I’ll admit it, fans are boring, but they an integral part of any computer system and without good fans bad things can happen. To me a good fan is one that can move a good amount of air but yet be quiet as low noise is important to me. ARCTIC has sent me over two of their F Pro series of fans for review, the 80mm and the 120mm sizes. These fans are meant to help keep things cool but be virtually silent while doing so. The F Pro fans are specifically designed with silence in mind and they are virtually silent.
Specifications:
We’ll take a look at the fans separately.
The first fan is the 120mm and in the box you’ll find an ARCTIC badge along with a bag of screws for installation.
The F Pro fans have a specially designed shroud on them. It’s basically a built in fan grill but it’s much more than that.
The fans are actually not fully attached to the frames, they’re held on with rubber fasteners to let them sort of float thus preventing or reducing vibrations and in turn reducing the noise from the fans.
The back of the fan is totally open for full unimpeded airflow and cooling performance.
Here’s the 80m m fan in pictures, it’s designed the same as the 120mm but just smaller.
Installation is simple, you can use the included screws and just fasten it to your case either in the back of maybe in the front if there’s enough room.
The one thing about these fans that kind of bothers me is the fact that they can only be installed one way because of the front shroud. Most cases don’t have enough room in the front behind the bezel for a type of fan like this, so you’re only real option is to use them for exhaust fans. This does work fine though.
The second thing that kind of bothers me is that they really can’t be used as a cooling fan on a heatsink. This second thing isn’t that big of a deal, but it would be nice to really test how well they move air.
They are quiet fans, I didn’t notice any increase in noise levels with these fans installed and they seem to be more than adequate for helping to keep the system cool.
Conclusion:
The ARCTIC F Pro fans are quiet and they seem to do a decent job of moving air around to help keep your system cool.
The 120mm fan sells for under $8 and the 80mm fan sells for under $5, which is very good I think. When you look around for fans you’ll find many that cost over $20 each and that’s a lot for single fan in my opinion.
The ARCTIC F Pro series of fans over a very good value for the money. They are quiet and they will do a very good job at helping to keep your computer running cool.
Pros:
+Runs quiet
+Simple to install
+Inexpensive
+Includes parts for installation
Cons:
-Can only be mounted one way
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