Fan recommendation for HW Labs Black Ice 420 GTX

Hi everyone,

Young DIY water cooling player here. I am building my first DIY water cooling solution and cannot decide what fans to put on my HW Labs Black Ice 420 GTX radiator. I am planning to use push configuration, as of now the radiator will be inside the case (Corsair 900D), I'll be running them from my AquaComputer Aquaero 6 PRO (using Splitty9 to split them with PWM signal), only CPU (i9-13900K) will be cooled. My candidates:

• Noctua NF-A14 PWM
• Akasa Viper 140mm - I have 1 already in its box because I had bad clicking issue with it, I cannot recall but I think I was running it with voltage regulation not with PWM signal, read somewhere that this one clicks on voltage regulation but not on PWM so don't want to rule it out but don't want to risk it either
• NF-A14 industrialPPC-2000 PWM - bit worried that this would be too loud + I'll be using a splitter, I read some comments that this one does not like being run from splitters
• Be Quiet! SILENT WINGS PRO 4 140mm PWM - solely based on spec it has high static pressure hence it is on my list

My ideal fan would be:

• on idle as quite as possible for the price of less performance in terms of cooling
• if my CPU is under load I don't mind some noise but would be good to get some performance in turn
• I don't care much about the price as I am looking for a long term solution
• I live in the EU, prefer something that I can get from there

I am using right now a Noctua NH-D14 with stock fans and obviously I am pretty pleased with them so my no1 candidate is Noctua. I checked a Youtube vid about the industrialPPC-2000 but the mic was too close to the fan and I cannot really guestime how loud it would be in a case built solution. Don't want to rule it out but potentionally it will be too much.

Thanks for the help

I have 140mm 3000rpm industrial ppc's, they are laud af. you can have em on 0 rpm on pwm signal if you wish so, they are audiable a bit too on like 600rpm cause of motor humming not cause of blades, you do not want to have em above 1500rpm, however if you need to cool down things fast, they for sure can keep cool your whole setup on 420mm rad while on above 2000 rpm without problems and probably keep it low temps too. They dont give a **** being air restricted/ choaked by filters, etc. They brute force everything even radiators. Keep in mind they pull lot of current, so make sure you do not overload your header on the mobo ( fry it ) if you decide to attach more then one ( either find high amp header on mobo or supply em with power from molex/sata ). Regard splitters, that was issue before with some noctua fans I believe. Anyway I always run my 3000rpm noctuas with splitter, was fine. If you plan to use this 3000rpm version on voltage regulation, I wouldnt do it, they start spinning at too high voltage/rpm and become very laud, strangly enough the motor humming noise is gone when voltage controlled, but sad is, they spin way too fast and are very laud.. Main reason I dont have em on case now ( i mean i do, but they are not spinning cause of noise )


About akasa vipers, I have them, very satisfied with those fans, I used 140mm as rad fans, was okay, however i think they are better for airlow in case, cause of blade design, they spread air everywhere, they are pretty silent too. Atm i have 120mm variant on my 360mm 60mm rad, they are dead silent even at 2000rpm. I did order 4 more akasa vipers 140mm, cause I wanna active cool down my hdd and few more things, love yellow/black accent in case too.

I run all my akasa fans ( 140mm and 120mm ) on voltage regulation, they behave same as on pwm signal. you probably had defective fan. Got 4 140mm sound is exact same. One is mounted in PSU cause I want psu to always be active cooled, and other three are mounted on front pannel for airflow, they behave so good that i dont see any other fan that could replace em, and the blades look damn cool too. I have really no bad words for vipers/apache fans from akasa.

If you want more silent operation, maybe use 120mm fans for rads, 140mm cool things down better, but are noiser in my experience with fans so far. I have hardware labs gtx rads ( 480 mm - 4x120mm fans on it ) , they have less fins density then lets say ek rads nowdays and are very effective on low rpm's, so I slapped noctua a12x25 on them, and im satisfied, silent and cool things down very well.

SW3's in p/p work really well on my GTX's. Im sure the SW4's would be even better.