Fujitsu-Siemens 'Silent Fan' and 'Silent Fan LT'

ken274 · Post by **ken274** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:08 am

Does anyone have any experience with the 'Silent Fan' or the 'Silent Fan LT' technology which all recent Fujitsu-Siemens motherboards are equipped with? It seems to me from reading the commercial blurb that this technology offers the advantages of such systems as Asus FanEQ in that fan speeds are 100% controlled by a chip on the motherboard and therefore works whenever the computer is on, not requiring a windows application to be running like with AOpen's SilentTek, whilst also offering the control AOpen's solution, allowing fans to be throttled anywhere down to 6V unlike FanEQ. In addition, if I wanted to finetune the temperatures at which the various actions were triggered, software is supplied which would allow me to do this and, from what I've seen of it, it looks far better designed than AOpen's clunky solution. What also looks interesting is the ability of the boards to intelligently throttle the CPU and also control the hard disk ('Silent Drive'). Anyone own a Fujitsu-Siemens motherboard equipped with this technology who can tell me how well it all works?

I'm currently thinking of using the Antec Aria case as the base of a new system with a P4 550 (3.2GHz), a fanless Gigabyte Radeon X700, 1GB of RAM, a Audigy soundcard and the usual Samsung optical drive and SpinPoint harddisk combination. Fujitsu-Siemens currently have two lines of motherboards, the 'Premium' series equipped with 'Silent Fan' and the 'Value' series equipped with 'Silent Fan LT'. Unfortunately, they only currently offer a value board for LGA775 in micro-ATX form factor which, as previously stated, only has 'Silent Fan LT'. Does anyone know what the difference between these two versions of the same technology is? Will I still be able to monitor the temperature of my system components and the RPM of the fans with the latter?

Thanks in advance for any help,

Regards,

Ken.

HellDiver · Post by **HellDiver** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:02 am

Epox's fan control works without Windows running. I've seen it working to good effect on an 4PDA5+

ken274 · Post by **ken274** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:30 am

Thanks HellDriver, I checked out EPoX's website but couldn't find any mention of automatic fan control built into either the socket 478 board you describe or any of the socket 775 boards which I would prefer. How does this fan control system work?

Looking back at the fujitsu-siemens website, it seems to me that the boards they offer are perfect for the noise-concious computer builder, with fan control, CPU throttling and disk control all built in and without requiring a clunky piece of software running under Windows for it all to work. I am very surprised that nobody at spcr has had any experience with these boards as they do look very promising! (Although perhaps the fact that fujitsu-siemens parts are very difficult to get hold of in the US has some bearing on the situation.)

I'm considering just taking a risk and getting hold of a fujitsu-siemens board so that I can test it myself - if only they had a micro-ATX LGA775 board fitted with the full 'Silent Fan' as opposed to 'Silent Fan LT' (as their website, whilst being very clear on what the former technology can do, is far from clear on how the LT version differs from it.) Although, if you could give me further details on the EPoX boards, HellDriver, it would be much appreciated!

Regards,

Ken.

CharlieChan · Post by **CharlieChan** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:39 pm

I have a fujitsu-siemens D1562. I personally don't use silent fan but thats because my PC is always under 100% load running folding@home. It works as you have decribed it and whether it is of any use to you will depend how you plan to use the PC. My setup is - D1562, P4 3.0C + aerocool DP102 + panaflo 80L1A@9V , 1G, Barracuda IV, seasonic SS300FS + panaflo 80L1A mod, 80L1A@9V exhaust, not silent but quiet enough for me.

ken274 · Post by **ken274** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:52 am

Thanks CharlieChan - I'm having second thoughts about fujitsu-siemens boards after reading bad reviews of some boards equipped with silentfan on Tom's Hardware. Out of 16 P4 boards tested, the fujitsu-siemens board came last when silent fan was enabled, even when setup for 'enhanced cooling', the least rigourous of silentfan settings, with the CPU throttling cutting in far too early.

I think I may wait until Intel releases their EM64T P4 processors with Enhanced Speed Step (EIST) before splashing out and buying components for a new PC as without a doubt the current Prescotts run too hot! Whats more, there seems to be a complete lack of feature-rich Mini-ATX Socket 939 motherboards at present so the AMD option is not an option.

Regards,

Ken.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:35 am

What's wrong with socket 754 AMD's? The 130nm AMD's might run a bit hotter than the 90nm AMD's, but still a lot cooler than anything (affordable) Intel made lately or is likely to make in the near future.

Don't start about Pentium M. That's what I meant with (affordable).

ken274 · Post by **ken274** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 5:26 am

I'm looking to keep my options open - as I understand it, and I may be wrong so correct me if that is the case, socket 939 both is and will in the future be better supported by AMD themselves. Whats more, support for even socket 754 in mini-ATX form factor is pretty poor from most motherboard manufacturers.

You're absolutely right about the thermal performance of all AMD processors being far better than anything Intel can offer or will ever offer while remaining on the P4 architecture. However, from what I've read it is still quite possible to cool the mid-range prescotts both silently and effectively. With EIST, I would hope that the situation would improve even further.

Ken.