Comparing Fan Noise Levels (...And Why It's Mostly Futile)

Рет қаралды 1,057

5 ай бұрын

Here's a short video with some brief notes about comparing fan noise and why it is mostly a futile endeavour. Yes, the T30 is better (and quieter) than the A12x25, and so is the P28... but people will still buy the Noctua, and so they should - we are free to buy any products we choose, including objectively inferior ones. A free world is a wonderful world!

Пікірлер: 26

@tiagoferreira086 5 ай бұрын

3 points to be considered: 1-we have to take into account that the microphone in the sound measuring device may not have a linear response to the sound frequency range. 2-some sounds pitch may be annoying even if the spl is lower. 3-lower frequencies while overall more tolerable they reach further distances, so it all depends on your particular setup, distance from the case, etc. Conclusion: all and all this is another complex subject were there is a ton of variables to be considered and personal choices.

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

Exactly - I touched on this in my first video about fan noise. There are just too many variables when it comes to sound, and you also have to factor in surrounding surfaces, absorption vs. reverberation, distance between sound source and listening subject, other devices that augment the sound level (other fans, HDDs), the size of the room, etc. This is why I opt for the simple phrase "mostly futile". :)

@timlew7441 5 ай бұрын

Thank you for the video and sensible/rational conclusion. As you've said, most people turn the fan rpm down if the fan is too loud and the temps of the cpu and/or gpu do allow it. Have a nice day!

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

@drawings4896 5 ай бұрын

How about air flow and static pressure for normal fans thickness(25mm) vs thicker fans like 35mm, 38mm or 50 mm?

@bobbysanderz6769 3 ай бұрын

beautiful

@alexz1232 5 ай бұрын

You can get a calibrated USB measurement mic for $80 and use 5.5" insulation to build a small low noise enclosure. It won't be accurate below 300Hz, but this way you can get a noise floor below 25dBA, and see the actual audio spectrum rather than a fixed dB value. The channel 'Major Hardware' started using the microphone method when testing 3D printed fans and it does a much better job of showing perceived noise rather than measured noise.

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

Yep there are ways to measure sound very accurately (I looked into it briefly), but IMO the effort it would take to get these kind of measurements is in no way worth it for the data you'd get - it's clear that people just hear things differently and the data is not really of consequence.

@meenaadel8248 5 ай бұрын

By the way since most fans have pwm you can obtain the results more fairly, but these powerful fans still do the job even better at low speeds as usual.

@XiaOmegaX 5 ай бұрын

To my ears the A12x25, at louder spl than other fans, still sounds better. The T30 has a scratchy high pitch to it while the noctua's sound is all down low on a frequency chart.

@athmaid 5 ай бұрын

Yeah at least in videos, regardless of the setup the T30 always has some nasty resonant frequencies. To me the Silent Wings 4 fans seem to be the most pleasant at the same SPL, even more so than the A12x25

@infi84 5 ай бұрын

yup, there is definitely more to noise then pure sound levels and while he mentioned multiple times that yes it is very subjective and hard to measure, it still matters to customers more than absolute data.

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

That's the very point I made at the end of the video - sometimes it is just a case of "I prefer this fan over that one," and the objective data is moot.

@807800 5 ай бұрын

I disagree with that. While the noise normalized test doesn't count for the sound signature and many variable that would occur in user cases, it's still a valid measurement. Perfect is the enemy of good.

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

I'm not saying that noise-normalised wouldn't be a valid measurement; I'm saying that I'd consider it a waste of time because ultimately people don't care about SPL. There will be several people who will say that the A12x25 sounds "better" despite being >2dB louder, thus completely negating the point of noise-normalised testing.

@807800 5 ай бұрын

@@FanPhys That's not what I meant. I'm disagreeing with your claim that it's "Mostly Futile". And again, yes, there would be people who would be like what you said here, but as I said, it's still a valid measurement. It wouldn't make everyone happy, it's not perfect, but, perfect is the enemy of good.

@maxrockbin 5 ай бұрын

Your two Winners in this video are both deeper than the notcua. 25mm vs 28mm and 30mm. This just demonstrates the point you already made in your 38mm fan test. Deeper is probably better (if it will fit, if the fans are designed to be low noise, if the weight doesn't droop you r heatsink). Also, I don't understand why you're testing at a fixed RPM - and a low RPM at that. It is not at all a "constant noise" test proxy. The argument that you can't hear any of them at that level is like testing a sports car and finding it runs great under the speed limit. Maybe the Noctua could run at 1300 at the same noise level vs any other 25mm fan? We shall never know. I doappreciate your videos. I appreciate the testing and knowledge you've presented in the whole giant "static fan" 7 part video series. But if you're getting any irritable comments, I thiink it's mostly because your info does little to help people who are building a high performance system know the best options. You've declared for "most" systems they will all do the job. But who watches videos on fan performance if their CPU is anemic and barely needs 65W peak?

@FAB1150 5 ай бұрын

It's a continuation of another video he made, in my anecdotal experience the A12x25 is quieter than most others at a given RPM. Here he's testing the fans at speeds that gave him similar cooling performance in his setup, so the A12x25 is spinning much faster than the others. So this is a "cooling normalized" test of sorts. I wish Noctua made a thicker fan! They gave the A12 line a name that very much implies a great variety of thicknesses, but there are only two variants now, and it only goes thinner lol. The NF12x25 is great in my setup as I have something like 1mm of clearance behind my radiator, thicker fans wouldn't fit. Still, in places other than the radiator I'd like better performing fans that have the care of Noctua sound signature-wise.

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

The physical attributes of the fan don't matter - this video is about which fan cools best whilst being quietest. For the sake of argument, the Gentle Typhoon is not far behind the A12x25 in noise (if at all) and is just a regular 25mm fan. I'm aware that people may not find the best build advice on this channel, but as I've stated previously this isn't QVC for gaming PCs; it's a physics channel where I test things and bust myths. Glad you like the videos so far. :)

@ThermalLeft 5 ай бұрын

Correction: P28 actually has similar impeller height(about 16mm) with other 25T fans. It became 28T in total because it has quite large clearance(about 11mm) between a lower side of impeller and rear frame. So P28 is not a fan like PH-F120T30.

@FAB1150 5 ай бұрын

You hit sensitive topic with the Noctuas lol It would be cool to see a sound spectrum graph too... But as you said you'd need a much different (and expensive) setup for reliable results. I'm interested in tests with that radiator, the other heatsink you test with seems to have a big hole on top!

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

Yep the Noctua cheerleading squad are a formidable bunch :) And yes, I'm going to do some tests where I duct the heatsink to see if there is any notable improvement. I'm suspicious that the AIO will struggle to keep the temps down, but we shall see!

@TheBackyardChemist 5 ай бұрын

Thing is, this leaves PC fan design efforts in a very uncomfortable situation. The metric to optimize for would be cooling power / loudness, but if dBA et. al is not a good metric, how should a fan designer evaluate if a given change to a prototype was an improvement?

@FanPhys 5 ай бұрын

I think SPL is a perfectly reasonable metric in terms of fan manufacture, because it's objective. The problem is with the end user, when objectivity gets thrown out of the window - even looking at some of the comments here, you can see people say "OK so the A12x25 is louder but I still prefer it." It shows that people don't _actually_ care about the measured sound level, despite all the fuss that's made about noise-normalised testing.