All PC Fan Types EXPLAINED

this is a 120 millimeter be quiet silent Wings Pro 4 fan this is a 120 millimeter Corsair ml120 Pro LED fan and this is a 140 millimeter ncxt f-140 RGB fan they all have one thing in common they're all but there are many small differences between fan models and in this short video we're going to try to summarize as many of them as we can I

I might forget a few but we're going to call it comprehensive anyway here we go stay with me to get rid of that annoying Windows activation Watermark head on over to VIP SCD key purchase a Windows 10 Pro OEM key for a fraction of the price of retail just see the secure payment method like PayPal enter your product key into your PC settings window and say

goodbye to the watermark and be sure to use our offer code skgs for a sew wheat discount let's kick things off with what I believe to be the most important difference between PC fans their sizes I have 140 millimeter fan here and 120 millimeter here and these are the two most common sizes you'll see even when shopping for aios or just generic CPU air Tower coolers

they'll likely be paired with either a 120 or a 140. and this is an important distinction because some cases only support 120s and some support up to 140s and there are advantages of going with larger fans the two most prominent are airflow and noise and these are actually trade-offs of each other so if you're a fan of spitting at a higher RPM obviously it's going to

make more noise but it's going to displace more air if you lower the RPM it's not going to be as effective as a fan but it'll be a lot quieter a one 40 millimeter fan can theoretically displace more air at the same RPM as its 120 mil counterpart here and this means that it technically should have quieter operation while being just as efficient from an airflow

front and that's where I want to run a few tests so we've got two be quiet light Wings fans here the only difference between them is that one is a 140 and one is a 120. we're going to place both of these in that same phantax p300 case and we're going to run both at the exact same 1000 RPM mark this here is the 120 millimeter

fan and this here is the 140 millimeter fan foreign a very clear difference I would say another thing we can talk about while we're here RGB it's a love it or hated thing this trait blew up over the last decade or so and that's why so many many factors have included RGB options one other good thing about these though is that if you don't want to

run any RGB at all you can just turn it off something else to look out for the type of RGB supported in each fan this lightwings fan from be quiet supports argb or addressable rgbs meaning each individual LED can act independent of all of the others making for some pretty cool effects the problem is a lot of older boards don't support this feature here meaning you

might need to rely on a hub these are their own can of worms I tend to stay away from these wherever possible and just wire my fans directly into the motherboard on the RGB side this Hub is not the worst I've seen they do add clutter though and often rely on their own RGB softwares to function properly that's another can of worms now some fans don't

rely on any RGB at all and these are super simple to not only cable managed but maintained they don't rely on any software and it's just one cable to deal with so nice but a nice middle ground for someone wanting very simple lighting inside their build these ml120 Pro LEDs come in various colors this one has white LEDs baked in but that's the catch you can't

change the color of these LEDs and they only have one cable stemming from each fan so they're easy to Cable manage they don't require crazy RGB software or anything like that but it's one color a static color you might run into a case where you have just like a rainbow fan or something like that but it can't really do much because again you don't have an

independent cable with an independent controller but I like these these are yeah a nice common Middle Ground here's a good one three pin fans versus four pin fans my hits referred to as voltage fans versus pwm fans we have a dedicated video by the way on pwm and how it works you want to check that out it's in the video description the gist of this argument

is that four pin fans while they do often cost a bit more allow for more flexibility in terms of RPM tuning you might find three pin fans a bit annoying and stubborn especially when tuning with your your fancy fan tuning software these things usually have a voltage bottom and you can't really dip below that without the fan completely shutting off pwm fans by nature of how

they work can pulse power over and over resulting in lower RPMs and much quieter operation especially at idle and if you're shopping for fans wondering how you can tell the difference just look for something along the lines of fan connector you can see this one from ncxt clearly says 4 pin pwm if it doesn't specify this it likely is just a three pin fan and is

probably a bit cheaper and again will be a bit more annoying to tune now maybe you're shopping and wondering why are some fans seemingly more expensive than others even when all the other traits we just discussed are the same say they all have built-in RGB say they're all pwm why are some fans 30 or 40 dollars and some are like 15 20 bucks well my friend

there are some interesting characteristics of Premium fans you might not be aware of these silent Wings Pro 4 fans are perfect examples of value ads characteristics and qualities that you might Overlook while shopping online take for instance this sweet little toggle here allows you to choose between various RPM presets or profiles without the need to download any third-party software these are also six pole motor fans

which means six magnets are involved in the operation of this motor instead of your traditional four means it can run quieter in theory but it also means the price is going to be a bit higher some fans come in packs of three or six and this might actually save you a bit of money per unit and some fans just look plain weird or awesome just different

overall and you'd expect that extra tooling to add to the cost a bit but be diligent when it comes to packs of fans some include hubs to support things like RGB connectivity and maybe just straight up power to each fan it's nice to have all that kind of centered again around one Hub but it does add a bit of clutter and might require the use of

third-party software some packs of fans don't come with any Hub at all and it's kind of just a you're on your own scenario but those packs might also be cheaper as a result and if you're foregoing a hub altogether make sure that your motherboard has the included RGB connector on board this is a standard RGB header and this is another addressable RGB header and you can

confirm which if either your board has on your vendors page another distinction you might come across while shopping for fans is static pressure versus airflow airflow fans just try to move as much air as they can from point A to point B and they're not worried about what necessarily is behind them you'll find airflow fans in a lot of cases for example where there's a large

open space right behind each frame a static pressure fan is usually associated with either a CPU Cooler or a radiator where again you've got a lot of hindrance there right behind the fan frame and so it's more important to get that air forced through those small little crevices and channels as effectively and quickly as possible Silo Wings Pro 4 fans have a very high CFM you

can see many different fan blades they're curved very sharply these would make for great case fans let's not say they wouldn't be effective atop radiators or next to CPU tower coolers but they do the best job at just getting as much air as possible from point A to point B now compare this to a noctua NF F12 this is a fan that ships in the ryogen

2 360 and IO from Asus that I showed you a few Clips ago this fan has far fewer fan blades and the blades themselves are shaped and just angled much differently than they are in the be quiet silent Wings Pro 4 fan and that's because this has a much lower CFM and is just targeted toward a different use case CFM by the way is a measurement

of how much air a fan can displace over a unit time and to be more exact CFM stands for cubic feet per minute there are also measurements of cubic meters per hour that you'll find in a lot of European countries and sure enough check this out airflow on the back of the silent Wings Pro 4 box 142.5 cubic meters per hour and as for the noctua

93.4 cubic meters per hour that is a vast vast difference but again not really a reflection of how effective the fan is in general they're both very good and actually very expensive but the Nokia fan is just slated for different tasks it's going to be better for radiators it's also going to be better for Tower coolers the more you know right I actually think this is

a really cool comparison here because these are two giant factors of fans be quite innocuous just make some of the best available units on the market and these are just very clearly different in terms of their designs and noctua makes high airflow fans as well and you'd expect them to look a bit different than this now before we wrap this one up consider learning more about

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response time of just 30 microseconds or 0.03 milliseconds coupled with Nvidia g-sync and AMD freesync premium certs you've got yourself one heck of a gaming monitor learn more about the Corsair Xenia on Flex 45wq HD 240 by clicking the link below so with that it's time to clean that's that that's a mess so I'll get to that if I missed something let me know in the

comment section below I can't possibly cover every fan Topic in a single video but I wanted to make sure that I hit all of the major talking points things that I expect you'll be asking yourself if you're shopping for PC fans especially as a first time Builder give this one a thumbs up consider subscribing and I will catch you in the next one my name is

Greg thanks for learning with me and out of that cleaning