Reply 180 of 243, by pentiumspeed
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,
Great Northern aka Canada.