BigAl2 said:
Well you guys convinced me on the Sanyo Denki's, I just ordered four of them to replace the four 120mm Panaflo M1A's I have in my case now, which replaced my 4 enermax 120's. No offense, but the enermax are a POS, compared to the Panaflo's. They were way too loud when I turned them up, and they still couldn't move near the air the Panaflo's could. I like my Panaflo's, they are quiet and they move a LOT of air, but they have kind of a whining or "mechanical" sound even when they're turned down. I'm hoping the Sanyo's will just have that nice quiet sound, where all you hear is the air moving. Even if they don't, I figure what the heck, for $25 bucks, I'll give these Sanyo's a try.
I got 4 of these Sanyos on my birthday (the scheduled shipment just happened to hit that day, it wasn't planned) a week ago and I must say that I am impressed! First of all, I compared these fans to the 130cfm Y.S. Tech fans that I was using and the difference in noise levels is ridiculous. The question however is how much air the Sanyo Denkis push compared to the Y.S. Tech fans. Well, just by placing my hand against the 2 fans and comparing them, I could feel that the Sanyo Denkis were not far behind the Y.S. Tech fans in terms of the air being pushed. I unfortunately don't have any equipment that can really compare the the 2 fans in terms of CFM and static pressure but I was curious as to what the CFM rating for these Sanyo Denkis were so I made a little research.
I couldn't find a CFM rating for the Sanyo Denkis on the E-Bay auction webpage so I went to the Sanyo Denki website and looked for these fans. I found out that the 109R1212H101 model is no longer in production from the website and that the newer model is 109R1212H102. Now, I don't know what the differences are between the older model and the newer model but I am willing to bet that the CFM ratings and dBA ratings are probably identical because there are standardized CFM and dBA ratings for all fans on the Sanyo Denki website and there are no exceptions (i.e. *ALL* the 2600 RPM 120mm fans have a CFM rating of 2.9 m3/min (which is 102.399 CFM) and a dBA rating of 39 dBA). As a result, going with these ratings from the Sanyo Denki webpage, the Y.S. Tech fans push approximately 30 CFM more air and are 7 dBA louder (the Y.S. Tech fans that I have are rated at 46 dBA at Sidewindercomputers).
I do believe that the CFM rating of 102 CFM of Sanyo Denkis compared to the 130 CFM of the Y.S. Tech fans sounds about right but for that extra 30 CFM or so, the Y.S. Tech fans produce one HELL of a racket compared to the Sanyo Denkis. The difference is so much so that when you put these 2 fans together and run them together, it is impossible for me to hear the Sanyo Denki over the Y.S. Tech even with my ear almost touching the Sanyo Denki. Once the Y.S. Tech fan is turned off, the Sanyo Denki does become audible but most of the sound coming from the fan is indeed the sound of air. There *IS* a motor noise coming from the Sanyo Denki if you are close enough to it but I believe that this is unavoidable for any fan that has ball bearings. I think that it is unrealistic to expect any ball bearing fan to be as quiet as a sleeve bearing fan but even then, these Sanyo Denkis are probably as quiet as any ball bearing fan can get. You can hear a not very unpleasant motor noise when you are very close to these fans but you really wouldn't be able to hear this when the fans are inside the case.
OK, now to compare these to my 120mm M1A Panaflo. I have to say here that the Sanyo Denkis are quite clearly louder than the M1A Panaflo at 12Vs but the amount of air that the M1A pushes compared to the Sanyo Denkis is, for lack of a better word: Pathetic. It *feels* like at 12Vs, the Sanyo Denkis push about 2 times more air than the M1A but the sound the Sanyo Denkis produce is nowhere near 2 times as loud. I personally feel that the Sanyo Denkis at 7Vs would be quieter than an M1A at 12Vs but I have yet to try this. Besides, the sound level of the Sanyo Denkis really doesn't bother me at 12Vs so I don't really plan to undervolt them (altough I will probably hook them up to a fan controller just to make use of the fan controllers I have).
Another important thing is the quality of the sound the Sanyo Denkis provide. Even though there is a motor noise coming from these fans, it is not an annoying whine like the whine my Y.S. Tech fans produce. Instead, the sound is more like a muted vacuum cleaner. It might sound stupid here to compare the Sanyo Denki to a vacuum cleaner but to me the sound these fans produce sound like the humming noise of a vacuum cleaner. I am of course not saying that the fans are loud like a vacuum cleaner, I mean the type of noise the fans produce sounds like the noise of a vacuum cleaner.
Finally, an important aspect of these fans seem to be their pressure. When turned on, compared to either a Y.S Tech fan or an M1A, the Sanyo Denkis seem to have more focused flow. This is to say, when you are about a meter away from these fans and put a piece of paper in the way of the fans, the Sanyo Denkis seem to have more concentrated flow on the piece of paper than the other fans.
All of this is after a very short amount of testing. I do plan to do a lot more testing on these fans and report my findings but just after 5 minutes of trying out these fans, I have to say that I am at the very least impressed. These fans are definately not the quitest fans at 12Vs and are quite clearly louder than my M1A Panaflo but the noise they produce is not unpleasant and they push a heck of a lot of air for the amount of noise they produce.
I did forget one thing here though. My M1A vibrates a lot at 12Vs. When the fan is put on a carpet and you touch the fan lightly, you can really feel it vibrate but there is vibration whatsoever coming from the Sanyo Denkis.
