Any experience with SilenX products?

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GUNNER
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Any experience with SilenX products?

Post by GUNNER » Mon Apr 11, 2005 8:30 pm

I'm about to build a system for the first time in years, and making it quieter than the lawn-mower I have is a priority. This site has been GREAT in helping me make informed choices!

I keep coming up with references, elsewhere, to SilenX ( http://www.silenx.com/ )products. Fans, CPU coolers, HD enclosures, etc. However, I haven't seen any of their products reviewed or discussed on this site.

Have they been missed? Do they not work as well as the claim, so they're not a SPCR-worthy product? Just curious.

Thanks!

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:07 pm

A nasty experience with them has turned the regulars away from SilenX. The general consensus, AFAIK, is that they're vaguely quiet, but generally overrated for the price.

Lawrence Lee
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Post by Lawrence Lee » Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:08 pm

Good quality fans, but they're overated and severely overpriced.

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Post by frankgehry » Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:13 pm

G,

From what I heard their sales people (person) used to pose as a reader and make false claims about their products, other products, I'm not sure. But silenx specs are too good to be true and there are better products out there. There is some more about this in the vendor forum or somewhere. - FG

Wow. That was three posts in about as many minutes.

Slaugh
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Post by Slaugh » Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:25 pm

SilenX is widely discussed in the forums, a search for "SilenX" gave me 696 results.

Sthayashi is referring to the thread telling the whole story about Peter Kim and SilenX. This is the main reason why I decided not to try their fans and bought some Nexus fans instead... (Very good choice indeed!)

Have a look at the recommended section to know all the good brands recommended by SPCR... There are also very helpful reviews and articles all around the site.

ckolivas
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Post by ckolivas » Mon Apr 11, 2005 10:00 pm

In Australia where our choice of quiet fans is severely limited, silenx are one of the few we can purchase. Despite the bad feel on these forums I have been quite happy with the silenx fans I have purchased.

There are a few things to note - the quoted sound figures are quite simply bullshit. They are indeed quiet fans but not in the magnitude they claim.
The price, in my opinion, is not too high as the fans are of good quality, are quiet and undervolt very well. Only the 120mm fan did not like PWM control with some buzzing, but is very quiet through a zalman fanmate. The 80 and especially the 92mm fans I have purchased are very good, undervolting to extreme levels and coping with pwm without buzzing or clicking. That does not mean it has been everyone's experience with them. However since the feel of the forums is that silenx is "evil", people put down their products much more than they deserve.

As for their cpu coolers; most of them are rebadged or re-fanned coolers from someone else, and getting them directly may be a better option.

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Post by Rusty075 » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:39 am

Actually Ckolivas, everything they sell is rebadged. The fans are Adda's, the heatsinks are Swiftechs or Zalmans, the PSU's are fortons.

ckolivas
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Post by ckolivas » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:40 am

Rusty075 wrote:Actually Ckolivas, everything they sell is rebadged. The fans are Adda's, the heatsinks are Swiftechs or Zalmans, the PSU's are fortons.
True, but then Nexus fans are rebadged Yate Loons etc... so that's not really a bad thing all the time...

GUNNER
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Thanks!

Post by GUNNER » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:31 pm

Thanks for the responses. I guess I'll be ignoring their products in favor of others, which was what I was thinking.

Sorry I hadn't searched the forum. I just didn't see any of their products in the reviews, which had me wondering.

dvsOasis
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Post by dvsOasis » Fri Apr 15, 2005 10:56 am

even though i was trolling through the site for a while, I didn't see any of the bad posts about silenx. I only saw a couple of posts where someone was saying that they were the quietest. I gave it a try...at 12v, it doesn't push as much air as a panaflo, but it is definitely much quieter than it. It still pushes alot of air while undervolted.

Lately I've been seeing all of these complaints when people ask about the silenx products...if it's going to be a banned name here, maybe the silenx name should be added to some sort of filter/bad word list. To me, it seems wierd that every mention of it will make several users reply just to say rumors and warnings, rather than addressing the post.

Although I'm satisfied with the fan (I bought a 120mm one with blue led's, and it's bright and looks really nice), I probably won't buy it again. They don't have many vendors, and I eventually had to buy it from a shop on the east coast (took a week to get here).

nici
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Post by nici » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:32 am

Didnt see any bad posts? Check out the thread posted at the start of the thread. No wait, here it is. http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... ght=silenx

Rusty075
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Post by Rusty075 » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:34 am

dvsOasis, the two stickies atop the SPCR Announcements forum, you know the one at the very top of the forum index, the one that's captioned, "Site announcements, news, stuff you should read. Start here.", completely, totally explain the Silenx PK situation.

If people actually took the time to follow simple directions like, "Start here", we'd never have to have this discussion again. Until then, forum responders will likely continue to feel the need to warn unaware newbies that Silenx is a company that makes defrauding its customers an official part of its operation. As soon as that position at Silenx changes, the reception their products receive here will likely change too.

mathias
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Post by mathias » Fri Apr 15, 2005 1:01 pm

Banned? A ban requires some kind of mechanism against violation of it, since here we have practically no flame wars or anything like that, as much as we look down silenx (and thermaltake to a lesser degree) for being pathological liars, we do not rip into or censor anyone who disagrees or buys their stuff. In fact, quite the opposite, last time someone said they were "ripped of and scammed by silenx", their language was censored. Not even RMA'ing something you broke is banned here.

bob670
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Post by bob670 » Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:16 am

I dunno', I have been using a lot of SilenX stuff the last couple years and have had no issues. I find their fans to be rated pretty close to reality, if anything the airflow is slightly less than what is stated but the noise level seems pretty close to me. I started using them before I knew of the situation here and have not yet been compelled to stop.

While it might not happen around here much it is far from uncommon for this kind of thing on a variety of message boards and at any given time ATI, nVidia, Intel, AMD and many times Microsoft have been caught in this kind of thing. It's desperate and many times not necessary, but people do strange things in the name of $$$.

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:21 am

bob670 wrote:While it might not happen around here much it is far from uncommon for this kind of thing on a variety of message boards and at any given time ATI, nVidia, Intel, AMD and many times Microsoft have been caught in this kind of thing. It's desperate and many times not necessary, but people do strange things in the name of $$$.
One slight difference between those companies and SilenX is that in SilenX's case it was the OWNER who admitted to doing wrong.

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Post by ilh » Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:27 am

I just interviewed a graduate student who's job at a startup last summer involved what he called "viral marketing" right on his resume. He described viral marketing as posting to various forums saying how great the company's products were while pretending to be a legitimate customer. Yuck!

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:38 am

ilh wrote:I just interviewed a graduate student who's job at a startup last summer involved what he called "viral marketing" right on his resume. He described viral marketing as posting to various forums saying how great the company's products were while pretending to be a legitimate customer. Yuck!
That's one way of looking at it. Viral marketing is more than that and actually has some good and useful properties. It's basically marketing through word of mouth and getting others to follow along and spread the word. Quite literally, it's a word-of-mouth marketing except marketing was the intent from the beginning.

Want an example of good viral marketing? Gmail.

EDIT: Incidentally, Silent PCs can be a form of viral marketing. I was inspired to pursue silent PCs when a friend showed me how quiet his room was when he put his computer in the closet. I didn't think much of it at first, but then it slowly grew on me.

bob670
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Post by bob670 » Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:26 am

sthayashi wrote:
bob670 wrote:While it might not happen around here much it is far from uncommon for this kind of thing on a variety of message boards and at any given time ATI, nVidia, Intel, AMD and many times Microsoft have been caught in this kind of thing. It's desperate and many times not necessary, but people do strange things in the name of $$$.
One slight difference between those companies and SilenX is that in SilenX's case it was the OWNER who admitted to doing wrong.
So if any of the owner's of those companies came out and admitted they knew their companies did the same things you would boycott them? Seeing as how ATI and nVidia have both been caught doing some pretty shadey stuff (far beyond what SilenX did here) with benchmarks and have publically acknowledged it I have to assume you are using S3 DeltaChrome graphics cards?

I'm not saying what he did was okay, I just don't know if it was any more serious than some of the actions of much larger companies. If you are going to hold SilenX to such a level of ethics should you not hold all companies you deal with to such standards? Or are we practicing situational ethics since it is far easier to find another brand of fan than give up high end graphics or CPU performance?

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:10 pm

bob670 wrote:So if any of the owner's of those companies came out and admitted they knew their companies did the same things you would boycott them? Seeing as how ATI and nVidia have both been caught doing some pretty shadey stuff (far beyond what SilenX did here) with benchmarks and have publically acknowledged it I have to assume you are using S3 DeltaChrome graphics cards?

I'm not saying what he did was okay, I just don't know if it was any more serious than some of the actions of much larger companies. If you are going to hold SilenX to such a level of ethics should you not hold all companies you deal with to such standards? Or are we practicing situational ethics since it is far easier to find another brand of fan than give up high end graphics or CPU performance?
If any of those larger companies did what SilenX did to this forum, then yes, I would boycott them.

Faking benchmarks is not as bad as having hidden multiple representatives for the sole purpose of marketing. The latter is much more personal.

bob670
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Post by bob670 » Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:38 pm

sthayashi wrote:Faking benchmarks is not as bad as having hidden multiple representatives for the sole purpose of marketing. The latter is much more personal.
That is one skewed veiw of reality; big lie, little lie, still makes it a lie. If you can tolerate lies from ATI and nVidia it is pretty much hypocrisy to hold SilenX to a higher standard. Sounds more like bruised pride than actual ethics.

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:44 pm

bob670 wrote:That is one skewed veiw of reality; big lie, little lie, still makes it a lie. If you can tolerate lies from ATI and nVidia it is pretty much hypocrisy to hold SilenX to a higher standard. Sounds more like bruised pride than actual ethics.
You and I clearly have different sets of ethics then.

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Post by m0002a » Fri Apr 22, 2005 1:30 pm

If ATI and Nvidia published benchmarks under their own name that were not entirely objective, then no one should be surprised that they interpreted the results in a way that is favorable to their own products, even if such benchmarks were misleading.

If ATI and Nvidia hired employees or another company who pretended to be independent and objective, and pretended to not be associated with either company, to publish erroneous results, then that would be a different matter. Of course, if both ATI and Nvidia actually did that, then it would not influence too may purchasing decisions since they are the only realistic choices people have for video cards.

bob670
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Post by bob670 » Fri Apr 22, 2005 5:39 pm

m0002a wrote:If ATI and Nvidia published benchmarks under their own name that were not entirely objective, then no one should be surprised that they interpreted the results in a way that is favorable to their own products, even if such benchmarks were misleading.

If ATI and Nvidia hired employees or another company who pretended to be independent and objective, and pretended to not be associated with either company, to publish erroneous results, then that would be a different matter. Of course, if both ATI and Nvidia actually did that, then it would not influence too may purchasing decisions since they are the only realistic choices people have for video cards.
They didn't post benchmarks that "were not entirely objective", they built cheats and extensive tweaks into their drivers and then let numerous web sites publish those cheats as facts. You don't have that kind of concerted effort to decieve the public without some management involvement.

Be honest, you guys are busting SilenX balls becasue they caught you with your guard down, but they haven't really done anything ATI, nVidia or MS haven't done extensively. It's just a lot easier to find a new brand of fan so it's easy to sit on your high horse.

bob670
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Post by bob670 » Fri Apr 22, 2005 5:42 pm

sthayashi wrote:You and I clearly have different sets of ethics then.
Not really, but you want to make SilenX out to be more evil because the slight was perpetrated on a web site you love. That is understandable, but that is the very definition of situational ethics.

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Post by StarfishChris » Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:08 pm

And what's wrong with situational ethics? Lies are lies but it has context. In the case of SilenX, you can't trust testimonials on independent websites lest they be an employee in disguise. At least with ATI/nVidia they forged only the benchmarks and left the community intact (...to find out the truth).

m0002a
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Post by m0002a » Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:26 pm

bob670 wrote:They didn't post benchmarks that "were not entirely objective", they built cheats and extensive tweaks into their drivers and then let numerous web sites publish those cheats as facts. You don't have that kind of concerted effort to decieve the public without some management involvement.

Be honest, you guys are busting SilenX balls becasue they caught you with your guard down, but they haven't really done anything ATI, nVidia or MS haven't done extensively. It's just a lot easier to find a new brand of fan so it's easy to sit on your high horse.
In the case of ATI/Nvidia, there are a couple of points:

1) There are no other realistic choices besides ATI and Nvidia video cards.

2) The issue of tweaking drivers for benchmarks is an interesting one. I assume you mean that tweaks were made that would only show up as beneficial on certain benchmarks, and not the same level of improvement would be seen for general use. Oracle (who makes a high end database) did something even worse. Oracle hard-coded certain SQL statements that were only used in the TPC (Transaction Processing Council) benchmark, that would never be used in the real world. The TPC organization which did the benchmark found out about the “problem” and figured out a way to revise their benchmark so it would no longer be possible to do that. Perhaps the people who devise video card benchmarks need to take the same precautions.

All things taken into consideration, I still think the SilenX behavior was worse than ATI or Nvidia. That is just my opinion and you may disagree.

SilenX products are pretty much like others that are available on the market that cater to quiet computing. Many of them are identical to other products, with the only difference being the name imprinted on them. I don't think SilenX has any ground-braking technology or products that others don’t have. If they did have such products, I think you would see most people on this forum ignoring the unethical SilenX postings and buying them anyway.

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Post by mathias » Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:32 pm

bob670 wrote: Be honest, you guys are busting SilenX balls becasue they caught you with your guard down, but they haven't really done anything ATI, nVidia or MS haven't done extensively. It's just a lot easier to find a new brand of fan so it's easy to sit on your high horse.
And it's very easy to recommend not getting silenx products from a high horse because there's also tons of other reasons not to. So the resentment towards them isn't purely moralistic.

One reason I think people hove so much disdain for them is because they do little more than rebrand products and jack up the price. They're also in league with the company blatantly ripping off zalman products, and with the status quo appologists at oc'ers.com.

Plus, this is our niche, there's plenty of penguinistas to trumpet how evil m$ is(and no one can pirate silenx products), and if you want to give up on playing games, that's a much bigger and personal decision which we probably shouldn't be advising people on. And we're not being very effective vigilantee-policing it, I often notice people elsewhere obnoxiously recomending silenx products based on the ridiculous specs.

bob670
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Post by bob670 » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:10 pm

mathias wrote:Plus, this is our niche
There it is, right there, you are defending your turf. SilenX fooled you guys and you are punishing them because there are easy alternatives. Other companies can act far less ethically but it is too inconvenient to find an alternative so that is okay. Got it, I won't poke at the group-hink any more. Point taken, I'll leave it alone.

m0002a
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Post by m0002a » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:15 pm

bob670 wrote:There it is, right there, you are defending your turf. SilenX fooled you guys and you are punishing them because there are easy alternatives. Other companies can act far less ethically but it is too inconvenient to find an alternative so that is okay. Got it, I won't poke at the group-hink any more. Point taken, I'll leave it alone.
Your statement that other companies acted “far less ethically” than SilenX is your opinion, and not necessarily shared by everyone.

"inconvenient to find an alternative" ? No, with regard to video cards, it is impossible to find alternatives to ATI and Nvidia.

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Post by mathias » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:22 pm

Now you're just purposely ignoring the context of what I said to repeat yourself. I clearly meant that this is what no few others will make a fuss over, thus neccessitating us to do so. To illustrate: I'm implying that if someone pulled the same stunt to sell low noise PC products elsewhere, we should and would likely react the same way.

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