Good Fan Brands

[c_hegge]

While we have several threads mentioning fans failing and what they were replaced with, We don't have one with a list of good, reliable fan brands. From what I've seen:

Good Brands:
- Minebea/NMB
- Panaflo
- Sanyo Denky
- Delta
- Papst
- Noctua
- Nidec
- AVC

OK Brands
- Sunon
- Foxconn
- Yate Loon

Post what you have found with any other brands

[Krankshaft]

Re: Good Fan Brands

The Yate loons are the quietest I under volt the low speed ones to 5V and they are whisper quiet. They IMO are the quietest in their price range but they use sleeve bearings.

If you want super quiet go with arctic cooling fans they have rubber shocks to absorb vibration and use fluid dynamic bearings like hard drives.

On my new rig I used Yate loons 4 120mms and one 140mm. So the loss in CFM from undervolting is overcome by the sheer number of fans in the case. Feels like a summer breeze in there.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Adda fans look good but tend to seize up after some time.

[Topcat]

Re: Good Fan Brands

- Sanyo Denky

My favorite. They last forever!! Also are quiet.

[Behemot]

Re: Good Fan Brands

The newer Delta fans are very good, the older ones use bad bearings and springs which causes vibrations. I recently acquired two 90mm Deltas, they do not vibrate on maximum speed (the rotor is centered than) but make terrible acustic nois; however they are still noisy when operating on 5 V due to the vibrations when not centered on low speed.

The NMB are slightly better, but still not perfect. But what do you want from second-hand fans

Only two really quite brands out there are Nexus and Noctua (=you hear vibrations at <=10 cm). Everything else is only close to quiet...AC vibrates, the Airen fans (which have won most reviews thanks to their price) vibrate even as brand new and are unusable after a year.

[totalselfreliance]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Adda fans look good but tend to seize up after some time.

Yep, had this happen to one of my test machines as well.

[c_hegge]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Arctic cooling and Scythe can probably be added to the list of good brands?

[washu]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Arctic cooling and Scythe can probably be added to the list of good brands?

Yep, all my quiet PCs are all Scythe or Scythe + Arctic Cooling. Never had any fail. I usually run them at 5V as well or use the PWM versions to keep them running slow unless absolutely necessary. My main desktop and 2 HTPCs are dead silent unless you get your ear within about 6".

[Agent24]

Re: Good Fan Brands

I've got 3 Sunbeamtech LED fans, they're a few years old and still going fine

They are quieter than others I have, Sunbeamtech claims 21dB (A)

[Behemot]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Yep, all my quiet PCs are all Scythe or Scythe + Arctic Cooling

I personally don't like Scythe fans because they have way too much unused room between blades. Maybe they are quiet, but blow too little...

[Agent24]

Re: Good Fan Brands

In my opinion fans are a trade off between Quiet\High Airflow\Small Size

You can pick only 2 at once...

[370forlife]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Young Lin Tech are pretty good. Superred is hard to find, but pretty good. Ong Hua are also decent. Jamicon are actually pretty decent too.

Anyone have good luck with Fanner Tech (found under most masscool's)? I ran a couple in my computer for quite some time, they were actually pretty quiet and I didn't have any problem with them.

[stj]

Re: Good Fan Brands

i just cleared out a lot of fans - there where just too many!

kept all the ball type ones.
binned all the sleeve ones.
(including one that had a ceramic sleeve - not even bronze!)

Antec double-BB type fan's seem pretty good for the price.

[ratdude747]

Re: Good Fan Brands

uhhh... ceramic is better than bronze from what i heard...

[kikkoman]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Anyone have good luck with Fanner Tech (found under most masscool's)? I ran a couple in my computer for quite some time, they were actually pretty quiet and I didn't have any problem with them.

the ones I had were good. They were marked Fanner/Spire or similar.

[yyonline]

Re: Good Fan Brands

Anyone have good luck with Fanner Tech (found under most masscool's)? I ran a couple in my computer for quite some time, they were actually pretty quiet and I didn't have any problem with them.

I've found their ball bearing ones to be decent and last years. The sleeve bearing ones tend to get really noisy after a year or so, but at least they give some warning vs. just seizing up.

[AudioCraZ]

Re: Good Fan Brands

I once had a Sanyo Denky Almost take the tip of my finger off.... It was love at first bite.

[stj]

Re: Good Fan Brands

uhhh... ceramic is better than bronze from what i heard...

it's ceramics in the foxconn cpu fans that keep seizing.
bronze bearings are oiled, ceramics arent.

while stripping the crap fans i noticed something,
the bronze bearings are the same dimensions as the ball-races.

so i think i'm gonna get a cool looking chinese fan full of led's and swap out the bronze for some bb's for fun.

[c_hegge]

Re: Good Fan Brands

I personally don't like Scythe fans because they have way too much unused room between blades. Maybe they are quiet, but blow too little...

When I started this thread, I was talking about reliability. So, even if Scythe don't always have the best blade designs, I would still consider them to be good.

[stj]

Re: Good Fan Brands

reliability is simple,

ball-race bearings will slowly get noisy but always run,
bronze or ceramic sleeves will bind or even disintegrate causing the blades to seize - often without warning.

so the bearings are what matters.

now if your asking about db & cfm we can start praising and diss'ing different makes!