Elegant first. The Aorus EZ Chain Fan 120 Ice is a neat piece

Cooling, Extra tests, Fans | | Ľubomír Samák

Gigabyte has put together a fan that combines ARGB LEDs, clever daisy chaining using connectors in the frame, and very good results on radiators. All of that for an attractive price. The design of the Aorus EZ Chain Fan 120 Ice seems to be optimized for use on radiators in particular. In fact, these are the cheapest ARGB fans with daisy chaining and this kind of efficiency that we’ve ever tested.

Results: Frequency response of sound w/o obstacles

Measurements are performed in the TrueRTA application, which records sound in a range of 240 frequencies in the recorded range of 20–20,000 Hz. For the possibility of comparison across articles, we export the dominant frequency from the low (20–200 Hz), medium (201–2,000 Hz) and high (2,001–20,000 Hz) range to standard bar graphs.

However, for an even more detailed analysis of the sound expression, it is important to perceive the overall shape of the graph and the intensity of all frequencies/tones. If you don’t understand something in the graphs or tables below, you’ll find the answers to all your questions in this article. It explains how to read the measured data below correctly.

The vast majority of fan sound operates in the 70–7000 Hz band. You can virtually ignore frequencies above 7000 Hz, they reflect electromagnetic noise from the measurement chain. This (electromagnetic noise) also extends to frequencies below 70 Hz, although there is still aerodynamic noise at these frequencies. These bands (below 70 Hz and above 7 kHz) could be safely “cut out”, but we do not. Just in case one of the fans does have an anomaly that needs to be controlled and visualized.



Wordpress Table Plugin



Wordpress Table Plugin



Wordpress Table Plugin
Why is there a missing value sometimes? There may be more reasons. Usually it is because the fan could not be adjusted to the target noise level. Some have a higher minimum speed (or the speed is low, but the motor is too noisy) or it is a slower fan that will not reach the higher decibels. But the results in the graphs are also missing if the impeller is brushing against the nylon filter mesh. In that case, we evaluate this combination as incompatible. And zero in the graphs is naturally also in situations where we measure 0.00. This is a common occurrence at extremely low speeds with obstructions or within vibration measurements.


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Comments (2) Add comment

  1. While I understand the need to trim down the length of the charts, I miss being able to directly compare between 120 and 140 mm fans in one chart.

    Perhaps an article can be made that updates every time a new fan review is posted, that includes all up-to-date charts for all fan formats? This will also make sharing the fan test results easier – the link will always lead to the latest data. Well, at least it would be the stop-gap solution before a proper database is created. Alternatively, add a filter option into the charts that let you toggle some data on or off, though I am not sure how feasible it is.

    Another suggestion is to embed the links to the reviews of each fan into the charts themselves.

    Reply

    1. Thank you for your feedback on this matter. 🙂

      We thought about how to do it and whether to do it at all – the separation of 120 mm from 140 mm format fans. In the end, we approached it like this, and maybe it would be a good compromise to release at some intervals (always at the end of the year) a complete database of the results, where both formats are included in one graph?

      You have some good ideas about filtering, but here we encounter the limited possibilities of the interactive graphs we use. They are very outdated in their core and while it would be useful to completely rewrite (and modernize) them, unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to do that at the moment.

      Reply

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