The long break is over, back to fans. BeQuiet! recently updated its entry-level line – Pure Wings – and at least the slower 140-millimeter models have to be on your radar. The Pure Wings 3 fans in the BL108 variant represent an extremely efficient low-cost option for some situations, while not suffering from the common shortcomings of their price class. What’s quiet here is not only the aerodynamic component, but also the motor one.
Measuring the intensity (and power draw) of lighting
Modern fans often include lighting. This is no longer a “cooling” parameter, but for some users the presence of (A)RGB LEDs is important. Therefore, we also measure how intense this lighting is in our tests. These tests are the only ones that take place externally, outside the wind tunnel.
We record the luminosity of the fans in a chamber with reflective walls. This internal arrangement is important to increase the resolution for us to measure anything at all with lower luminosity fans. But also so that the readings do not blend together and it is obvious which fan is emitting more light and which one less.
The illumination intensity is measured in the horizontal position of the fan, above which is the lux meter sensor (UNI-T UT383S). This is centered on the illumination intensity sensing chamber.
The illumination is controlled via an IR controller and the hue is set to RGB level 255, 255, 255 (white). We record the brightness at maximum and minimum intensity. According to this, you can easily see if the brightness is high enough, but conversely also if the lower level is low enough for you.
In addition to the brightness intensity, we also measure the power draw that it requires. This is again through the shunt, which is between the Gophert CPS-3205 power supply and the (A)RGB LED driver. After this we get a reading of the lighting power draw. In the graphs we show it separately, but also in sum with the motor power draw as the total maximum fan power.
Yay, I have been starving for HWcooling fan reviews for a while now.
The links are broken in the last page. It’s spelled bl-108 in the last page but the url of the article itself is spelled bl108.
Fixed. Thanks! 🙂
Thanks for that enormous quantity of information, now, being compared the Pure Wings 2 140mm vs Pure Wings 3 140mm which would be best ? and it would be reasonable to replace PW2 with PW3 ?
We have not tested the older Pure Wings (2) fan in 140 mm format. Some correlations and better estimates can be made after the results of the 120 mm PW3 are completed (there will be a comparison with the 120 mm PW2). Although, of course, it will not be completely accurate. With the size of the blades the character of the noise and the colour of the sound changes. And also across formats it is not just a matter of making the impeller in the 1.00:1.16 scale ratio.
Well, the results of the 140-millimeter Pure Wings 2 might be added eventually, but it’s not a big priority.