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Corsair Air Series SP 140 LED Blue High Static Pressure Fan Cooling - single pack

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#1 ·
Corsair Air Series SP 140 LED Blue High Static Pressure Fan Cooling - single pack

Description:
Corsair Fan LED SP140, Blue, Single

Details:
DetailValue
BindingPersonal Computers
BrandCorsair
EAN5054533661110
FeatureHigh static pressure cooling with LED illumination
Tuned for high pressure air delivery directly to components
Better performance than standard case fans
LED-lit translucent, frosted fan blades for a dramatic effect
Specially designed fan blades and a sleeved bearing system for less vibration, noise and turbulence
Two year warranty
LabelCorsair
ManufacturerCorsair
ModelCO-9050026-WW
MPNCO-9050026-WW
PublisherCorsair
StudioCorsair
TitleCorsair Air Series SP 140 LED Blue High Static Pressure Fan Cooling - single pack
UPC843591051798
ColorBlue
CatalogNumberList - CatalogNumberListElement##-CORSAIR--CO-9050026-WW
LN58522
150418
90575212
Item Height6 inches
Item Length4.8 inches
Item Width1.1 inches
Package Height1.1 inches
Package Length5.91 inches
Package Weight0.35 pounds
Package Width4.8 inches
PackageQuantity1
PartNumberCO-9050026-WW
ProductGroupPersonal Computer
ProductTypeNameCOMPUTER_COOLING_DEVICE
UPCList - UPCListElement843591051798
Item Weight0.14
 

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#2 ·
A great performer!

review by alastair

Introduction

So I am going to start off this review with a disclaimer. I have never been particularly impressed by Corsair's products, apart from their memory. I have always thought them to be overly expensive for what you get.

A few days ago while cleaning my PC I broke one of my Aerocool Sharkfans. Being a bit OCD I like all my things in my PC to match. Fans are not an exception to this rule. So I began my hunt for new 140mm fans. Above all else I value static pressure. Because ultimately these fans will be used on a 280mm radiator. So my hunt began.

Recently Corsair released the new ML series of fans. But I found them to be EXTREMELY pricey for fans alone. Maybe you get what you pay for? I dunno. But I sure as hell was not going to spend that much money on fans. So I looked around. I had heard mixed things about the Bitfenix Specter Pro 140 PWM's. Cooler Master is still to release a Jetflo 140mm to the retail market. Although it looks like the Master Fan series is soon to arrive, they still were not available to me at the time. Noctua's are not available in my country. So ultimately when it came down to it, it seemed the SP140's were the logical replacement. Much to my chagrin. However a friend of mine who runs a PC shop told me that he has had a positive experience with them. So ultimately it was his testimony that convinced me to give the Corsair's a chance.

Packaging and Contents

I ordered 6 of these fans. All as twin packs. The packaging is fairly standard. A fairly sturdy cardboard box with pictures of the product on the front.


The left and right sides of the box simply have SP140 printed on the sides.


The back of the box has a short description of the product in several languages. The specifications and pictures of other colour options for the SP140's.


Inside the box, the fans are simply packed one on top of the other on simple cardboard trays. You do not get any additional accessories with the fans.



The fans
The fans felt very sturdy and well made when I first pulled them out of the box. The fan is of a round frame design. So it will loose a bit of performance there, especially when used on radiators as it wont seal up completely against the radiator. The blades are not transparent. They are frosted rather, this actually helps produce a very nice effect when lit up with the LED's. The only thing I have to fault corsair here on is the fact that there are no rubber corners on these fans to help dampen vibrations. Something which the SP120's get, but their bigger brothers do not.



Specifications
When I first saw the specs of these fans I was not hoping for much. I know often that fan manufacturer's often either greatly over or under-exaggerate the specifications of their fans. Which did not give me much hope when I saw the specs. According to Corsair these fans push around half as much air as the Aerocool Sharkfan's I will be comparing them to, yet had a similar pressure rating and rotational speed. In my eyes it wasn't looking good for the Corsair's.

Specs: SP140
Dimensions: 140mm x 25mm
Operating Voltage: 7V - 12V
Airflow 49.49 CFM
Static Pressure: 1.17 mm/H20
Sound Level: 29.3 dBA
Speed: 1440 RPM
Power Usage: 0.26 A

Comparison Fan
Aerocool's Sharkfan 140mm will be the fan I will be comparing the SP140 against. It is the only other 140mm fan I have for reference. (Note the sharks do not look like this out the box. I did paint my fans. And it had no apparent effect on performance or acoustics. These fans over the three years I have had them have been reliable performers and have enjoyed having them in my PC. If you have them in your PC and they are still going, I recommend sticking with them as they are still pretty good fans. Especially as airflow fans.



The Specs.
Dimensions: 140 X 140 X 25mm
Rated Voltage: 12V
Starting Voltage: <=6.0V
Power Consumption: 4.32W
Rated Current: 0.36A
Speed: 1500 RPM+-10%
Air Flow: 96.5 CFM
Air Pressure: 1.069 mm-H2O
Noise: 29.6dBA

As it becomes apparent from just looking at the specs. It would appear that the SP140's seem rather underwhelming. If not "MEH" at best. But we all know sometimes fan specs should be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe even a bucket or two.

Test Setup

The computer I will be testing these fans in will be my Sig Rig GHOST. If you want you can open it in my signature. But for the purpases of this review I will be laying out the specs for you here. For the purposes of this review I lowered the overclock on my CPU from my daily 5GHz to 4.65GHz. All side panels are on and secured.

CPU: AMD FX8370 @ 4.65GHZ (300X15.5) @ 1.452v.
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX Pro R2
Ram: Corsair Vengeance LP 2133 CL11 4X4GB @ 2000MHz 9-9-10-27 1T
GPU's Sapphire Fury Tri-X unlocked to 3840/240 configuration at 1100MHz core and 550MHz memory clock. GPU 1 @ 1.2v and GPU 2 @ 1.225V
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro 1TB, WD Blue 1TB and 500GB, Samsung Spinpoint HD502HI 500GB.
PSU: Antec High Current Pro Platinum 1300W
Chassis: NZXT Phantom 820 with custom side panel.

Cooling
CPU: XSPC Raystorm CPU block
GPU's: EKWB FC-Fury-X Full coverblocks with EKWB Fury-X backplates.
Radiators: XSPC EX360 mounted at the top of the chassis and an XSPC EX280 mounted in the bottom of the chassis.
Fans: CoolerMaster Storm Force 200mm on the front as intake.
4 Aerocool Shark 140mm/Corsair SP140 mounted in Push/Pull on the 280mm rad set to intake.
Aerocool Shark 140mm mounted on the swivel mount, angled upwards towards the rear of the chassis.
1 Delta AFB 70mmx15mm fan mounted on the VRM heatsink of my Asus motherboard. (stock fan that ships on most pre-wraith AMD heatisinks)
1 Aerocool Shark 140mm mounted as the rear top exhaust.
3 CoolerMaster Jetflo 120mm's mounted on the EX360 rad, set to blow out the chassis.
2 CoolerMaster Storm Force 200's set to exhaust the hot air coming from the EX360 and the rest of the chassis.
1 CoolerMaster XtraFlo Slim 120mm on the back sidepanel blowing on the back of the CPU socket.
Pics of Rig





Methodology of testing

I will test the computer using a combined CPU and GPU heatload. I will be using Prime 95 set to a small FFT size of 768KB and a maximum FFT size of 896KB. This tends to produce the maximum heatload, power consumption and stress on the CPU as outlined by The Stilt. The GPU's will be stressed with Heaven bench 4.0 on a continuous loop. Set 2560x1400 on ultra quality with extreme tessellation and 4X AA. I will test the fans in push and Push/Pull modes. I will be using HW Info 64 to monitor and log the temps of the system.

I will run the tests for 30 minutes. That should be enough time to allow the loop to stabilize its temperatures. I will also be doing my best to maintain an ambient room temp of around 21C to 22C. Which I succeed in doing to my surprise.



Push ONLY Results

Firstly it should be stated that the Aerocool's actually FAILED this test. The CPU ended up throttling itself down to 2.2GHz because the VRM temps exceeded their built in limits. Now most of you will be wondering what do socket and VRM temps have to do with the cooling performance of the rad fans? Well as I have always stated and been able to prove to people in the Vishera owners club, better CPU cooling will result in better socket and VRM temps as there is less heatdump into the motherboard.

First off the Push only results. The Aerocool's are in red. And the SP140's are in blue. You will notice the SP's file number is test 2. I was so surprised at the results I re ran the test. The second test was actually the slightly hotter of the two SP runs I did. I chose the second result as the first test showed some unusual spikes at the beginning of the test.

CPU Package and CPU Socket temps.
The Aerocool's in push only reached a maximum temperature of 65.6C on the package with an average of around 62C. Socket temps reached 84C with an average of 79C.

The SP140's reached a maximum of 62.4C while maintaining around a 59C average. Socket temps reached 78.9C while the average was around 75C.

Around a 3C improvement on max and average package temps. Socket temps improved by around 5C.


GPU temps.
For whatever reason HW Info only logged one GPU's results. But the maximums reported by HW Info were pretty consistent between the two cards.

The Aerocool's reached a max of 47C on the cores. With an average of around 44.5C. The VDDC VRM reached 50C with an average of 47C. The VRM VDD reached 43C with an average of 41C.

The SP140's maxed out at 46C with an average of 43.22. VDDC VRM hit 48C with a 46C average. VRM VDD reached 42C with an average of 40C.

So on average there was around 1C to 2C improvement on the GPU temps here.


Motherboard and other temps.

I am showing these temps. Just to give you an idea on what various components recorded the interior case temp to be. Such as the motherboard and HDD's and so on. If anything according to these results the SP's were probably performing in slightly higher ambients than the Aerocool's


Push Pull Results
Again here I will show the GPU CPU and motherboard temps.

CPU Package and CPU Socket temps
Here with these results the Corsair's won over the Aerocool's again. However the margins are a bit slimmer this time around.

The Aerocool's in P/P hit a maximum package temp of 61.7C with an average of around 57C. Socket reached a maximum of 78.9C with an average of 73C.

The SP140's reached a maximum package temp of 59.5C with an average of around 56C. The socket maxed out at 76C with an average of around 72C.

Overall again around a 1C-2C improvement here.


GPU Results
Again here the SP's win out by a narrow margin. Around 1C-2C again on average.

The Aerocool's maxed out at 46C on the GPU cores. With an average of around 42C. The VR VDDC VRM reached 48C with an average of around 44C. The VRM VDD reached 41C with an average of around 38.5C.

The SP140's reached 44C on the cores, with an average of 41C. VR VDDC temps reached 46C with an average around 44C. Not much in it on the VR VDDC temps. The VRM VDD temps reached 40C with an average of around 38C.

Again the SP's edging out the Aerocools, but just slightly!


Motherboard and Drive temps.
Again just for reference here are the motherboard and drive temps. Again just to try highlight the consistency I tried to maintain in the ambient temps between the runs. If anything again the SP's were running at an ever so slight disadvantage when it came to the ambient room temperatures.


Final Conclusion

You know I have to be honest here. I am very surprised at these results. I really was not expecting the Corsair SP140's to do as well as they did. But here we are. They were ever so slightly better than the Aerocool Shark 140's in push/pull. But what really surprised me was that the SP140's in push only mode were pretty much equal to the Sharks in Push/pull. The SP's are also quieter running fans in both Push and Push/Pull.

However I sit here wondering if Corsair couldn't have done more with these fans. I wonder what these fans could of done if they were shipped at say 1600 rpm and with proper square frames to properly seal them on the radiator. I guess Corsiar may have wondered the same thing cause now we have the M140's that have a square frame and come in cranked all the way to 2000rpm! I hope to actually get some ML's on hand to test sometime. But that could be a while.

Ultimately if you are looking for a quiet, good looking 140mm radiator fan that performs quite well against other common 1500rpm class 140mm fans, I have absolutely no trouble in recommending these fans.
SP140's in action. Please excuse the poor quality of the pictures. Its a potato phone.




ProsCons
Good radiator performance. Quiet. Sturdy Build quality. Looks fantastic.A bit slow. No rubber corners like SP120. Round frames.

Ratings
Overall4
 
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