Indeed, Scythe are a Japanese company, whereas Nexus are local to Europe, from the Netherlands.

No, the S-Flex, you rarely find an S-FLex less than £10, whereas I paid £7 for two Nexus 120mm fans.

I didn't have to, I plugged the cooler straight into the ZM-MFC1 fan controller's 0-5-12V toggle switch using a cable like this: http://www.atechfabrication.com/images/htpc/products/Power_Extension_Cable_013_320.jpg the lack of a surround 'out of the box' meant the fan plugged straight into it, no m...

Wow, really? Nexus fans are a quarter of the price of Scythes in the UK.

Wow, thanks for posting. As a dual 4870X2 owner, finding a crossfire compatible solution is welcome

Tests are a little biased though, the stock cooler does not reach 96 celsius with the fan at 2600rpm unless there is another card next to it or it's in a pretty naff case.

Those temps seem a bit high. Ironically, the exact heatsink the card had to start with is in my mind the best graphics heatsink I've ever had (was on my HD3870) - I undervolted the fan to 5V, the card never broke 70C and was dead silent.

It's between The SFF21E and the Yate Loon. I think you will probably find the Scythe fan the better choice, but there might not be too much of a difference.

1200rpm is high for any 120mm fan if you want silence. Lian-Li fans (the black ones) are especially good for low vibrations and relatively low noise, but don't seem to push at much air for the same speed, so for a true comparison, cut the speed of the Scythe a bit. I would also agree that the differ...

3-pin headers don't have PWM control, so the fan will be running at full speed. At full speed The PWM Nexuses run at DOUBLE the speed of the normal 80mm ones, 2800rpm vs 1500, and any 80mm fan is noisy at that speed.

I was under the impression the Noctuas actually forced more air than the slower Nexus fans, but perhaps I've got that wrong.

I had a Thermaltake PSU for a while that had a Yate Loon D14S-M12 I think it was, mounted horizontally, and the bearing noise from it was hideous.

Ah, my mistake.

A Spinpoint F1 in a Drive-a-Way is unstoppable for airborne and seek, that's from personal experience. The vibrations are basically transferred directly though, and F1s vibrate a lot. The only way I found to stop that was to use the drive-a-ways externally, sitting on a towel. Heat didn't seem an is...

The TX750 also uses a different fan doesn't it?
The HX1000 and HX520 are also miles apart.
My HX520 never became anything but ultra-quiet even under the load of an overclocked quad core and a 4870X2. Thoroughly recommended.

A minimum noise of 35dB? Hmmm... They look upon the Scythe Kaze white 120mm and SFF21F as both relatively good and not too far apart. I'm not so convinced, the two are pretty different, the Kaze being far louder, far more of a buzz and far more irritating, which is a shame, as the white LEDs are ver...

Well, when I stick my ear right up to the back of the unit, I can only hear the faint roar of the air coming out, nothing else. No offense taken btw :) Maybe I do have a unusually quiet unit, but I would consider the EA380 noticeably quieter than the Corsair HX 520 I've owned, and that is well known...

Can't you just plug the connector on anyway and leave the rpm pin exposed, since its on the outside?

Your system uses a lot less power than the one my Earthwatts runs:
Core 2 Duo E4300
Gigabyte EP31-DS3L
2x1GB Corsair XMS2
Radeon X1900XT Passive
6 3.5" HDDs (all the noise in the system :S )

I would agree with that, but I like to think that the Earthwatts 380W is a exception to that rule, or at least mine is. For its intended use, it's a nice quiet unit. For any higher load though, I'm sure 120mm fan PSU would work out being quieter.

I compared by looking at the CFM readings the 80mm and 120mm Nexus fans get respectively in SPCR's reviews, and adjusting their speed accordingly.
You don't seem to get that I'm in agreement with SPCR, not trying to discredit it.

I meant for the same CFM, not the same rpm, and they do. Even in Nexus fans this is obvious, the 80mm fan noise is very smooth, the loudest noise a 120mm Nexus makes up until 700rpm or so is the bearing hiss, and this is prevalent in all four 120mm fans I have, bought in two pairs years apart.

I would agree, for the same workload, 120mm fans are indeed quieter than 80mm fans. However, due to reasons I don't fully understand, presumably the manufacturing process, apart from vibration 80mm fans seem to be able to achieve lower minimum noise levels than 120mm fans, at any speed. The differen...

I can't hear the Earthwatts 380W over any 120mm fan turned up beyond 800rpm, even relatively good ones, but the unit is never under much stress as it isn't powering a game system (well it is, but the system isn't normally used for games), the highest load it usually sees is 130W or so from the socke...

Just thought I'd share my experience of high-end PSUs for those interested. I tried a few units to run a Quad crossfire system. BeQuiet! DarkPower Pro 850W - thoroughly unimpressive unit. Fan speed monitor is nice, but unfortunately doesn't offer any means of reducing the frankly excessive fan speed...

EA380? The Earthwatts unit? Many true silencers prefer 80mm fans for PSUs and it's easy to see why, it's completely devoid of any grind like most 120mm PSUs (BeQuiet, Corsair for example). My EarthWatts 380W is the quietest PSU I've ever owned, including the relatively good Corsair HX 520W. I don't ...

Nice idea, but I don't think this would apply to the 4870X2, the VF900 is a bit of a mediocre cooler really, and I'd imagine seeing triple-figure load temps at max speed with 4870 GPUs, bearing in mind they use almost half as much power again as the 4850s.

Looking around at ways to reduce the noise of my HD4870X2, admittedly dual top end graphics and silent PCs don't go together, but my PSU is nice and quiet at full load on it, my CPU fan is near silent (Ultra-120A + Nexus 120mm) even with an overclocked quad core, and my hard disks aren't too bad. Th...

Dell 3007WFP: 165-170Hz hum at lowest brightness, decreases in volume as brightness increases. Would guess it is around 18dB or so. Quietest at one setting from max brightness, very minor buzz. Max brightness has very noticeable buzz. Dell 3008WFP: Pretty much silent, a tiny buzz, but only audible f...

Wow, I had no idea that could be done. The noise level of the 4870X2 is what I would call 'acceptable' at best for normal users, in that it doesn't have the horrid grind of ATI's older coolers, but for any SPCR enthusiast, when both GPUs are going, it isn't remotely satisfactory. In single GPU games...

The HD4870's noise is made solely of turbulence, and isn't that obtrusive, but is far from silent. The GTX260 is meant to perform much better, but I'm not sure how long that lasts in games. I just have my doubts about a 21dB card not overheating after a few hours in games, or more likely, ramping up...

Put it this way, I hear no ticking or hissing from my SFF21Fs a good year or so after I purchased them. The Nexus fans are ok, but the bearings are far noisier, the minimum noise level is about how they run at 9-10V, versus 4-5V for the Scythes.