSU powered splitters, but realistically you probably don't need that many fans anyway.

[Obie]

They're really solid fans IMO, they're massively better than the stock fans my Carbide 300R came with.

If you end up using the daisy chaining capability of them, as a general rule use 2 fans per header at most, 3 at a push. Boards can generally handle 1A and each fan at max load is 0.26A. You're unlikely to ever need that many anyway, but since the info isn't officially stated anywhere I thought I should pass on the information. Alternatively there are the Akasa and other PSU powered splitters, but realistically you probably don't need that many fans anyway.

Ah great! That's useful to know as I read about the PST feature and wondered what the max would be

[jag272]

Ah great! That's useful to know as I read about the PST feature and wondered what the max would be

Not a problem. I just checked again and its actually 0.24A at full load, so strictly speaking you can just about fit in 4 fans onto one header, but ideally I would try not to do too many. Better to have 2 headers with 2 fans than 1 header with 4 IMO, my board has 2 CPU_FAN headers, if you only have one and you want to sync it up to CPU you might have to put 2/3 onto the header. Alternatively, based off what MSI told me about my board (again, information on this functionality is lacking) SYS_FAN 4pin headers work the same, but use a separate board temperature reading rather than the one the CPU sensor provides on the CPU headers.

In my case I had 2 of these fans installed, connected up to my CPU_FAN2 header, with my heatsink linked up to CPU_FAN1. Therefore if my heatsink starts to spin up due to CPU load, my intake and exhaust Arctics also spin up on the same signal as its another CPU header, behind that I still have the standard 3pin intake and exhaust from the case.

I actually took the extra exhaust fan out recently as I'm tinkering with air pressure a bit to see if I can avoid the rapid dust buildup I seem to suffer.

[Obie]

Not a problem. I just checked again and its actually 0.24A at full load, so strictly speaking you can just about fit in 4 fans onto one header, but ideally I would try not to do too many. Better to have 2 headers with 2 fans than 1 header with 4 IMO, my board has 2 CPU_FAN headers, if you only have one and you want to sync it up to CPU you might have to put 2/3 onto the header. Alternatively, based off what MSI told me about my board (again, information on this functionality is lacking) SYS_FAN 4pin headers work the same, but use a separate board temperature reading rather than the one the CPU sensor provides on the CPU headers.

In my case I had 2 of these fans installed, connected up to my CPU_FAN2 header, with my heatsink linked up to CPU_FAN1. Therefore if my heatsink starts to spin up due to CPU load, my intake and exhaust Arctics also spin up on the same signal as its another CPU header, behind that I still have the standard 3pin intake and exhaust from the case.

I actually took the extra exhaust fan out recently as I'm tinkering with air pressure a bit to see if I can avoid the rapid dust buildup I seem to suffer.

Great. I'll definitely want to sync them to the cpu. Do you think the heat sink and 2 fans could go on one?

[jag272]

If you don't have 2 CPU headers then yes, but I wouldn't push it any further than that.

My understanding from what I've read and what MSI have told me is that all CPU_FAN headers share a PWM signal, and if you have 4 pin SYS_FAN headers they all share a signal with other SYS fans. CPU and SYS signals are independent of each other, but any CPU or SYS fan should match the signal of its type.

If you only have 1 CPU header then by all means chances are you can run 3 fans off it. Check the ampage of the heatsink's fan if the info is available anywhere, but you should be fine, just don't push it any further than that.



Edit: Just tried to find info on stock fans. In intel's case the current, copperbased fan is apparently 0.28A, the older all aluminium version is apparently 0.20A, but thats only one source and the info is scarce. Either way I'd be surprised if any stock heatsink used 0.52A, and it should be relatively easy to find info on custom coolers I would hope.

[Pullock]

In my opinion, if you need decent performance, it's worth paying out the cash for decent fans.
Likely the fans will carry through across several other builds and still be going when we're buying DDR-9 RAM!

Keeping it below 28dB:

I'd personally favour Noctua - The S12B Redux versions are about £12 and very high airflow. Others are better, but more expensive.

Other good ones are the Corsair AF120 and the Blacknoise NB e-Loop (B12-PS or B12-3).
EK-Varder fans are OK, but significantly lower performance at that noise level.

As another note on the AF120's they seem to move enough air for cooling my pc and with the low noise adapter they aren't very loud at all.

[f350]

Noctua F12 or Corsair AF120.

[Lil-Diabo]

I highly suggest Akasa Apache Fans
I have a couple of them in my machine and even at 100% they're not too loud

[Pob255]

Depends which Apache fan you have, there's a couple of different models, side note the original apache fans where actually made by Scythe and used the same bearing as the Scythe S-FLEX fans, I'm not sure about the current ones as I've not kept up to date with it.
The original Apache fans where not near silent, actually a bit loud, at full speed although they moved a heck of a lot of air for the noise level and you can run them near silent via PWM.
I run two on my cm 212 plus from the motherboard cpu fan header via a PWM splitter cable, they run around 800rpm idle, great cpu cooler PWM fans.
For price vs quality the Artic F12 fans are great for case fans and hard to beat in the sub £5 category.

On fan headers and fan control, a 4pin header is PWM (or should be*) to use PWM control, you'll need a 4pin PWM fan, if you want to run multiple fans off a single PWM header you need PWM splitter cables eg http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005FWXWPS

PWM works by pulsing an on/off signal to the fan to slow it down rather than by reducing the voltage, the main advantage to this over a normal 3pin or 2pin fan is that to reduce the speed of the fan you have to reduce the voltage, most fans have a minimum working voltage around 4-6v, the over all upshot is that PWM fans can generally be run at lower speeds as they are getting 12v pulses which is enough to overcome the inertia of the blades and keep them turning.
I'll admit this is less of an issue these days as most fans are made out of lower weight/density plastics to reduce the inertia, allowing for lower speeds.

If you connect a 3pin or 2pin fan to a 4pin motherboard header it will not use PWM control and will ether default to 100% 12v speed or reduced voltage fan control (depending on motherboard)

Still a digital PWM control is easier to do than fine analogue voltage control on a motherboard chipset, which is why most motherboards are changing to it and when they do use voltage control it's usually relatively large voltage/speed steps not the smoother steps you normally get via PWM control.

You can get fine analogue voltage control via simple mechanical/electronics, hence the simple and cheap fan controllers with mechanical sliders or knobs, it's just far harder to get the same level of control out of a digital interface, most digital voltage controllers work in steps between 0.7 to 1 volts (I've seen around 2.5v on some).

With all that said, unless you're really chasing minimum noise/silence it doesn't matter that much, I'd always go for PWM on the cpu cooler as you tend to want fans with a higher max rpm on the cooler to make sure you don't have heating issues and jumps in rpm and noise are more noticeable than smooth increases.
For case fans PWM is less of an issue as long as your motherboard has voltage control or you just run low rpm/near silent fans (or both) as long as you've got some air flow through the case internal heat build up is less of an issue.

One thing to remember it's not just the noise of a fan but the case and the position of the fan in the case that can have a major impact on the noise.
A fan at the front of the case will generally sound louder than a fan at the back of a case, simply because it's closer and the sound has a more direct path to your ear.
Sometimes to majority of the noise is caused by the air being pulled/pushed through the vet in the case, not the fan itself, so you can often increase the noise by putting in fans with higher air flow, or decrease the noise by cutting out the mesh of vent.

*on some motherboards 4pin system fan headers are not actually PWM controlled they are voltage controlled, the manufacture has just used all 4pin headers and not wired them up to reduce costs.

[0100001]

I like the Be Quiet Pure Wings 2, they're quite cheap and are inaudible at 5v. NZXT Grid is quite affordable if you need a powered splitter