Sound Testing

Detailing the noise attributes of these kinds of fans can be rather subjective and to some extent wrong perceived by those who have a different ‘comfort level’. As we don’t currently own some high performance Anemometer’s to measure the CFM and/or sound level meter to accurately measure the dB rating, we shall not be going much further in detail to prove and back up the stated specs for those reasons.

Not to miss a whole section completely on noise output (which is vital to the fans branding), I will however detail what each fan is like and compare to some popular brand name fans for you, the reader, to get a better idea of performance.

SWiF2-921

Having not owned any 92mm fans in the past, I unfortunately can’t compare to a well known fan. 92mm fans in this reviewers opinion are neither worth their weight in gold to man nor beast. That said, the performance of this 921 is great. Sound levels are good for a 92mm fan. We were expecting it to be rather loud due to the size (fan having to work harder to push more air than larger fans), but to our surprise, the fan pushes quite a bit of air and the sound level was very quiet indeed especially for a fan spinning at 1500RPM. Great for a small media centre or server.

SWiF2-92P

The 92P (PWM version) was a different story. At full speed (1900RPM), the fan was obviously audible to the ear even from a short metre distance away. However, the fan wasn’t that noisy. We would say right on the limit in terms of comfort levels sitting next to the PC. When we hooked it up to a fan controller and tried it at different speeds we found that at its lowest speed (625RPM), it didn’t push any air at all placing the back of our hand behind it; it was however 100% silent. At near double the speed at 1200RPM, the fan was extremely quiet and pushed quite a bit of air for the noise level it produced which is very impressive and we back up our statement earlier for using these for server/media centre builds.

SWiF2-1201

The 120mm fan industry is very competitive being that it is the sweet spot for fans right now from basic to enthusiast builds. The 1201 model is very impressive in terms of the amount of air pushed and the noise level at its rated 1200RPM. I do however feel its claim of 18.2dB is a little low, more around the 24dB area but is still very quiet.

To put things into perspective in relation to some other popular fans on the market, we have a big winner on our hands with the 1201 model. Not only does it push more air than a Noctua NF-S12B FLX and Sharkoon 1000 Golf Ball, but its sound level is on par with the Noctua FLX series. It’s not to the sound standard of the 1000 from Sharkoon (quieter than the Noctua series fans and pushes more air from this reviewers opinion), but boy does it move a bit more air. It may well be a tad (when we say a tad, we are talking about 1-2dB here) louder and have a slight different tone to the Sharkoon 1000 (Sharkoon 1000 has a slight low basey moan to it close up and disappears once you move 15 cm away, where as the 1201 from Coolink has more of a whirling tone to it which has more to do with the air resistance being pushed), but the added extra CFM it pushes makes up for it indeed.

Coolink claims 54CFM at 1200RPM & 18.2dB as previously mentioned. With reference to Bit Tech/Custom PC’s recent 120mm round up of fans featuring the true to its spec Sharkoon 1000 Golf Ball 120mm fan which they found to push 36CFM at 20.7dB, we can safely say that this fan would push near 40CFM but at 24dB. Great specs none-the-less.

SWiF2-120P

So, what about the PWM version of the 1201 then? From our perspective, we have come across a new fan for our needs. Coolink has done a very good job with the 120mm series. At 800RPM, the fan was still pushing a bit of air and was silent. However, the amount of air pushed wasn’t that great and would be useless for CPU/GPU coolers and intake/exhaust on performance cases. Coolink states at its lowest speed it pushes roughly 35CFM, but I’m afraid that is way off. You don’t hit that area of CFM until the 1000+ RPM territory.

At its full speed of 1700RPM, the fan was quite loud, but pushed a lotof air! Coolink claims at its full fan speed, it pushes 74CFM. Having owned a few San Ace H1011 fans for water-cooling rads and knowing what CFM they push at full speed (99CFM) and being backed up by many fan reviews on the web, 74CFM for this 120P is about right, if perhaps a tad lower. With benchmarking in mind, this speed & CFM is very much appreciated and the sound level doesn’t sound like a hover either. Very well done Coolink.

Testing the fan at other speed levels to find a nice comfort level for noise to CFM ratio, we found that at around 1100RPM tops was a great setting for this fan model. Not only did it push more air than both Noctua and Sharkoon fan rivals, but the sound level was quieter too (just).

The 120mm 120P (PWM)