Static pressure measurement…
Blade length is always the “topic”, but will be more common with 140mm fans than smaller variants. Some bet on long blades for preference of selected features, the other manufacturer on short ones. And such (short) and overall more robust blades are also used by the 140mm Aorus fan. From certain points of view this is quite a big advantage, but for which something had to be sacrificed. It’s a quid pro quo.
Static pressure measurement…
Finally, it is time to move further down the tunnel a bit. Just behind the fan is a static pressure sensing probe. Its position has been chosen with maximum measurement efficiency in mind. In other words, the sensors are placed at the points of highest pressure (although this is virtually the same everywhere in the unconstrained part of the tunnel).
The Fieldpiece ASP2, which is connected to the Fieldpiece SDMN5 manometer, is used to measure the static pressure in the tunnel. The latter also allows measurements in millimetres of water column, but we measure in millibars. This is a more finely resolved base unit for this meter. And only from there we convert the measured values into mm H2O to allow easy comparison with what the manufacturers state.
While we wrote when measuring noise levels that our results could not be compared with the parameters, that is no longer the case here. As long as the fan manufacturers do not embellish the parameters, they should quote approximately the same pressure values as our tests show. The most significant deviations can only arise at the level of varying accuracy of the measuring instruments, but these are negligible percentages.
The greater the difference between the manufacturer’s claimed values and ours, the less the specifications correspond to reality. If the claimed values are significantly higher, it is certainly an intention to artificially give an advantage to the fans on the market. However, if the manufacturer quotes a lower pressure value than we do, it points to something else. Namely, a weaker tightness of the measuring environment. The less tight the tunnel is, the lower the pressure you naturally measure. This is one of the things we tuned for an extremely long time, but in the end we ironed out all the weak spots. Whether it’s the passage for the probe itself, the flanges around the anemometer, even the anemometer frame itself, which is made up of two parts, needed to be sealed in the middle. Finally, the flap at the tunnel outlet must also be perfectly tight. That’s because static pressure has to be measured in zero airflow
But there is one thing that often lowers the pressure of the fans a bit. And that’s protruding anti-vibration pads in the corners or otherwise protruding corners. In other words, when the fan doesn’t fit perfectly to the mounting frame at the inlet, and there are small gaps around the perimeter, that also affects what you measure. But we have not gone into this because it is already a quality feature of the fan. In the same way, it will “stand out” and perform a bit weaker than it has the potential to do with better workmanship, even after application by the end user.
- Contents
- Gigabyte Aorus 140 ARGB in detail
- Basis of the methodology, the wind tunnel
- Mounting and vibration measurement
- Initial warm-up and speed recording
- Base 6 equal noise levels…
- ... and sound color (frequency characteristic)
- Static pressure measurement…
- … and airflow
- Everything changes with obstacles
- How we measure power draw and motor power
- Measuring the intensity (and power draw) of lighting
- Results: Speed
- Results: Airlow w/o obstacles
- Results: Airflow through a nylon filter
- Results: Airflow through a plastic filter
- Results: Airflow through a hexagonal grille
- Results: Airflow through a thinner radiator
- Results: Airflow through a thicker radiator
- Results: Static pressure w/o obstacles
- Results: Static pressure through a nylon filter
- Results: Static pressure through a plastic filter
- Results: Static pressure through a hexagonal grille
- Results: Static pressure through a thinner radiator
- Results: Static pressure through a thicker radiator
- Results: Static pressure, efficiency by orientation
- Reality vs. specifications
- Results: Frequency response of sound w/o obstacles
- Results: Frequency response of sound with a dust filter
- Results: Frequency response of sound with a hexagonal grille
- Results: Frequency response of sound with a radiator
- Results: Vibration, in total (3D vector length)
- Results: Vibration, X-axis
- Results: Vibration, Y-axis
- Results: Vibration, Z-axis
- Results: Power draw (and motor power)
- Results: Cooling performance per watt, airflow
- Results: Cooling performance per watt, static pressure
- Airflow per euro
- Static pressure per euro
- Results: Lighting – LED luminance and power draw
- Results: LED to motor power draw ratio
- Evaluation
Nice to see the 140mm fan reviews rolling!
Also, would it be possible to publish noise samples for your fan/cooler reviews? Preferably for all scenarios where you perform frequency analysis?
And they will continue to come, tests of 140 mm fans. But we probably won’t exaggerate it, so that they stay in a relevant ratio (according to the interest in whichever format in general) to 120 mm models.
Which noise samples do you mean? From spectrographs? Do you want that data for your own purposes, for your own analysis? If so, we can send you the noise levels at all frequencies in all tested scenarios almost immediately (e.g. by e-mail). We can certainly post them on the web somewhere, but it will take more time, as we will need to create a section for this somewhere. Making it make sense on the web will be more time-consuming and at the moment we are quite overloaded and it is hard to find space for extra activities. :/
Always looking forward to your fan reviews regardless of size!
For noise samples, I mean audio files so I can listen to them to make a subjective judgement. In reviews you often mention the differences in frequencies between obstacles/fan models etc. With audio files to listen to, it will be much more easy to understand the difference.
Maybe you can consider compiling the audio files for each fan and upload to YouTube as a video, for example, which perhaps take relatively little effort, though I am not sure if the audio quality is satisfactory. Anyway, it is only a suggestion so please decide on whether you think it is worth the effort or not.
I understand now, and I am also sorry that I am now likely to disappoint you.
Sound recordings are something I boycott against and the goal is to get more and more people to learn to read spectrograms. Sure, it’s more complicated, but we plan to publish materials to facilitate reading these charts. We will select a few fans that have the biggest differences in the frequency characteristic of the sound, make a sound recording of them, and put a spectrogram against it. On it we then explain which component of the sound represents what in the spectral analysis.
You know, I’m willing to sacrifice all my time for these things, but I have to see some meaning behind the results. And sound recordings don’t make sense to me because they can be extremely misleading. While the user thinks he’s hearing the fan, the sound system with the speaker on top is laughing at how they have been perfectly fooled. It is certainly not necessary to elaborate that the same recording sounds different on each speaker (it is determined by the frequency characteristics of the sound equipment of the end user), and this also with regard to the volume that the person sets. To judge something on the basis of the sound recording is therefore very inaccurate and misleading. I would probably suffer a lot when making them with my high demands on the relevance of things and at the same time it would reduce the relevance of spectrogram, which everyone sees the same way.
I believe that after this message you will not give up on our tests and sooner or later you will surely find out (also with the help of various auxiliary materials, which we plan to publish on this topic), that you understand everything perfectly also with the help of spectrograms. 🙂
Not disappointed at all, very satisfied with your answer. Looking forward to the articles explaining spectrograms, I’ll admit I never really understood how to interpret them.