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120mm Fan Roundup - 35 Models Compared

Cooling/VGA & Other Cooling by jmke @ 2009-02-13

We compare the performance/noise balance of 35 different 120mm fans from AcoustFan, Aerocool, Arctic-Cooling, Cooler Master, Coolink, CoolJag, Delta, Gelid, GlobalWin, mCubed, Nexus, Noctua, NoiseBlocker, Papst, Revoltec, Scythe, Sharkoon, SilenX and Xthermal.

Conclusive Thoughts

Conclusive Thoughts

It has been several months since we received our first sample for this 120mm fan roundup, we’ve been verifying results, double checking everything, the result charts found on the previous page are the fruit of that labor.

If we compare the:

“Madshrimps Efficiency Rating (MER)”

with a classic performance/noise ratio we can state that any fan which gets a MER of 130+ at the mentioned voltage level (with subjective motor noise weighed in) is worthy of a recommendation. Availability and price are very important factors which should not be ignored, unfortunately given the fact that not all these products are available internationally and prices vary widely between countries we have to leave those two factors out of it, for now.

If you want to have the absolute best performance/noise fan and don’t mind the price and having it shipped possibly overseas, here’s the TOP 10 recommended fans based on the results from the previous page:

NoiseBlocker M12-P (7/5v)
Scythe SY1225SL12VBL (5v)
Scythe SY1225SL12L (12/5v)
Scythe SY122512WH-VR (5v)
NoiseBlocker M12-S3 HS (5v)
SilenX Ixtrema Pro IXP-74-11 (7/5v)
GlobalWin 1202512LNCB (5v)
mCubed X12 (5v)
NoiseBlocker M12-S2 (7v)
Scythe S-Flex SFF21F (5v)

If however you do care about price and availability you should see which fans can you can get in your local (web)shop and come back to our roundup to see how they score to make your buying decision. There is not one single fan which stood above all others, but rather a group of products from different manufactures which struck a very nice balance between noise and performance.

We hope this group test will help our readers to pick out a quality fan for their PC; if you have any questions or suggestions please don’t hesitate to drop us a line in the forums.

We like to thank all the companies who send in their products for this group test, until next time!

Comment from Rutar @ 2009/02/15

How comes the Silent Eagle performs so badly compared to the previous roundups, especially in the noise/temperature ratios? Did fan tech advance that much?

It would be nice to have multiple scatter graphs with different groups of performers so differences can be seen better. I still prefer them over the MER.

Comment from jmke @ 2009/02/15

Quote:

The Sharkoon Silent Eagle is better known as the « golf ball » fan, as the surface of its fan blades look exactly like that. We’re testing the 2000rpm model here, unfortunately the 1000rpm model we no longer have in our labs. Sharkoon does not label their Silent Eagle model so we added our own “2000rpm” tag to the label.

2000 model best effort is starting point of the 1000rpm model... I don't have the 1000rpm model in house anymore, otherwise would have included it

regrading scatter chart: what groups would you make?

Comment from Rutar @ 2009/02/15

Still, here the SE 2000 RPM did excellent vs the Globalwin which beat all other fans in the 17 fan review. The Noctua S12 1200 outperformed it with 51°/42.9 dBa vs 50.5°/43.6 dBa when there were -3.8°/+0.9 dBa difference in the 4 fan article.

I think it could have to do with the fin spacing difference between the Infinity and the Zipang and the fact that it wasn't mounted directly on the heatsink in the first roundups. I think at least the difference due to the fin spacing should be ruled out and the conflicting results explained.

Eventually 2 test methods have to be used to find out which one is the best casefan and which one is the best CPU fan.

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