Looking for a very quiet 100mm fan

vkoloyan · Post by **vkoloyan** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:55 pm

Hello,
Just the other day i read the 120mm and 80mm round-ups and was really excited about the Noctua fans. I did purchase 3 Noctuas. Two 120mm and one 80mm for my case in my quest to make to quite and was planing to use one of the 120's on my heat sink. I have the(CoolerMaster Hyper 6+ ). The heat sink is great and keeps the 3.4 P4 overclocked to 3.7 around 30 Celsius (core reading) with fan running and only goes up about 7 degrees with the fan stooped. The problem is the stock CoolerMaster fan is very loud and this is the main source of noise from my PC. I ordered the fans in a rush and didn't realize that my heat sink uses a 100mm fan, which are more uncommon apparently than a 92mm fan. So here I am with an extra 120mm Noctua and unless there is so magic 120mm to 100mm adapter/converter, I have no good idea what replacement fan to get with. If you guys could point me in the right direction in my search for 100mm heat sink fans, I would greatly appreciate your input. Thank you in advance.

-vk

p.s. I apologize for the double post

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 8:01 pm

Hello & welcome to SPCR!

You are in luck: the Scythe 100mm is one of the quietest fans tested by SPCR:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article636-page3.html

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article636-page4.html

12V: At full speed, this may well be the quietest stock fan we've ever heard. While we weren't as impressed as one reviewer, who couldn't hear it at all, we do have to offer our congratulations to Scythe. No other stock fan that we know of has been this quiet at 12V. The fan is quiet enough to put any doubts as to whether it's worth keeping the oddly sized fan to rest.

Note that we said quiet, not silent. The fan definitely made some noise, mostly in the form of a low growl. There was also a slight overtone that could have been the aluminum fins resonating, and a significant amount of air turbulence.

Cooling performance was very good, although not champion level. That's hardly a surprise, because the stock fan is so slow. With a fast fan screaming along at 3,000 RPM, we have no doubt that the Mine could hit with the big boys. A more valid comparison would be to look at how the Mine compares with other heatsinks at a constant noise level... keep reading to find out.

9V: The resonance and most of the growl disappeared at 9V, leaving turbulence noise as the prominent source of noise. This is good enough for a very quiet computer; in a loud environment it might even have been inaudible. Cooling performance definitely dropped, but was still well within the bounds of safety for our P4 Northwood chip. There's even a little headroom to cool a warmer chip.

7V: At 7V, the fan was almost inaudible from one meter. Only a faint clicking let us know it was still spinning, and we had to listen hard to hear it. Performance was now borderline for our processor; we do not think any of Intel's 800 or 900 series could be cooled properly at this level. However, most AMD chips should still be fine, as they tend to run cooler than our test bed.

5V: The fan noise disappeared entirely at this level. We had to listen from within a foot or two to pick the noise out from the background. Performance was not good enough to cool our test rig under real system conditions, but a cooler processor would be perfectly fine. Despite Scythe's claim that the Mine is not intended for low airflow conditions, it certainly does well enough so long as a cool processor is used.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 6:24 am

SPCR tested the 1500rpm version as Neil said above.

There is a 1000rpm version that is also very quiet. It would be quieter than the 1500rpm version but wouldn't push as much air. However I can tell you that I have modded one to fit into my Zalman 7000B-AlCu and it pushes plenty of air at 12V.

vkoloyan · Post by **vkoloyan** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 10:33 pm

...NeilBlanchard and jhhoffma. I placed the order for the 100mm Skythe based on the spcr review you pointed me to. And as for the extra Noctua 120mm that I baught by mistake, it is going to go into the newly drilled top blowhole

.

Lawrence Lee · Post by **Lawrence Lee** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:14 am

I have a Scythe 100mm 1500RPM fan that came with my Scythe Mine. Very quiet... too bad I'm not using it. 100mm too small for me.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:00 am

Amourek wrote:I have a Scythe 100mm 1500RPM fan that came with my Scythe Mine. Very quiet... too bad I'm not using it. 100mm too small for me.

It certainly isn't suitable for the main system cooling fan. But it's an excellent spot-cooling fan for devices its size. Like 101.24mm-wide 3.5" HDDs. Like the 104mm-wide Freezer 64 Pro. I'm using the fan right now, in those two applications, in the computer I'm typing on. The system fan is, of course, a 220mm running at 3.6V (honest). There is no PSU fan.

JaYp146 · Post by **JaYp146** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:15 pm

Felger Carbon wrote:
Amourek wrote:I have a Scythe 100mm 1500RPM fan that came with my Scythe Mine. Very quiet... too bad I'm not using it. 100mm too small for me.
It certainly isn't suitable for the main system cooling fan. But it's an excellent spot-cooling fan for devices its size. Like 101.24mm-wide 3.5" HDDs. Like the 104mm-wide Freezer 64 Pro. I'm using the fan right now, in those two applications, in the computer I'm typing on. The system fan is, of course, a 220mm running at 3.6V (honest). There is no PSU fan.

Exactly what I'm using it for. MSI 5900XT's fan was being noisy ... what to do, what to do ... bingo!

Disconnected the annoying fan, positioned the Scythe 100mm fan from Scythe Mine, connected to fan controller - silent and effective (FTW).

BrianE · Post by **BrianE** » Tue May 22, 2007 4:57 pm

I hope no one minds if I bump this older thread, but I didn't want to create a new one to mention this...

Recently built a ducted Opteron system for my brother and like the OP, I also used a Coolermaster Hyper 6+ (it was super cheap so I had it lying around). I also didn't realize that it used the oddball 100mm size so I necked down one of the ducts to fit a 120mm. Impedance is disappointingly higher than when I "bench tested" the concept....

Today I noticed that NCIX now has the Scythe KAZE-JYU 100mm fans mentioned above available for order:

Low Speed
Medium Speed
High Speed

$11.24 Cdn. I may want to order one to give the airflow a boost (120mm CM fan on it now... 1200rpm I believe). Like the OP I found the stock 100mm fan hopelessly loud even when undervolted.