12-Way 120mm Fan Roundup

If you start hearing things when there is hardly any sound ... go see a shrink. The same goes for unable to sleep at night, or can't focus at work because you are bother by slight noise.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-shr1.htm
If you can't hear what you boss tells you, go get your hearing test.

Sone is all marketing b/s.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/dB.html#log

that website is very informational http://www.kemt.fei.tuke.sk/Predmety...acoustics.html

I would guess nowadays you get sound meters that calculate everything for you already =O. But then, I could be wrong.

The Loudness Scale and the Sone
As the apparent loudness of a sound is not directly proportional to the sounds loudness level (a doubling of subjective loudness results in an average increase of about 6 phons), subjective experiments have been performed in order to establish a scale on which a doubling of the number of loudness units doubles the subjective loudness, a trebling of loudness units trebles the subjective loudness, and so on.

The unit of this scale is the sone. It is defined as the loudness of a 1000Hz tone having an intensity of 40dB. Thus the sone is equal to the loudness of any sound having a loudness of 40 phons. The mathematical relationship between the two is given as;

S = 2 (P - 40)/10

or log(S) = 0.0301 (P - 40)

where P represents the loudness level in phons, and S the loudness in sones.

http://www.kemt.fei.tuke.sk/Predmety...s/index-1.html

where does one get a SONE meter

it's already a lot better than most reviews on the net considering they at least tested noise and performance, explained their methods and gave some usefull information


now you need a sone meter to get full scientific pwnage (it's measures how an average person percieves the noise)


if you measure the dba, the accelero doesn't pwn the stock ATI cooler as hard as with sone because the fact the dba meter doesn't care if it's a broad humming or a high pitched whine annyos

well it just food for thought; my roundup was far from perfect and this one gives a second opinion which can never hurt

the noise level is different because they took into account the frequency

the temperatures could be inside the margin of error, however as said, their test setup is inferior because it shows less differences between the fans

there are still some things not quite right, if you look at the Turbine 1000 vs Papst at 12V

*in their test the Turbine cools better than Papst, is louder than Papst and spins slower.
* in my test the Aerocool cools less than Papst, makes less noise and spins slower.

The sound pressure level has the advantage of being an objective yet a handy measure of sound intensity, but it has the drawback that it is far from being an accurate measure of what is actually perceived. This is because the ear's sensitivity is strongly dependent on frequency. Indeed, whearas a sound of 1 kHz and 0 dB is already audible, you need to raise up to 37 dB to be able to hear a tone of 100 Hz. The same holds for sounds above 16 kHz.

directly from the link, they did an adjustment according to the frequency of the sound (and unless you can read German, it might have gone missing in the translation)

both the madshrimps and the other results are correct, both times a clear description is given how they were achieved

More nonsense from Rutar.

http://www.eie.fceia.unr.edu.ar/~acu...e/soundlev.htm

Unless that guy lives in a broadcasting studio.

comparo time!

quite good actually

they explained a few things very well and the maintenance tips are good as well


Their dba readings are adjusted to the human hearing capabilities, that might explain the results from Scythe. They tried to do something like AC does with the rating in sone.


Biggest issue is, the test did not allow large discrepancies because the airflow in the case was too good and the Northwood is not taxing enough.


Still, Scythe seemed to gain the critical knowlege from their cooperation with AC that fans matter a lot. If they start supplying the the E version of their flex fan with their coolers, the competition has to be very affraid.

Can't believe a single data point from them.

no mention of ambient noise and they measured 11dBA for the Scythe "D"... uh?

they used this device for dBA measurements: http://www.atp-messtechnik.de/messte...-264-plus.html

€2000+ - range of 15-140dB.


They state they are not in a special noise room, but still the noise readings list <20dBA values.. wtf?


reading results from tables is not too user friendly imho

copycats