Fan Testing Part 2 (Retesting + Noise)

[Martinm210]

Hello I am fairly newb to this, but wow, nice work Martinm210, and hey I don't live too far from you; I live in Welches, OR; at the base of Mt. Hood. Anyhow, yikes, I just read this whole review and my head is spinning. I am inclined to the GT, however I would like to know what you and others think of the AP-14 as it was not tested? I can only assume it would be that much quieter. Nice videos btw - those really helped. The GT had a more comfortable noise than the other fans I was interested in. I would guess the AP-14 is similar in sound but just a bit slower? However would it still perform decent enough for use in a rad set up? I plan on running two Feser X-Changer Triple 360 mm Extreme Performance Radiator - 15mm Spacing. Another concern of mine is that the GTs have a huge disc, and I worry about that creating a dead spot in the middle, as well as what it might do for static pressure. Sure the flow can be tested and graphed, but does air flow alone indicate actual performance for cooling a rad? I know you used a rad in your setup, I guess I am just concerned about it cooling equally without any dead spots. Any thoughts?

Yep, I live in po dunk southern Oregon. You're up there near Danger Den in Astoria, you should go give those good folks a visit some time.

Good questions:

I never tried an AP-14, only the 15 so I couldn't tell you. I do know that with some of the fans that I have tested in the same family like the S-Flex, that there was enough difference between models that I wouldn't generalize too much. Each and every fan seems to have more of an individual character, so you almost need to try both side by side to ensure.

You are correct about the dead spot issue, it's another variable that influences what CFM level leads to bottom line radiator performance. The only way to eliminate that variable would be to test each and every fan on a radiator. The issue is time in testing, it's prohibitive to do the same on a radiator. The CFM flow bench style testing can be done very quickly. I could measure CFM levels almost instantly and because of that captured a data point from 4V to 12V at every volt. So that was 9 data points, and could be done in about 10 minutes.

30 fans translates to about 300minutes or around 5 solid hours of testing. Remounting and the rest accounted for more, so this testing of the data points really probably took me about 10 hours worth of testing.

Testing on a radiator is instead of taking 10 minutes, takes a good 60 minutes depending on the radiator delta and water volume. My radiator test rig has a large reservoir, so a single data point can take 90 minutes of testing time to ensure complete stabilization of the system and quality data.

So...Rad based testing would have taken 90minutes X 10 data points x 30 fans or 450 hours But wait, you'r still not done, because more than likely because of the fan power curves, those results may be slightly different over different types of radiators. In reality, you probably would need to run those same tests over each radiator brand....you could turn this into a lifetime effort that you'd never accomplish because there would continually be new fans.

Anyhow, that's why I used CFM based testing. It's no where near as complete in evaluating the bottom line performance as rad based testing of fans (which does also include dead spot effects), but it's a place to start and sort of a quick look effort which is more effort than I even wanted to do when I started in this mess. You're always more than welcome to tackle the effort yourself though..

I gave all of my fans to skinnee so I could rid myself of this nightmare...it felt quite good sending off that big box..lol!

I would always recommend that you go out and buy a couple of fans for yourself that you're trying to decide between and tinker with them. Use your own test to make your decision....that's the best thing to do..