Please expound on the virtues of San Ace fans for me...

S

starhawk

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Messages
8,908
So recently I was given a used San Ace 120 fan, model 9GH1212M405. I'm told it came out of a VAIO desktop... I saw the heatsink it was previously attached to, a monster in my eyes (a quite large --to me-- tower sort of thing, with four heatpipes coming out of a -\_/- shaped aluminum block, with some serious plastic shrouding around the heatsink fins, to which the fan was attached). I'm really not sure what CPU it was cooling in its original job, but I have to guess P4 -- nothing else really needs that kind of cooling unless you're overclocking, AFAIK.

I've seen San Ace fans on the FS/T forum (away from which I rarely wander, TBH), and they seem to be fairly desirable. To me, a fan is basically a fan (unless it's extremely dusty, in which case it's a fan in need of bathing). This one has some unusual features, most notably (to me) the fact that the rotor hub is plastic-over-metal (iwith some exposed metal where it's attached to the motor shaft) rather than all plastic with a ring of magnets glued to the inside. But I still don't "get it".

What makes San Ace fans so awesome?
 
Well this sure is a popular thread :(

Anyone other than the crickets wantin' to chime (chirp?) in...?
 
SA fans are like Delta and others, they are OEM, which means really well made and often last a long time, the down side to most of those however is poor sound characteristics. Many of the SA fans back in the day where much better than this and had good sound profiles (no ticking), moved good CFM and had good static pressure at the same time, so WCing guys back then loved them. Today that spot has been taken by the GT fans.
 
I *did* notice that it seemed a bit quiet for the amount of air it was moving...

Not sure what you mean by 'ticking' tho -- if a fan starts to make clock noises the bushing or (in nicer fans) bearing is shot and it's time for a new fan!
 
Not always the case, most ball bearing fans, big time with OEM fans tend to have a ticking sound when undervolted and in really bad cases a "grinding" noise to them. These were all big issues in fans that moved the air needed or had the static pressure people were looking for back then, as most aftermarket fans where cheap crap or highend OEM made for servers and the like, but noise was not that big of an issue in that kind of environment. Today we have many good choices for good fans made for this market and as such the use of OEM MFG fans has gone down.
 
Hm. I've never really understood why people undervolt fans. Sure, they're noisy -- but noise means air movement. The noisier a fan is, the better (to a point) -- quiet fans aren't pushing as many CFM, as a general rule. Obviously if it's like a jet engine at point-blank, or you hear Impending Bearing Doom noises, that's an issue... but a loud fan is moving tons of air and where I'm standing that's a good thing ;)

Silly me... :p
 
starhawk said:
Hm. I've never really understood why people undervolt fans. Sure, they're noisy -- but noise means air movement. The noisier a fan is, the better (to a point) -- quiet fans aren't pushing as many CFM, as a general rule. Obviously if it's like a jet engine at point-blank, or you hear Impending Bearing Doom noises, that's an issue... but a loud fan is moving tons of air and where I'm standing that's a good thing ;)

Silly me... :p
Click to expand...

Has to do with efficiency curves. Some fans are capable of moving more air at lower volts with a more pleasant tone than other fans can at full speed. There are plenty of fans that move a lot of air, or have excellent static pressure, and can still maintain very good noise profiles. There are very few reasons anymore to deal with obnoxious fan noise.
 
Last edited:
SAN ACE were the bomb back in the day. Especially the 60mm ones that came on the APLHA coolers for Slot-A Athlons. You seriously could not speak over them they were so loud.

And they were dangerous as well. Stick a finger in a spun up fan and you would need stitches or worse.

The Delta and other CPU fans in the newer Dell desktops are also really loud and quite dangerous when running at full speed, but they can move a lot of air.
 
Dell fans have always been obnoxiously loud and obnoxiously powerful. You could probably build a low-flying quadcopter with the fans from old P4 Dells -- if you could figure out how to make two of the four fans spin backwards... ;)
 
Heh, I use a Nidec fan from an old Dell with the blades and shroud cut off and a rubber bumper put on the hub of the fan to bump start R/C Airplanes.
 
starhawk said:
Hm. I've never really understood why people undervolt fans. Sure, they're noisy -- but noise means air movement. The noisier a fan is, the better (to a point) -- quiet fans aren't pushing as many CFM, as a general rule. Obviously if it's like a jet engine at point-blank, or you hear Impending Bearing Doom noises, that's an issue... but a loud fan is moving tons of air and where I'm standing that's a good thing ;)

Silly me... :p
Click to expand...

SilverSliver said:
Has to do with efficiency curves. Some fans are capable of moving more air at lower volts with a more pleasant tone than other fans can at full speed. There are plenty of fans that move a lot of air, or have excellent static pressure, and can still maintain very good noise profiles. There are very few reasons anymore to deal with obnoxious fan noise.
Click to expand...

This^

Undervolting fans often times was used because you wanted quiet, but when you started to game and had headphones on blasting sound and lots of load on the PC, you could ramp up the speed. Also, some fans were found that when undervolted lost very little CFM to a given point but dropped massive amounts of sound, which is why some fans were very popular. Today that has been replaced with PWM, which is more or less the same, really quiet without a load, but temps go up and so does cooling.
 
Wow, didn't know all that. Thanks!

@Jorona: you made me quite literally LOL. That's a great use of a Dell fan :D ...BTW, short out the wires going to the thermistor on most Dell fans (the little green blob) and you can quite likely use the fan /as/ the prop for your R/C plane -- when those leads are shorted together (bypassing the thermistor) the fan goes full on. I swear those things almost levitate at that point...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top