Airflow Straighteners avaliable, SPCR review coming soon

saxxon · Post by **saxxon** » Sat May 05, 2007 8:45 pm

I sent some airflow straighteners to MikeC for review on this site. Hopefully it will help with the metering project he's making on the homepage. They are avaliable from http://www.saxonpc.com/ in 3 sizes. Great for fanless chipset cooling. Airflow profile data is here http://www.saxxon.net/test Discounted $1 per item if you mention SPCR in your order. Material is aerospace grade aluminum honeycomb.

I have posted some results under this forum:

viewtopic.php?p=339183#339183

Fungi · Post by **Fungi** » Sun May 06, 2007 12:40 am

Looks neat, going to test it out on my Ultra-90 + Nexus 92mm.

Edit: I mean sure there's plugs everywhere but someone's gotta test it out :p

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Sun May 06, 2007 2:06 am

This sounds way too good to be true... I'll wait for the review.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Sun May 06, 2007 2:09 am

Sure looks nice, and no doubt would force airflow into a straighter path......but at what cost in airflow reduction? We all know that removing case/fan grills improves airflow in any situation. And I wonder if this device would only be effective with certain heatsink/fan combinations. DIY ducting performs a similar duty, and I cannot think of a single cooling project of mine that might benefit from this device. But you just never know.....

Now come up with an add-on device that bends axial airflow 90 degrees within 25mm with no airflow reduction......and I'm interested.

saxxon · Post by **saxxon** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:54 am

Ducting I find to be far noisier than I like in my systems. And you still have 2 forces within the duct. I certainly understand your doubts. I will send a few people who have commented a sample for review.

crispyfish · Post by **crispyfish** » Sun May 06, 2007 8:05 am

I'm really looking forward to hearing about more experiences with these devices. If the figures are typical of what the average user will get, these have great potential for those of us who want to keep temps down without adding more fans.

saxxon · Post by **saxxon** » Sun May 06, 2007 8:43 am

Send me your address crispyfish and I will send you one for review. Let me know if you want a 80, 92 or 120mm. I need more customer feedback. Thanks for your comment.

crispyfish · Post by **crispyfish** » Sun May 06, 2007 6:14 pm

saxxon wrote:Send me your address crispyfish and I will send you one for review. Let me know if you want a 80, 92 or 120mm. I need more customer feedback. Thanks for your comment.

Thanks! Check PMs.

mcoleg · Post by **mcoleg** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:44 pm

sounds pretty neat. i'll be waiting for independent reviews

Blacktales · Post by **Blacktales** » Mon May 07, 2007 7:06 am

Somehow i can understand how this would be helpful for a fan attached to a heatsink to prevent the airflow from spreading over non-cooling-effective areas or increasing pressure but would this kind of attachment be useful for case fans ? I doubt it would increase airflow ? More like reduce it like bluefront said ? Or would it be negligible ?

cyburzaki · Post by **cyburzaki** » Mon May 07, 2007 9:32 am

I checked out the results in the other thread, and while impressive, I can't help but remain skeptical.

And if someone is using a single fan to pull air through an Ultra-120 eXtreme, it seems like this device would be counterproductive, actually reducing cooling over the lateral periphery of fins that otherwise would be getting a nice wash of air.

Blacktales · Post by **Blacktales** » Mon May 07, 2007 9:53 am

I don't know if this device would have any use on the intake side of a fan ? Obviously you want the outgoing flow to be as straight as possible but not straighten the incoming air thus probably reducing airflow.

For case fans, let's say i install one on the blowing side of an front intake fan next to the HD cage, would that help keeping a straight airflow "tube" that could somehow cool the HDs and extend to the GPU and help cooling the card as well ?

What about silence ? I know several threads on the forum dealing with noise generated by fan grills (air throttling and back pressure increase ) present impressive silencing results by cutting the grills on their cases and installing a less restrictive one. The mesh seems quite unobstrusive but would installing an airflow straighteners change anything on the noise level ?

Fungi · Post by **Fungi** » Mon May 14, 2007 7:52 pm

The sample 92mm Aerospace Grade Airflow Straightener arrived, courtesy of saxxon (Thanks!)
I was going to do some closed case testing, but the clip mechanism of the Ultra-90 prevented me from doing so.

Test setup: [email protected], 1.25V, Ultra-90, Nexus 92mm fan and Panaflo FBA90A12M at 12V

What I did was really unprofessional: hold the fan (or fan and straightener) up to the heatsink, note temperatures (both idle and load). I waited for temperatures to stabilize for about a minute for each result.

The conclusion I came to was that with both fans, fast (Panaflo) and slow (Nexus) the airflow straightener did not affect temperatures. I tried the straightener both ways as requested by saxxon, and the temperatures did not change.
With the Nexus, the honeycomb added a little bit of noise, and a bit more noise with the faster Panaflo.

On a side note, I tried the "face test" where I held the fan 3 feet away from my face and found that there was no air with just the fan, but the straightener put an "invisible duct" between the fan and my face: I felt all of it. It was kind of surprising how focused the air became at that distance. It might be useful for spot coolers that have to blow on something a little ways away.

Summary: On an Ultra-90, the airflow straightener did not affect temperatures either way, and added a little noise (but an "air" noise that wasn't harsh on the ears).

Thanks again to Saxon for the sample.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Tue May 15, 2007 5:16 am

Fungi,

You should say what your temps actually were. It's possible that you've reached the cooling limit of your HSF/CPU combo and all the air from your CPU fan is being used effectively to cool (in which case an air straightener wouldn't have any effect).

You face test makes sense, though. When I first saw this posted, I immediately thought of a choke on a shotgun. Basically by tapering the end of the barrel, you increase the effective range of the shot by keeping it from spreading out as fast. You are right that this would have more effect in a spot cooler where directed airflow is necessary. This would/should have no effect on standard box-frame fans that are mounted directly to a CPU heatsink unless you assume the resistance of the heatsink builds up enough back pressure that is negated by the straightening of the airflow.

Still, it's interesting and I'm waiting for the review...

ceselb · Post by **ceselb** » Tue May 15, 2007 5:26 am

Current hsf designs take into account the nature of the fans. If this was standard and the heatsinks were designed for it, I bet it could be nice.

Were it will really shine though, is component cooling. I would love to have two of these, one for the fan blowing on my harddrives and the other blowing down on my heatsink and motherboard components. Aiming the airflow for maximum benefit is tricky, since it's much less in the center where it would be needed most.

Looking forward to the review.

Fungi · Post by **Fungi** » Tue May 15, 2007 9:33 am

jhhoffma, that may be true. Here are my temps:
31/51 with Nexus
28/48 with Panaflo
These are the core temps, since I figured they'd be more reliable than "CPU temp"
But I do remember reading a review of the Ultra-90 that said that it works better with fast fans, possibly faster than the Panaflo.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Tue May 15, 2007 10:51 am

Fungi wrote:jhhoffma, that may be true. Here are my temps:
31/51 with Nexus
28/48 with Panaflo
These are the core temps, since I figured they'd be more reliable than "CPU temp"
But I do remember reading a review of the Ultra-90 that said that it works better with fast fans, possibly faster than the Panaflo.

Either it would perform better with a fan that has more pressure behind it (turbine style-more blades) to overcome backpressure due to close spacing of fins, or the a fan with higher CFM is needed to overcome the small(ish) size of the HSF in comparison to some of the other monsters out there.

I'd say that you'd be hard pressed to get lower than 28C with any fan at idle, but depending on your system/ambient temps I could be wrong.

saxxon · Post by **saxxon** » Fri May 18, 2007 11:52 am

Sounds like some decent results. Considering this is a case fan product. I am not surprized people are trying them for CPU's. Case fans are standard size and usually higher RPM. CPU's use so many differnet fan speeds, mounting brackets and wire forms to mount it is difficult to make a one size fits all solutions. Fungi, let me send you a product that may be more effective on your CPU fan. I will also go get one of those Nexus fans for testing. I tested 92mm at 12 volts for hours and have never experienced any additional sound increase.

Chocolinx · Post by **Chocolinx** » Fri May 18, 2007 12:16 pm

If all this is true:

- No Noise Increase
- Higher CFM
- Better Cooling

I'd love to try one of these on my Ninja. I saw those results at the top and they're very impressive if its all true. But I don't get how it wouldn't raise any noise levels? Wouldn't the air cause some sort of turbulance seeing how it's so close to those grills?

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri May 18, 2007 12:39 pm

Higher CFM

this product,however it works,can't increase CFM;just straighten it so less is wasted.

EndoSteel · Post by **EndoSteel** » Fri May 18, 2007 1:18 pm

Chocolinx
I'd love to try one of these on my Ninja.
Your Ninja itself is a nice straightener, you don't need any extras.

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Fri May 18, 2007 5:49 pm

Why would you want the air to flow straight through your ninja? Fully laminar flow doesn't sound that helpful here.

More interaction between the air and the heatsink is what you seek (sure you don't want recirculation), some more turbulence could be beneficial.

I could be completely wrong, my fluid mechanics is rather rusty.

edit: I 'm not trying to say the air straighteners would achieve fully laminar / straight flow.

Airflow Straighteners avaliable, SPCR review coming soon

Airflow Straighteners avaliable, SPCR review coming soon

thanks for the comments

look foreward to your review

Re: look foreward to your review

Thanks