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How many actually still use 38mm fans (or thicker) on a daily use rig

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Do you still run 38mm fans on your daily driver?

  • Yes

    Votes: 68 43.9%
  • No

    Votes: 56 36.1%
  • Thicker

    Votes: 3 1.9%
  • What's a 38mm fan?

    Votes: 28 18.1%

  • Total voters
    155
I'm actually kind of surprised at the results of this thread, considering so many people are posting up with 38mm fans. I think we will likely see this tide of being the majority shifting as soon as more of the membership starts posting up and voting for their Gentle Typhoons. The thing is, Gentle Typhoons don't push as much air or have the static pressure of a Delta.

To me, the drone of a high performance fan running at 7V is actually quite soothing.:D
 
One of my 232cfm Nidec 38mm fans is mounted to the heatsink and fed power, but has a Bing556 controller on it that keeps it stopped. The pot adjsutment stick pokes out through the side of my case. For benching I give it a crank and PRESTO! Less heat, and loud noise :D

I used it daily (at ~10% duty cycle, still gets a lot of air through the TRUE) for a bit, but it's still fairly noisy even at that low level.

EDIT:
Quieter than any of my computers were in the SuperSocketSeven through Socket A days were though.
 
Bob is that the same Nidec I gave to bing?

I found it to be a very loud fan even at extremely low speeds, compared to my Delta FFB1212EHEs which are almost identical in design/appearance but are almost silent up to 2000rpm...no motor whine or moan, just air noise.

On the subject of 38mm fans I have a new Delta hitlist: FFC1212DE, TFC1212DE, and PFC1212DE. These fans are used in HP "Proliant" series servers, especially the older ones from a good few years back.

PS I think bing should change his username to bing556 :D :D :D
 
i have a 38mm fan on my northbridge for my benching pc, mainly because i had it lying around + when im using it, i generally aint bothered about sound =] if im using the pc for anything else, i turn it down majorly from 8000rpm to around....erm....0
 
I run six Pananflo 38mm Fans. Four H's and 2 M's.

As seen here (the top two are kind of hidden):
picture.php
 
It's a VA450DC, comes out of HP servers I think, funky miniature PCIe power connector type connector.
 
I've been using 38mm thick fans since day 1. Have a total of 5 in my case atm.

3x Scythe DFS123812-3000 "ULTRA KAZE" on my rad and 2 on my case. ( intake and exhaust)
 
Got this fan in the post today and decided to take it apart for fun - slightly different from my last Nidec but still very nice :thup:

This is the sort of build quality you can expect from a very high quality 38mm server fan :D

(Click pics to enlarge)




 
That's the one I have, roughly speaking. I love mine.
Gotta love 12 phase power :D
 
Yeah, just like the San Aces :D

TBH I really don't know what the difference is between the 34809-35 (what you have/what I sent to bing) and the 34809-90, which I now have. They have exactly the same look, airflow, amperage etc. but a different numeric suffix. Lol.
 
Might be the full-stop-ness or something. Might be a tiny different shape to the fan blades. Might just be the power connector for that matter.
 
This fan stops at low duty cycle and spins up nice and slow, but the motor is louder than my other fans. Still, it's a monster and I like it :D Could possibly be an older version of the -35 since -90 isn't on the Nidec website.
 
I use 2x 38x120 Panaflo's on my ultra120 ext. I believe they are either 100, or 115cfm fans, I cant remember :bang head

Its been my aircooling setup since 2007 :thup:

I deviated from it for about 2 weeks on and off to try a NH-D14 :facepalm:
 
I use 3 delta AFB1212SHE's on my rad, after a year if I turn them off its just too quiet, I can't sleep with them off. I normally run them at 7v. so its not obnoxiously loud but turn them up a bit depending on ambient.
 
I was using a Panaflo FBA12G12U & a 38mm SD on my TRUE, but with the new HR-02 I've dropped back to just the Panoflo SD.

E: Panoflo had bearing noise when undervolted. SD forever.
 
Last edited:
Using a Delta AFB1212-SHE on my Megahalems.

Got it from a friend who is a Mac-o-phile, he had a PSU that Mac users were complaining about the fan noise, he got a new PSU, gave me the old one, got the 120mm plus 2 small 60mm Deltas...
 
I now use exactly one 38mm thick fan in my daily driver as the pull fan in a push-pull setup.

It was just unbearably loud with 12V though, so I modded the molex connector to connect to the 5V power wire instead.

At 5100-5200RPM with 12 volts it was like sitting in a room where someone has either a vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, or a small jet engine on full blast right next to you. Now at 5 volts she's spinning at 2300-2400RPM and is almost unnoticeable, there is a slight bit of bearing whine though, but it's quiet other than that.

I don't think I should be able to hear my PC from the other end of the house while I'm watching TV.
 
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