They promised, collected money from people, and it has now actually been nearly five years since the Gamers Nexus team announced uncompromising fan testing. Yet those tests still have not materialized, and public questions on the subject are often ignored by the creators. As always, there are multiple possible scenarios as to what may have happened. In the following article, all that remains is speculation about how things may be unfolding.
We already wrote one blog on the topic of fan testing and Gamers Nexus… more than three years ago. Since then, not much has changed—in fact, nothing has changed, except that more time has passed.
- One reason Gamers Nexus may still not have started fan testing could be that it genuinely is not a simple matter, and they are still working with measurements from the Longwin wind tunnel and studying how to handle the data. Five years is already a long time, however, so while this remains a possibility, there are also other potential scenarios discussed in the following points.
- Fans may simply not be a topic capable of generating sufficient clickbait—the kind of content on which Gamers Nexus thrives. That would mean they understand revenue from this topic would not be high enough to cover costs, and therefore they prefer focusing on other subjects more capable of igniting stronger passions among the audience.
- Even if we assume neither the first nor second scenario is the core issue, fans as a category are an extraordinarily complex topic to fully understand, and drawing any conclusions could potentially diminish Gamers Nexus’s standing—at least in the eyes of the technical community. That community often remains silent anyway, whether to avoid putting individual companies in customers’ disfavor or to avoid conflict with fans of sensationalized PC hardware coverage.
- There is also relatively substantial competition with which Gamers Nexus could find itself at odds, something that—especially in the era of expanding AI chatbots—might likewise fail to produce the desired results.
Naturally, there are more possibilities, and if you have information we may be overlooking, additional input would be welcome. Some things may have been missed, some not fully considered—that is natural. One thing is certain, however: as of today, Gamers Nexus is not delivering any data—the data it promised when collecting financial support from backers for test lab equipment. So if you can contribute additional factual clarity, this initiative may, we believe, prove socially useful. You can share your perspective below this blog in the comments section.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
My guess is using Longwin turned out too complicaded for GN crew and nothing else much matters then. And I assume this forgiving option as somebody who more dislikes than likes them. These guys have passion, but are not good at testing anything and from time to time hit the wall of science – that’s an example. Then I don’t want them to provide their signature in a bad way “experimental charts”, because it’s a waste of time.
Yeah, they spent on Longwin plenty of money from their supporters, but ones feeling bad about it need to understand one thing – man can’t guess if he is able to learn using complex scientific equipment, especially knowing little and willing to take time to learn. Most likely the case here.
Btw, as somebody in similar situation, so who lacks knowledge to interprete Longwin data, but still haven’t bought Longwin, I wonder if it’s even a right device to test and compare fans or something more suitable to design and fine-tune them? Aris from HWBusters use it and maybe these are an amateur impressions, but understandable noise-normalized results sometimes seem strange to me and in general I prefer HWCooling approach due to simply seeing how given fan performs on real life restrictions and plenty of noise levels.
Thank you for the exhaustive comment and opinion! 🙂
Personally, I don’t think Longwin’s wind tunnel is irrelevant. Of course, it has multiple design details that already seem questionable to me based purely on documentation, but developers could probably say similar things about our tunnel as well. In principle, if airflow is measured “precisely,” then different methodologies should theoretically produce the same results—but in practice, for many reasons, that doesn’t fully happen.
It also depends on how the fan is mounted to the tunnel, or in normalized noise tests, how sound is captured. And none of the developers I know would even dare claim that ACMA 210 (Longwin) is inherently closer to reality than the Venturi-effect principle our tunnel is based on. There can be speculation about what may be more accurate in which aspect, but ultimately what matters most to users is the general relative ranking. Expensive instruments are great, but truly knowing how to use them is extremely demanding. Our advantage, so to speak, is that we learned throughout the process of building and refining tunnel prototypes until things reached their final stage.
That said, I do have to acknowledge that even if the Longwin tunnel were not more accurate (which I genuinely can’t judge), its results still comply with ISO standards, which is more useful for many companies. In practical terms, though, I personally consider that less important simply because it doesn’t simulate real-world conditions. But then again, neither do our obstacles fully correspond to reality when you consider how differently filters, grilles, or radiators can be structured. Even so, we try to do what we can within our capacity limits, and we approach final evaluations in a way that is as universal as possible. In other words, we want to avoid situations where someone buys a fan based on our conclusions and then finds their own scenario completely misrepresented. That would genuinely bother us.
And yes—there’s probably nothing that can really be done about the fact that each person perceives sound differently. 🙂
I also thank you for your opinion about Longwin and it makes sense. Ultimately what matters is not only results being accurate, provided by good equipment and procedure, but shared informations sensible and useful. E.g. Gamers Nexus’ measurements of coldplate’s flatness of coolers are interesting, but they are absurd next to presenting just one noise-normalized thermal result. I find way more useful your six such measurements and one full speed, because it’s what matters in the end here. Even if you provided coldplate’s flatness test, man could only guess how much to blame it in terms of cooling results… The same with fans plus so much great, useful from the practical standpoint or just interesting info like vibrations, frequency analysis or power draw and my favourite first and last sites when you share knowledge about properties of blade shapes, fan design in general. Keep that great work!
Yes, I’m convinced that when it comes to providing information for users, the results and their interpretation are what matter most. Longwin will certainly be more useful for certification purposes, if only because the data produced by that device complies with a standard. 🙂
The flatness of a cold plate is visually appealing, but I’m not sure how to translate that directly into practice. In some cases (with certain processor models), a ‘curved’ base is actually beneficial, while elsewhere it can lead to weaker cooling performance. It’s highly individual and depends on the specific conditions and processor involved.
If I remember correctly, they have in the past criticized uneven base flatness and attributed it to manufacturing imperfections, even though it was intentional (typically to achieve stronger contact in the center of the CPU). 🙂
Of corse flatness of coldplate makes a difference and we can even see it with D15 G2 versions. Btw, Bartosz Szwedkowicz took an effort to compare them all on both 1700 and AM5 platforms with plenty of noise and power levels. These differences turned out negligible, but it’s only good that Noctua gives such options to the ones who think opposite, especially if we talk their strongest cooler and one aiming to be the strongest on the market.
But if we comeback to Gamers Nexus’ flatness test, I’ve always wondered how coldplates of units of given cooler are affected by manufacturing tolerance, so if GN testing it even makes any sense… Maybe the machinery producing coldplates makes them indistinguishably the same, maybe not – I just don’t know, so can’t judge, but wonder.
Noctua probably came to a similar conclusion as well—namely that differences in base flatness are negligible. The proof of that is that there is only a single version of the NH-D15 G2 chromax.black cooler now, instead of the original three variants that existed for the standard NH-D15 G2. 🙂
As with all serious things resulting from a manufacturing process, there are certain tolerances here as well. Producing exactly the same result repeatedly is probably impossible, especially across different production batches… but that’s already a topic I don’t want to elaborate on too much, because I don’t fully understand it myself. It would be better if someone with practical experience commented on it sometime and explained the situation in more detail. 🙂
May i suggest contacting them directly? If you can get Steve on the phone then maybe he’ll provide some proof that this isn’t the fan reviewing equivalent of a kickstarter early access garbage fire
Just don’t forget to say “Thanks Steve!”, he’ll be more inclined to answer this way
Personally my only complaint about GN is that they did not do enough investigation and “clockbait sensationalization” on the Raptor Lake disaster, ime my first 14900K bought early on didn’t even last a single day before crashing on idle or specific code patterns with random chance
Thank you for the suggestion. It’s pretty evident that Gamers Nexus does not want to take a clear stance on this topic, just like on many others. There are genuinely many cases where they claimed one thing and later contradicted it through their own actions. Just think of how they once heavily criticized other testers during the presentation of their cooler-testing device, only to abandon that approach very quickly and start testing in real-world environments—despite previously presenting such methods as fundamentally flawed. 🙂
At the moment, they’re testing coolers on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is, for this particular purpose, one of the least suitable processors available. Beyond its low power draw, it also has very weak heat transfer characteristics. Of course, that changes nothing about the fact that it’s probably one of the most attractive gaming CPUs available (aside from perhaps the R7 9850X3D?), but as the sole demonstration platform for CPU cooler behavior, it really isn’t ideal. I can’t help it — not just here, but in multiple areas, it often feels like they’re almost mocking their own audience.
But back to topics that relate more directly to fans. You mentioned how they secured an old Apple sound chamber to build a hemi-anechoic chamber where they test cases at maximum fan noise levels. For example, with the Fractal Design North XL, they amplify concerns that the wooden front slats are a source of increased noise. At maximum fan speeds? Sure, maybe. But who actually uses system fans like that in practice? It all looks impressive and professional, but from my point of view, much of it feels misleading in real-world relevance. There are many signs suggesting they don’t fully understand the issue at the depth they present it, and at some point—for the broader good and market impact—that’s something worth recognizing.
This comment from Steve corroborates the first point, listen to the whole section https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQtyxRtsqvA&t=38m31s. But i think the best approach to this matter would be to just ask Gamers Nexus about the subject.
Thank you for the link. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, others may see it differently—hard to say. 🙂
Quite a few people have already asked Gamers Nexus about this topic, and from what I’ve noticed, the question has always been ignored. That doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t addressed it somewhere—I just personally haven’t come across it. If someone uncovers anything relevant, that would of course be great. 🙂
I don’t know where their testing procedure and review process creation is at right now, but seeing their focus shift from reviewing and testing hardware to so called “investigative journalism” and “consumer advocacy”, I postulate they put such new projects on hold for the time being, and changed their content focus to that type of journalism. Maybe when they deplete the reservoir of content they can create in that area, they might return to focus the hardware reviewing and testing side of their business and we will see the new testing categories or categories they abandoned testing (like PSUs). Maybe their focus will not return to what it was in the past, and this is just the new long term direction of their business.
Thank you for your opinion. Of course, it’s possible. However, that doesn’t change the matter that, in my opinion, after the funding campaign supporters probably deserved some kind of… official statement? Let’s call it that. 🙂