In Round 1 I made a graph of "All-Stars" that was originally misinterpreted....all I did was take the best from each class and put them together to show that the best medium speed fans were the best overall performers. Turns out, people took the name "All-Stars" not-so-literally and thought they were my recommendations. They may have been the better fans empirically, but at the time they weren't my recommendations. I wouldn't have recommended the U1A at all (too loud and undevolts poorly) and the YL SL I had tested made a few funky noises every so often and was getting worse over time. That and it just wasn't up to the performance that the Sharkoon and ebmpapst were exhibiting, so why would I recommend it?

Well, the number of AWESOME fans in this roundup was a lot higher and these are true recommendations with reasons listed below

FWIW, the order in the chart legend is the order of my personal preference as well.

Open Air favorites:


Radiator favorites:


Comments:

All-purpose awesome fans:
San Ace 1011 - This fan really is in a league of it's own....yeah, the Zalman may 'catch up' on the radiator...but the San Ace isn't a sleeve bearing and is overall better construction. It is the real deal and somehow better than every other fan...ESPECIALLY in open air.

Zalman ZM-F3 - The surprise of the bunch catches up to the San Ace on the radiator, but overall it's still not quite as good....though definitely an awesome, awesome fan.

Scythe S-Flex F - Another great fan a lot like the Zalman, but also not a sleeve bearing fan. No excitation, no extraneous noise....just a great fan (gets near-'silent' at 5V too, which is rare for a medium speed fan).

Yate Loon D12SM-12 Petras - An unbeatable value....98% the performance of the S-Flex and the Zalman for fraction of the cost. It's overrrated (surprising considering the SL is slightly underrated), but a very, very good fan

Scythe S-Flex E - The silent-friendly fan of the bunch...easiest to make 'silent' while also having great otherwise performance. It's also a wonderful S-FDB bearing fan that has little downside.

Case fans:
Scythe Minebea 1900 - A great performer in open air but falls back a little on a radiator...great MTBF, non-sleeve bearing fan and a good price.

Scythe Minebea 1100 - Also a great open air performer that falls back noticeably on a radiator....great MTBF, non-sleeve bearing fan and a good price.

Silverstone FN121 - I rue giving this company any accolades, but the fan does perform once again. Unlike its sibling fans, it actually is rated appropriately too. It gets 'silent' in a hurry and makes no extraneous noises. It does fall back a little on the radiator and is sleeve bearing.

Radiator specialist:
Yate Loon D12SH-12 from Petras - Included the data from the straight blade version just to keep the atypical 11V and 12V numbers from the curved version from dissuading anybody. This is a very, very good fan on a radiator with surprisingly little CFM loss (has to do with the low CFM:RPM ratio in the open air ). No extraneous noises at a great price with performance better than the Minebea 1900 on a radiator puts this on my favorites list