Best blue LED fan for the Tuniq Tower? Best bearings?

Here is one "serious" fan to consider. It is a ball bearing fan, and comes with a controler. It can be loud when on full speed, but can push 110cfm at full speed, typical of all ball bearing fans, it will be slightly louder than a sleeve bearing, but will have a longer service life... Don't beleive Cooler Masters claim to silent operation... silent operation is 1100 RPMs and under.

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The nice thing about this fan, is when using the included speed control, the led lights don't dim. Just adding a controler to a standard blue led fan, also reduces the voltage to the leds, and the leds dim consistant with fan speed.

More expensive than the typical 120mm fan, but IMHO.. this ones a winner.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/69...6c15s518#blank

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I'm speechless. I like this one a lot. Plus, it has the 3.5" bay fan controller and a long cable for good cable routing.

Hmm. I also like how you also pointed out that there's basically a built-in generator that powers the LEDs, and so that the brightness of the LEDs depends on the fan's speed.

Speaking of the brightness, how bright would you say these LEDs are?

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The fan has a seperate power feed to the LEDs independent of the power to the Fan moter, so on this fan, the LEDs don't dim. That is if you use the included controller. If you used the fan controler in your Tuniq Tower, the fan LED would dim because you would be adjusting voltage to the molex connector. I'm sure you could mod the 3 pin fan connections, that connect to the included controler if you didn't want this to happen using your cases controller, but I didn't look that closely at the fan's power supply-return from the controller to the fan moter to give you an indication of how /or even if this could be wired.

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Oh the're bright... too bright for my taste in a dark room.

I built a computer for my daughter utilizing this as a rear exhaust fan.... Before she got it, I modded a few switchs into an empty front bay, so the other lighting in her case could be turned off. But there was no way I could find to turn this one off. The power for the LEDs seem to come off the 4 pin molex, inside the plastic housing, but this also powers the fan, so you can't turn off the power to the molex, or the fan doesn't work. Her case has a full size side window, 2-12" cold catholds, three other 80mm blue LED fans in the front of the case., blue LED CPU cooler (just like mine)...it's the dimest one in the whole case (the CPU cooler)... you can get sunburned...with everything turned on.... or maybe UV burned...

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Which fans were they?

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Well, I'm not all that interested in using the 4-pin unless I have no choice. If I replaced the fan and then actually went with this fan, then I would definitely use that front fan controller. That would spruce up the front of my CM 690 a little.
Oh the're bright... too bright for my taste in a dark room.

I built a computer for my daughter utilizing this as a rear exhaust fan.... Before she got it, I modded a few switchs into an empty front bay, so the other lighting in her case could be turned off. But there was no way I could find to turn this one off. The power for the LEDs seem to come off the 4 pin molex, inside the plastic housing, but this also powers the fan, so you can't turn off the power to the molex, or the fan doesn't work. Her case has a full size side window, 2-12" cold catholds, three other 80mm blue LED fans in the front of the case., blue LED CPU cooler (just like mine)...it's the dimest one in the whole case... you can get sunburned...with everything turned on.... or maybe UV burned... [/quote]
Oh good. The brighter the better since it'll be in the Tuniq Tower.

Actually, I have two of these Cooler Master blue LED fans in my case - one on the top, and one on the side panel (in the GPU placement), and they're really, really bright and they almost light up my whole case. Thanks to that, now I want a little more light plus a better fan in the Tuniq Tower (to some degree at least). I may even get another to replace the rear exhaust fan. But hey, it's The Blue LED Special! hehe Good grief. I suppose next I'll be trying to find a way to add blue LEDs to my graphics card.

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My friend's dad has one of these on his TRUE

It's pretty quiet even though he's running caseless

I'm not sure how much air the thing moves though

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Ooo, how bright would you say it is?

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I bought two of these fans from SVC for $5 each and i have loved them. They can be turned down to be silent or cranked up, they do get pretty loud. I would rate them much better then antec tri cools. Heres a VERY old picture to give you an idea of how bright they are. One is on the xigmatek s1283 and the other is ziptied in the drive bay ghetto style.

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Oh wow, nice. That helps tremendously. Thank you very much, Auld!

Update: I bought that 110.0 CFM Cooler Master fan from FrozenCPU! And just for kicks, I also had them sleeve the cables with Blue UV Reactive sleeving (and Blue UV Reactive Heatshrink)!

My thoughts:

The performance:
It's a noticeable improvement. With the Tuniq Tower's stock fan set to it's highest setting (which I think was almost always 2054 RPM, according to Everest 4.60 and CPUID's HWMonitor), and the core voltage at 1.312V with the overclock at 4.0GHz, my load temps were hitting 51°C max. My computer room's temps were anywhere from 23-25°C. I used Real Temp 2.70 with a 0.0 idle calibration, and a 95°C TjMax. But with this Cooler Master Y720DCD-25T1-GP at its highest setting (~2450 RPM), the temps maxed out at 49°C, but they were bouncing between 48 and 49, so I'll call it 48.5°C.

What's more, my CPU needs 1.328V to do 30 passes of the Linpack test in LinX with the maximum "Problem Size", or rather, with the maximum amount of memory to use. Now, without changing anything but the voltage and running the Small FFTs test again, the temps maxed out at 51°C, but seemed to bounce between 50 and 51 sometimes, so I guess I'll call it 50.75°C.

The noise level:I think all I want to say here is that this fan is definitely quieter than the Tuniq Tower's stock fan. Now, both have 9 blades, although the blades are shaped very differently, and the stock fan goes up to like ~2050 RPM, while the Cooler Master goes up to ~2450. At 2450 RPM, it's quieter than the Tuniq's at 2050. It's even smoother sounding. It has a more pleasing sound in comparison.

Appearance:
I love it. It emits just the right amount of light to shed light onto the cpu and even a tiny bit further than that. It also looks cool directly from above, as I can look down at it through the top of the case. And of course, I also like that the brightness does not change with the fan's speed. That's almost the very thing that sold me on it. But of course, there's also the supposed 110.0 CFM rating! Not only that, but I love the 3.5" bay fan controller. That's so much better and easier than a slot fan controller with my current setup. But this paragraph is about the appearance, so I'd like to say that the front of my CM 690 looks a little better now.

Conclusion: I need to see what happens when I replace the stock thermal compound. I have Tuniq's TX-2, but I'm just not interested in all the physical labor. But now that I have seen the temps drop by ~2°C with this new fan, perhaps I can drop it another ~2-3°C by replacing the TX-1 with TX-2. In other words, I am very satisfied with my purchase!