Arctic Breeze USB Desktop Fan Review

Computers produce a lot of heat, which is the primary reason why computer enthusiasts spend so much money buying advanced cooling solutions. By cooling your computer down, you actually chuck all that heat out into your room and if you've got high end hardware then your computer can raise the room temperature a lot. Arctic have devised the perfect solution for this scenario and while it may seem like a gimmick, we wanted to give it a go to see what it's all about, especially after seeing so many games sporting one at the latest Multiplay Insomnia i46 LAN gaming event in Telford The Arctic Breeze USB Fan that we have today is a 92mm fan that is meant to sit on your desktop and keep you cool by blowing air in your direction. Being a USB powered device with no drivers needed for installation, it could be used at home, work, college, university or in any place where there is a powered USB port available. It doesn't matter why you are hot, be it a heat wave or be it dual HD 6990s running Furmark, the Arctic Breeze USB desktop fan is still a potential saviour to your heat problems. Here are some of the key specifications from the product page: The front of the packaging is very simple. A product image and name with Arctic's website www.arctic.ac The side of the box is a lot more informative. It lists out the three key features, the adjustable neck so you can change the direction of airflow, the adjustable speed so you can optimise the noise/power/cooling ratio and the non-slip steel base so it will sit firmly on whatever surface you place it on. Although this fan is primarily intended for a desk, you could also use it next to your bed, in the kitchen or in the living room providing you have a USB port on hand or a USB port power adapter - which conveniently Arctic also sell. The back of the box summarises the key features once again and gives you some more pictures of the product. Key certifications are also listed like CE and RoHS compliance. The design is very clean and simple. A 92mm fan, with a flexible stand and a non-slip base which integrates a fan speed controller. Be careful when turning the fan speed controller as sometimes if you're careless you can get the tops of your knuckles trimmed! Thankfully it is not strong enough to cause any damage to you. From the back it further reinforced my opinion that this cooling fan actually looks like a wind turbine. It has a "fake vent" which makes it look like the back of a wind generator. The sides of the fan motor bare some Arctic Breeze branding stickers. The fan controller knob starts the fan off at 800RPM and goes to the maximum of 1800RPM. After the fan knob has been turned about 50% of the way it stiffens up briefly and is difficult to turn, it does get quite annoying but I am not sure if this is a fault with all Arctic Breeze USB desktop fans or just our particular sample. The provided cable is very long, you've got over 1.8 metres of it so it should be compatible with the vast majority of desk set ups. Performance We don't have a quantitative way to measure the airflow and its performance. However, I can safely say this fan is, like the name suggests, more of a breeze than a wind storm. The reason why it was designed for use as a desktop fan is because it has an effective range of just under 1 metre, after that you can't really feel the airflow at all. In my opinion this fan works well if you sit it next to your monitor and behind your keyboard, as for most people that will be about 30-60cm away from them and the fan makes a noticeable difference from that kind of distance. I normally use this fan at maximum speed since you get the best amount of airflow and its not loud at all. Bigger fans and air conditioning units will always provide more cooling than this unit, but for its size, price and power consumption this unit certainly punches well above its weight. We took the acoustic measurements 10cm away from the Arctic Breeze using a decibel meter. A silent room was 35 dBA on our meter, so seeing numbers of 48 dBA for maximum fan speed is impressive. It means just a 13 dBA delta compared to the background noise level. I found it is not intrusive at all, you can easily watch video clips, listen to music, play games and even talk over Skype without even noticing the fan is on. Costing you around £9.59 you don't have to splash the cash to get your hands on one of these USB desktop cooling fans. I spend a lot of time at the computer and sometimes testing can make the room really hot, so the Arctic Breeze is a real breath of fresh air (excuse the pun). The Arctic Breeze USB desktop fan doesn't promise to cool an entire room down and nor does it promise to emulate the effects of air conditioning. What it will do though, is make your computing experience infinitely more comfortably in hot and stuffy rooms. If you work around computers, have a power hungry computer, a stuffy room or just want to keep cool for when hot weather might arrive then the Arctic Breeze USB desktop fan is an awesome buy. It is simple, effective and it "does what it says on the tin". With all that in mind we'd like to award the Arctic Breeze USB desktop fan with the eTeknix "Bang for Buck" award. I'd also like to thank Arctic for keeping me nice and cool whilst my HD 6990 chucked endless waves of heat into my face during other testing, as anyone with that card will know how hot it can make your whole computer environment.