Introduction
Today, I am going to review cooling fans came from SilverStone Inc. For which I am thankful to SilverStone for providing me this opportunity. While SilverStone is well known for PSU designer, It’s also very competitive in Cooling solutions. Previously, I reviewed the tower heatsink cooler, Heligon HE01, from SilverStone which was quite impressive.
SilverStone is best-known for its quality based products, besides performance, its products are highly durable on top. The cooling fans I’ve got are actually in three different models AP141, FQ141, and FHP141-VF. All three models are 140mm and potentially seems as good as the other competitive lineup in the market. Let’s find out what I have in above models.
Unboxing and Details
I decided to unbox AP141 first, as it's box looks cool. The fan comes in Black colored box with a small horizontal shape look showcasing some portion of the fan. In addition to this, the company logo and fan model is visible at the front of the box.
Inside the box, I found a cool looking fan. This fan got 7 broad blades, which are transparent UV blue and the frame is black in a rectangular shape
The back side of the fan which actually push the air forward, has air channeling grille as fan guard to mitigate the size of the air. The cable alongside is about 10-20cm in length which is not that long but acceptable to most demands
. The 4 pin Wire is completely sleeved in back.
SilverStone kind enough to pack the fans with more accessories than even needed. Includes
- 1x Molex converter
- 4x Rubber mounts
- 4x mounting screws
SilverStone FQ141
This variant of fan is completely different from other models, I received. Even the packaging is totally different. Fan packed not in a regular box, but a plastic case which covered the fan and is not commonly used in modern day packaging schemes.
The fan has a great outlook, white frame and beautifully plain looking 11 blades in blue. The color combination is not of everybody’s preference but white definitely looks cool. Measured at 25mm in size.
Revealing the accessories, I found:
- 1x Molex
- 1x 4 pin converter
- 4x Rubber mounts
- 4x Screws
SilverStone FHP141-VF
Now this fan is something huge and it reminded me of molex black fans which I used to placed inside my rig to get cooling for the components, however, at high noise levels. But FHP141-VF is not only bigger, it contains few quality features that would definitely impress any Hardware lover.
Let’s start with its packaging, The box is larger than commonly used. Themed on black and white color scheme. The front side is populated with some features and fan pictures. There is a feature mentioned at front of the box, “Reversible Airflow”, is what I was talking about in preceding paragraph. In addition to this, It support a 120mm and 140mm fan slot too.
Inside the box, I found a huge, black fan along with accessories. Where the fan has 7 blades, black in color, and measure at 38mm size. Normally, we don’t see such huge fans for cooling. Since this fan has special purposes, I think it would be like this.
You can see the diameter of Fan. It is exactly 38mm measured via scale.
Reversible Fan connector is integrated beside 4 pin connector's wire.
Accessories includes,
- 4x Rubber mounts,
- 4x Screws
- 1x Molex to 3 pin
- 1x Airflow changing Switch
- 1x Fan to switch cable
- 4x Installation slot for 140mm
Test Setup and Results
Setup Configuration
- Asus Maximus VI HERO
- Core i5 4670K 3.4GHz
- Gskill Trident X 8GB 2400mhz RAM
- Noctua NH-U14S Cooler
- Enermax XT 650W PSU
- Reeven POLARIZ fan controller
- Temperature tests have been conducted under 33C ambient with 1% margin of error.
- Cooler Master IceFusion Thermal Paste used.
- Test conducted on stock clocks only.
- AIDA64 Extreme 4.7v used for CPU stress test.
- All the test run long for about 10 minutes.
- Maximum values used from Realtemp while ranking the charts.
The revolutional speed per minute varies but I tested these fans on 7V and 12V. As the graph shows, AP141 is on 1500 RPM at 12V which is its maximum speed while it reduced to 800 RPM at 7V and is very quiet that I can’t hear it sitting on chair. One thing I noticed in SilverStone fan is that the acoustic performance is incredibly improved. SilverStone done great with the noise delivery, the sound producing from FHP141-VF fan is also not teasing at all, what I am hearing is the air noise and is very low. On the other hand, I tested these fans as a heatsink fan and results are satisfying.
Airflow Range Test - AP141
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEU3ZuA616s&feature=youtu.be
What’s significance SilverStone fans got is the noise performance and airflow range on top. While I have looked at the build structure and fan speed, the airflow range is yet to examine. For this, I placed AP141 on table and place another fan on front of it, at a distance of about 20cm. According to SilverStone, AP141 airflow can reach 2 meter long range, sure it will do, but due to necessity of a situation, I tried to the extent of 20cm as a methodology.
After I roll up the fan’s blade for once, the AP141 airflow gave full advantage to the fan, facing it. I ran the process for about 5-10 minutes and it was quite impressive, to say the least. During the test, I did feel the level of airflow is straight and like fan knows its direction of airflow. It was a cold breeze, really. This isn’t a usual fan you have seen in the market. It’s a well-engineered yet cool product.
Reversible Airflow Test - FHP141VF
SilverStone has done brilliant work on Black beast. The fan’s not only running at 2000 RPM at 12V, but offers tremendous features of changing direction of airflow from intake to exhaust, so called “The Reversible Airflow”. In order to know the working of this feature and for the sake of my own experience too, So, a test is required to determine its actual working.
To start with, I press the switch, which directly effects on fans speed; it slowed down a bit and then rolled up...
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