Demonstration and test of 35 fans

Details of our test participants

Noctua

A fan test cannot be complete without products from the Austrian manufacturer. Noctua exploded into the public consciousness just a few years ago with its quiet fans. The special feature of the air pulleys is the bearing, which works in essentially the same way as Sony's fluid bearing technology. What is different is the name of the technology, as it is called SSO (Self-stabilizing oil-pressure bearing) in our western neighbors. What is worth mentioning in connection with this fact is that the price of the vents is lower than Scythe’s solutions.

After the small bend, let's get back to Noctua products! The fans are not like any of the competing solutions. The difference starts with the color, as we don't find the usual black or translucent plastics, the coloring here is limited to shades of brown. Whether it’s flashy or not is up to everyone to decide for themselves. To be sure, we don’t like or dislike fans because of their color, their smell. The deviations continue at the rotor, whose blades are visibly smaller than usual and their inclination is steeper. They look a little lame, but let’s not stick to that. This discrepancy is best true for the slow-rotating 12-centimeter pieces, less so for the ninth and eighth-dimensional sizes, and, to be an exception, there is a 1300-rotation specimen that has been given the usual rotor.

Of the fans that came for the test, Noctua comes with the most “extras”. All air vents come standard with mounting silicone mounts and a ballast resistor to operate your fan at a lower speed.

Now it’s time to turn on the brown vents. Overall, no big surprise came to us, these fans are quiet. However, there is some difference between them. The eight- and nine-centimeter pieces chirp softly, and the pitch of the sound is somehow just such that this otherwise soft chirp can only be heard up close. This is somewhat improved by connecting the ballast resistor received in the package, because it reduces the speed, but it can still be heard a little. Maybe we’re not exaggerating when we say that in terms of sound, these pieces are roughly on par with Coolink’s eight-centimeter valves, but let’s not forget that they have a ball bearing. The next category is the operation of “traditional” 12-cent fans. They’re quieter than their smaller siblings, but here, too, there’s a bit of a deep sigh from the background. Unfortunately, it’s hard to touch these sounds with the right signal, you should actually hear them, but we hope you can understand what we mean.

However, there is a fan that we can only say good about, and that is exactly the one with the conventional rotor that we wrote about above. The sound of this piece is finally comparable to an Englide ventik, however, it is worth noting that they have a conventional plain bearing while this one has a fluid bearing. Here we hear almost no bearing noise, and due to the special design of the blades, the wind noise is not significant either. This fan is a real favorite of the Noctua family! This is the quietest piece of our test (by ear) so far.

With regard to Noctua products, we would like to highlight an important moment again, even the fact that we find silicone mounts next to each fan, with the help of which we can install the air motors without screws. Of course, the point here is not screw-free, but the fact that the vibration from the fans does not pass through the housing. Such bucks have so far only been found in the product of Englide n.zero.

Scythe

By the end, one of the most renowned manufacturers, Scythe, remained. We talk quite a lot about their products, we love them too, and that’s also thanks to the fans running under the name S-Flex.

Of course, Scythe not only deals with fluid-bearing valves, their portfolio also includes traditional plain-bearing and ball-bearing pieces. In our test, the former line is represented by the Kaze-Jyuni family and the latter by the Gentle Typhoon family. In addition to the liquid-bearing 12-centimeter S-Flex valves, there is also an 8- and 9-centimeter solution equipped with Sony's S-FDB technology, which can be found on store shelves under the name KAMA-Flex. Then let's see the bear, that is, let's listen to them!

We started the investigation with the little ones. These can be said to sound very nice, to be precise. There is no chirping, no chirping or anything like that from the bearing. We only hear a soft, even and not disturbing hum, which is largely due to the wind noise. These fans represent a separate category in their field.

Our next victim was the 12-centimeter solution with a plain bearing Kaze-Jyuni. We have to say we met his real delicacy again. In terms of sound, this is already comparable to Englide. His voice is a little deeper, so he can hear a hair better, but similarly, we don't find the chatter typical of cheaper solutions in it. I definitely liked it!

Continue with the ball bearing Gentle Typhoon. This please instrument. The 500 and 800 pieces are incredibly quiet, with absolutely no quiet operation typical of ball bearing solutions. It is already noticeable how much it weighs more than its competitors, which is not surprising due to the larger size of the engine. We have to say that this is the fan that will satisfy every need. Long service life due to ball bearing and extremely quiet operation for home use. The highest speed, which spins at 1150 per minute, is already a bit noisy. Although it did not produce an outstanding value in the noise measurement, somehow its sound position is a bit disturbing.

By the end of our show, S-Flex was left with its own fluid bearing solution. We don’t really know what to write about this vent, we don’t have a bad word for it at all. We only hear a steady and very quiet sound, it is also barely perceptible. We still love it! However, it is part of fairness to describe that the higher turn brings sound here as well. We feel that S-FDB is a good technology, but maybe it would be worth refining the blade profile a bit to make the wind noise less.