Testing
First thing I did was to hook these sexy fans up to the included molex adapter at the 12V setting. I really couldn’t believe they were running. Simply put, even at 12V these are the quietest fans I have ever heard. In our test case I had the PSU jumped so the only thing working was the fans and the PSU. The PSU fan was louder!
They were so quiet I almost didn’t believe they were running at the correct voltage. I hooked them up directly to a Lamptron FC5 controller to see what speeds and voltages we were running at. Here is what it was reading:
Full Speed – 970 rpm @ 12.3V
Lowest Speed before shutdown – 330 rpm @ 3.3V
So they were in fact running at the correct voltage. However they did not ever reach the claimed manufacturer rpm of 1000rpm @ 12V. At 12V exactly they were only around 900 rpm.
I also laid the fan directly on a plastic surface to see how vibration resistant the fan itself was. I found it to be just slightly louder than holding the fan by the mounts. Good job here be quiet!.
So they’re quiet, but so are fans that aren’t plugged in. Let’s talk about how much air they move. Plainly, it’s not a lot. Even from the manufacturer specs, the static pressure is far too low to be used for water cooling. I compared these to a 140mm Akasa Viper, at both the same voltages and the same speeds. The Viper was easily moving more than twice as much air. Of course the Viper at 12.3V literally sounds like a RC plane taking off too.