Keep in mind I have a obsession with fans and heatsinks design by taking apart and playing with them over the years.

What I noticed the best case fans are actually ones that were made specifically for work stations and consumer computer parts you buy at computer stores and OEM like HP, Dell and Lenovo for example and others are specified to spin very slow 0n low rpm PWM, were designed into these specific fans. The ones I bought from chinese sellers that were for servers or "better" designs tend to have their rpm designed more higher rpm than usual and ones that is very high speed fans some of them needed different signal (inverted) or 12V PWM voltage levels.

The best one is maker that actually makes these for work station and consumer computers (includes gamers). Very few brands actually designs and produce own fans. Noctua is one of these. Thermaltake is not one of these, as I knew these over the years but this time designed like the noctua clone this time properly.

The original design of those fans before that was Servo (owned by Nidec of power controllers and fan and blower) that originally designed particular design called Gentle Tyhoon, fully 10 years prior, even earlier.

The producer and designers and are all OEM, and generally quality.
Nidec/ Servo
Delta specifically ball bearing versions.
YS Tech
Superred
Panasonic/Mit
NMB
EBM/Papst
Sanyo/San Ace

Lesser quality, still OEM.
Delta
Sunon - their meglev bearing is very loose and poorly done, molding quality terrible, not even based on fluid bearing. I took apart several.

Any case fans that you get from heatsink makers when you buy at computer stores are good as long as they are FB bearing or ball bearings:
BeQuiet!
CoolerMaster
Noctua
and some serveral others.

Any fans with funny sounding names are rather bad quality and bearings does not last and junky quality.

The best fans is actually centrifugal fans like this of two types
Good flow at near max pressure and quiet. Unfortunately GPU makers don't have the foresight to design a small one like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=FMwb-tTDOEg
And notebook blowers and PS4 and PS5 blower fans designs.

Axial fans and many centrifugal blowers with very short blades commonly used on GPU, depends on air flow to maintain pressure and also limits flow due to short blades and spaced too close together. If too much blocked, the pressure drops. Poor performing blowers that GPU blower uses like this, it needed to spun very high to maintain cooling, the heatsink can be a issue. Too thin fins and spaced closer together impacts two ways, loses cooling ability if blown harder if fan could, and back pressure build up also. Ideal heatsink fins is thicker and more spacing pitch for air to flow through easier.

https://images.app.goo.gl/kAu3Ce2QVDoUdvsM7

That why Xbox Series X have a small oval blow hole at back just in case if grille on top was blocked so it could keep cooling but unfortunely Microsoft in general, not just Series, in all Xbox consoles that was producedf (yes, 360, xbox one models (all) and Series S/X, used change phase TIM that is very hard and develops air bubbles between APU die and heatsink. To fix this for lags, crashes, these consoles needs to be taken apart to remove these terrible change phase TIM and use regular high end thermal paste instead. Happens even it is less than a year old.

GPU cards with axial fans on one card is designed wrong too with exceptions even the overlapping fans is of no use too. If the heatsink fins runs along the length of the card, the area between two fans is dead space due to cover and GPU block blocking that. The Nvidia OEM GPU is really good like RTX 3080 had one heatsink blown through from one side to other, while second fan cools other items.
https://images.app.goo.gl/wmi1RZ7ZZonmiJ38A
If the GPU card has heatsink fins running transverse, fans blows around at the edges of fins too and bottom heating the motherboard and blown some back into the interior of the computer case that you thoughtfully sited the fans to blown stale air out immediately?

Cheers,

Thanks for all the information! 😀

I’m very well acquainted with Nidec fans, as most of my large machines are fitted with them! (Extremely good, but also extremely loud!!!)

It’s interesting that the Noctua A12x25 is in fact a clone of the Nidec Servo Gentle Typhoon from 2009! (As everyone seems to knock ThermalTake for cloning the A12x25!!!)

ALSO NOTICE THE SLIGHT DIFFERENCE IN BLADE PROFILE BETWEEN THE THREE DESIGNS!

These ThermalTake fans actually look more like the Gentle Typhoon than the A12x25!

The main reason as to why I chose them was because they’d suit the look of this case more than the A12x25’s would!

The TOUGHFAN Pro is a very new fan, only a few months old, and the reviews of this fan that I’ve seen and read have been positive. Here's a review on the Toughfan Pro: https://basic-tutorials.com/reviews/hardware- … e-toughfan-pro/

If ThermalTake doesn’t design and manufacture their own fans, then who does it for them? (I haven’t found any OEM’s with this exact fan design?)

Irinikus wrote on 2023-10-01, 04:24:

ALSO NOTICE THE SLIGHT DIFFERENCE IN BLADE PROFILE BETWEEN THE THREE DESIGNS!

Just out of curiosity. Any idea why cooler blades aren't made like aircraft propeller blades ?
Propellers are usually twisted to have a uniform lift along the blade, considering that the speed is decreasing toward the center, incidence must be higher in the center. Fan blades are (generally) not built that way.

Twisted blade is there in many fans, depending on what designer is tasked with initial fan goals.

These you showed fans anyway, three fans were designed around low rpm and best high pressure at any rpm.

You should had run the Gentle Typhoon at 5V instead of 12V. They were designed pre-PWM era.

Cheers,

The fans arrived today: (And I'm impressed with their quality!!! They're as premium as fans get!)

And they're fitted: (It took me about an hour to fit them!)

This was the first run-up, just to confirm that all the fans were working: (It was like a hurricane inside the case, so all's good!)

Here it is with the tempered glass panels fitted: (It sounds as loud as an SGI system!)

I'm still waiting on the 16GB of RAM to arrive from the UK!

Since you are going hard after aesthetics, figured i can point to 2 things that caught my eyes:
1. The CPU fans have these naked cables that may benefit from a black woven sock.
2. The GPU power cables look much cheaper than the rest of the components. To a less extent this applies to MB and CPU power cables. Cables with woven cover look better in general, to me at least.

pshipkov wrote on 2023-10-03, 00:43:

Since you are going hard after aesthetics, figured i can point to 2 things that caught my eyes:
1. The CPU fans have these naked cables that may benefit from a black woven sock.
2. The GPU power cables look much cheaper than the rest of the components. To a less extent this applies to MB and CPU power cables. Cables with woven cover look better in general, to me at least.

You’ve raised two valid points there, which I will address!

Just chiming in, haven't read the thread.

3.8ghz - are thems 32 or 64 bit processors. The earliest 604 processors were 32 bit. I know there are both available for that socket. If those are 64 bit processors, what's the attraction? Those if so will likely be the earliest 64 bit xeons. You'd be better off with a dual 771 serverboard. Just my 2 cents. I imagine you bought ot already. Not a horrible thing at all. If I had a dual 604 board I'd outfit it with 32 bit cpus. Someone actually gave me such a Dell server. With some early 64 bit processors you won't be sacrificing 32 bit compatibility. But this is also true all the way to socket 771. Just my 2 cents.

kant explain wrote on 2023-10-03, 04:23:

Just chiming in, haven't read the thread.

3.8ghz - are thems 32 or 64 bit processors. The earliest 604 processors were 32 bit. I know there are both available for that socket. If those are 64 bit processors, what's the attraction? Those if so will likely be the earliest 64 bit xeons. You'd be better off with a dual 771 serverboard. Just my 2 cents. I imagine you bought ot already. Not a horrible thing at all. If I had a dual 604 board I'd outfit it with 32 bit cpus. Someone actually gave me such a Dell server. With some early 64 bit processors you won't be sacrificing 32 bit compatibility. But this is also true all the way to socket 771. Just my 2 cents.

I aim to end up with an example of most, if not all x86 CPU’s, so that will be a future build!

Dual Socket 771 motherboards sell for a fraction of the price of this particular board, so they don’t really interest me!

For what it’s worth, I still have a Supermicro P4DC6+ /Dual XEON /Socket 603 /RDRAM Build to complete, and I think that will be my full of NetBurst systems!

let’s face it NetBurst wasn’t exactly Intel’s best design decision!

Irinikus wrote on 2023-10-03, 03:54:

pshipkov wrote on 2023-10-03, 00:43:

Since you are going hard after aesthetics, figured i can point to 2 things that caught my eyes:
1. The CPU fans have these naked cables that may benefit from a black woven sock.
2. The GPU power cables look much cheaper than the rest of the components. To a less extent this applies to MB and CPU power cables. Cables with woven cover look better in general, to me at least.

You’ve raised two valid points there, which I will address!

Sorry to point you to a rabbit's hole, that will seriously impact your savings 🤣 https://www.cable-sleeving.com/cable-sleeving

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-03, 08:19:

Irinikus wrote on 2023-10-03, 03:54:

pshipkov wrote on 2023-10-03, 00:43:

Since you are going hard after aesthetics, figured i can point to 2 things that caught my eyes:
1. The CPU fans have these naked cables that may benefit from a black woven sock.
2. The GPU power cables look much cheaper than the rest of the components. To a less extent this applies to MB and CPU power cables. Cables with woven cover look better in general, to me at least.

You’ve raised two valid points there, which I will address!

Sorry to point you to a rabbit's hole, that will seriously impact your savings 🤣 https://www.cable-sleeving.com/cable-sleeving

That's some awesome stuff! 😀

Just to confirm it's relative performance, I installed my old 8800 GTX into the system and the system got the following windows experience score: (I know that this is a synthetic benchmark, but it clearly shows the GTX 690 to be the better card in this system.)

This is what it scored with the GTX 690 installed:

So the GTX 690 stays until I get an appropriate card to replace it!

Here is the 3DMark Vantage score with the 8800GTX fitted: (No PhysX)

Here's the score with the GTX 690 fitted: (SLI disabled no PhysX)

This is what the machine looked like with the 8800GTX fitted:

Interestingly, 3DMark isn't that consistent!

The two scores that I presented above were the results of a single run, however the GTX 690 has achieved a Vantage GPU score of 11460 in a past test! (So there's a significant bit of variation in the benchmark results)

However from this you can roughly gauge that the single GPU on the GTX 690 (As the increased CPU overhead due to SLI seems to negatively affect overall performance in this case) gives you plus-minus double the performance of the 8800 GTX in this system.

For the sake of pure madness and to perfectly demonstrate the concept of diminishing returns due to extreme bottlenecking, I will slot a TITAN XP into this machine when I find one at the right price!

According to this the GTX 690 (SLI Disabled) is roughly 7 times the speed of the 8800GTX: (Only equating to double the performance in this machine!)

According to this the TITAN XP is roughly 3 times the speed of the GTX 690 (SLI Disabled):

IT WILL BE VERY INTERESTING TO SEE HOW THIS WORKS OUT!

As suggested by @pshipkov I'll replace the PCIe cables with Corsair Premium Individually Braided cables. (The Corsair type 4 cables are compatible with the MSI MRG A750GF power supply that I have fitted in this system) I'll also replace the SATA cables with Corsair Premium Braided ones:

I'll place this type of Braided Sleeve around the ugly CPU fan cables:

I won't swap out the Motherboard and CPU power cables, as the extension going into the Motherboard Power Header is part of the InWin case that supplies power to the mechanism which raises and lowers the top vent! (Not the best design in the world, but it is what it is!!!)

All of this will only be done once I have the TITAN XP in the system!

Irinikus wrote on 2023-10-03, 21:19:

I won't swap out the Motherboard and CPU power cables, as the extension going into the Motherboard Power Header is part of the InWin case that supplies power to the mechanism which raises and lowers the top vent! (Not the best design in the world, but it is what it is!!!)

Is the top vent electrically operated? That's SO awesome!

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-04, 05:47:

Irinikus wrote on 2023-10-03, 21:19:

I won't swap out the Motherboard and CPU power cables, as the extension going into the Motherboard Power Header is part of the InWin case that supplies power to the mechanism which raises and lowers the top vent! (Not the best design in the world, but it is what it is!!!)

Is the top vent electrically operated? That's SO awesome!

It is indeed! 😀

As soon as the system posts, the vent raises automatically and it lowers automatically a few seconds after the system's powered down.

This cable feeds power and the necessary signalling to the vent actuator :

This is the actuator itself:

You can see its logic board to the rear of the machine through the top panel:

I wouldn’t overdo with the expensive sleeves.
Wrapping the existing cables, or replacing them with affordable option from Corsair, will be more than enough.

Don't buy latched SATA cables. The latch tend to not unlatch. I occsaionally had seen one that wouldn't unlatch at all. This meant sore fingers or grab pair of pliers and bite hard then carefully wiggle free.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-10-04, 23:35:

Don't buy latched SATA cables. The latch tend to not unlatch. I occsaionally had seen one that wouldn't unlatch at all. This meant sore fingers or grab pair of pliers and bite hard then carefully wiggle free.

Cheers,

nah man. other way 'round for me. I cant stand when these cables come loose.