Massive Fan Shootout: 25 Products
from Arctic Cooling, Cooler Master, GlacialTech,
Scythe, Titan, and Zalman

Test Results: 80x80x25 mm Fans

Contents:

1. Review: Arctic Cooling, Cooler Master and GlacialTech
2. Review: Scythe, Titan and Zalman
3. Test Results: 80x80x25 mm fans
4. Test Results: 120x120x25 mm fans
5. Annex 1. Noise profiles (1/3 octave analysis), 80x80x25 mm fans
6. Annex 2. Noise profiles (1/3 octave analysis), 120x120x25 mm fans

The Idea of the Experiment

It's not as easy to test fans (to say nothing of their comparative analysis) as it may seem on the surface of it. The main problem here is to decide upon the criterion of fans' functionality and consequently to choose a reference point for valid comparisons. Technically versed readers may exclaim: "Come on! What about the metering characteristic?! Airflow speed and static pressure! Everything necessary is at hand! No need to "decide upon" anything! Just take fans and get the results!" Indeed, metering characteristic is good. But there are two significant ideological obstacles here.

Obstacle One: metering characteristic is not static, and it does not determine strictly fan's operating mode for possible applications. A diffuser (or confuser) at the output/input of the fan in a circuit (stage) with complex impedance may change fan's behavior beyond recognition. That's why engineers working in the fan industry often rely on experiments instead of "idealized" data from manufacturers. They test fans in their certain conditions.

Obstacle Two: practicality of metering characteristic for PC fans is highly overestimated. A typical PC fan is not a turbocompressor, which pressure is the most important parameter, and it's not an industrial air pump, where the discharge flow is important. It's a cooling device in the first place! So it's actually not important for a computer user, be it a common user or an enthusiast, how much pressure a fan in their cooler generates, and what airflow (accurate within hundredths of m/s) is expelled from the n-th slit of the air grid in a PSU. Cooling efficiency - that's what a user needs! Static pressure and flow rate are just empty phrases, if you don't know the temperature.

Well, we'll use a different method! We'll run the tests on our testbed, which is usually used to analyze CPU coolers (ASUS P5AD2-E Premium motherboard and Intel Pentium 4 550 processor). Fans will be tested with a heatsink from the famous CPU cooler Thermaltake Big Typhoon, which is notable for high impedance (hydraulic resistance) and makes a good reference point in our shootout.

Thus, the main criterion of fan's efficiency is temperature readings (thermal resistance) of the "reference heatsink + fan" assembly. 120x120x25 mm fans are installed directly, and 80x80x25 mm fans are mounted on a simple adapter made of a 120 mm fan case. We'll use additional parameters to evaluate fan's efficiency of cooling near-socket elements - temperature readings of inductance coils of the CPU voltage regulator (temperature of PL24, PL25 and PL26 coil cores installed near the socket). And finally, in order to generate more heat in the testbed, CPU voltage is raised to 1.525 V (the resulting heating capacity is 150 W).

Testbed configuration:

• Motherboard: ASUS P5AD2-E Premium rev. 1.05
• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz Prescott, HT Technology)
• OS: Microsoft Windows XP