"Sleeve Bearing" or "Ball Bearing"

[richard-wong]

30,000 hours! thats 4 years of operation when running 24/7! thats for sleeve bearing. now I don't even thing a PC can last that long in comparison to the fan. so nothing to worry about in terms of reliability. I just don't like the fact that 2 months into running the ball bearing fans start to get noisy especially in dusty environment!

[schmunk]

30,000 hours!

3,000...

[eldren]

3,000...

He's referring to the Cooler Master link I gave, where they list the lifetimes (MTBF, I'm assuming) of the various fan designs. Ball bearing comes out at 50,000 hours, rifle at 40,000 hours, and sleeve at 30,000 hours.

[arthurleung]

I would say 30000 hours is a bit optimistic.

The chat did say thermal resistance for the sleeve bearing.
High temperature means shorter life
Dust can also cut down the lifespan.

Once it stop spinning it will bring something with it.
Don't be so cheap on cooling, I doubt anyone would like to learn it the hard way

[richard-wong]

sleeve bearing is more expensive than ball bearing . anyhow, i prefer the quietness rather than the loud rattle! plus i never keep the same stuff for over 1 year, so i am not really that fussed

[SilentDeath]

FDB are the best imo. I dont know much about them but they are a lot quieter in general.

right sleeve is quiet and doesn't get loud when its about to give. unlike ball bearing, it gets louder as time goes, usually 3 months later!

hydrowave...hmm. its really good for high RPM damn quiet, but at low RPM the bearing is noisy! i would know cos i have one of this panaflo 120mm fan, at 5V operation u can hear the bearing going, but at full 12V the bearing is really quiet and its just the air sound. (as the bearing has a very distinctive noise, very easy to hear)

That is probably not the bearing causing that. How did you get it to 5v? a fan controler, and was it a PWM type?
PWM makes fans louder becaue of the sudden directional pulls on the bearings each time the fan gets a pulse.

Also for quiet fans, I think wider fans, with very low RPM, and curved blades work best. The lower RPM has a similar affect to driving at the same speed in a lower gear - less noise but in the fans case from the bearing not the engine
The wider the fan is, usually means the more airflow and pressure per RPM but the blade design makes a huge differnce aswell.

[richard-wong]

12V-7V = 5V my friend

for PWM if you have PWM frequency above 20KHz then u have nothing to worry about

[scotty6435]

WHy are people assuming if a fan fails the component will fail also? With about 5 minutes work on speedfan or MBM your system will never crash and burn (This includes GFX card fan). True, if the PSU fails it will pop but AFAIK, good brands have auto-shut off circuits. All AMD and intel CPUs have thermal shut-off limits either built into the chip or motherboard so they're safe.

30,000 hours is optimistic to be sure, but so are the other figures. Sleeve bearings are far quieter (certainly in the long run) so why not go with them?

[arthurleung]

WHy are people assuming if a fan fails the component will fail also? With about 5 minutes work on speedfan or MBM your system will never crash and burn (This includes GFX card fan). True, if the PSU fails it will pop but AFAIK, good brands have auto-shut off circuits. All AMD and intel CPUs have thermal shut-off limits either built into the chip or motherboard so they're safe.

30,000 hours is optimistic to be sure, but so are the other figures. Sleeve bearings are far quieter (certainly in the long run) so why not go with them?

I don't think HDD have auto shutdown function, some slightly older GPUs also don't have thermal sensors. My 300G maxtor heats up to 55'C within 30 minutes after I turn off the fan (for testing), If you are sleeping when the fans are off, I doubt the drive will survive at 65'C+ for a few hours, even if the drive did not die the lifespan is likely to be shortened by quite a chunk.

[richard-wong]

when was the last time a fan die on you! and also most fans i use are on cases, due to water cooling, so i am not really having any issues, and regarding reliability, as i said the life spam is so long on these fans, its really stupid to comment on them! as most likely your compoenents are gonna out live the fan, even tho the figures are optimistic!

[eldren]

I have 8 or so dead PSUs, a couple of which are rebadged Fortron Source supplies. Of those, 2 or 3 died as a result of the fan seizing up, one of which was a FSP. Dodgy fans effectively killing equipment isn't nearly as rare as one may think.

[SilentDeath]

So does anyone know which brands make FDB bearing type fans, abnd where to buy them?

[ed^chigliak]

when was the last time a fan die on you!

Thursday just gone. It was a 92mm fan that came with a zalman flower heat sink. It had been running 24/7 for a couple of years. What type it of fan it was I have no idea but it made plenty of noise. On close inspection it was very stiff to turn. I find most fans will wait until a reboot before they fail which is pretty much what happened in this case.

I've had a CPU fan fail previously without making any noise and the PC would run OK for about 5-10 minutes and then crash. Only took a short while to figure it was overheating. I've had failures with generic PSU fans and the crappy little fans they put on alot of motherboard chipsets.

I've never known all the fans in a system fail simultanously and the HDDs melt. Perhaps I havn't been unlucky enough yet.

[schmunk]

So does anyone know which brands make FDB bearing type fans, abnd where to buy them?

Panaflo http://www.dorothybradbury.co.uk/

[scotty6435]

Thursday just gone. It was a 92mm fan that came with a zalman flower heat sink. It had been running 24/7 for a couple of years. What type it of fan it was I have no idea but it made plenty of noise. On close inspection it was very stiff to turn. I find most fans will wait until a reboot before they fail which is pretty much what happened in this case.

I've had a CPU fan fail previously without making any noise and the PC would run OK for about 5-10 minutes and then crash. Only took a short while to figure it was overheating. I've had failures with generic PSU fans and the crappy little fans they put on alot of motherboard chipsets.

I've never known all the fans in a system fail simultanously and the HDDs melt. Perhaps I havn't been unlucky enough yet.

That's why most people on these forums perform maintenance on their systems. When I check my system I always see how the fans are working. If you're into silencing then chances are a fan won't last more than 6 months before you find a quieter version