SilverStone AP123 120mm Case Fan Review

Today we have with us a new fan from SilverStone, the AP123. These fans fall into the AirPenetrator series of products and are designed specifically to be used as case fans. They feature a unique design with three different fan blades inside the same fan which optimises their noise output when placed up against grilles. You can see the full specifications below, and without any further babbling from myself lets move straight into the product. As we can see from the packaging the air channeling technology from multiple fan blade designs is the key feature. Included with the SilverStone AP123 fans is simply four screws and four anti-vibration rubber mounts inside two plastic bags. From the front you can see that there are 9 fan blades in total. There are three different designs that go in a triplet pattern, so 1,23, 1,2,3 and 1,2,3 etc. From the back we can see a rather unique looking fan grille design which helps channel air and act as a fan guard. Unfortunately the cables are not fully sleeved. From the side we see nothing out of the ordinary, a standard 25mm thick width. The cable is braided very nicely from the edge of the frame down to the 3 pin connector. Test System Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K at Stock with Gelid GC Extreme Thermal Paste CPU Cooler: Cooler Master TPC 800 in Passive Mode (i.e. No Fans) RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3 GPU: XFX Radeon HD 5870 1GB Storage Options: 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage) PSU: Antec High Current Gamer 620W Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 Testing Methodology Four of each fan type were fixed into the case in the same position. That is two in the front in-taking, one in the rear exhausting and one in the top exhausting. Delta temperatures have been used to account for small fluctuations in room temperature Prime 95 and Unigine Heaven were run for 10 minutes to stress the CPU and GPU respectively. The average maximum CPU, motherboard and GPU temperature(s) were recorded as noted by CPUID HW Monitor All other components of the test system were kept identical at consistent settings, only the case fans were changed. All fans were tested at 12 volts straight from the power supply with 12v volt molex adapters. The acoustic measurements were taken 10cm away from the tested fans with the power supply fan and GPU fan isolated/turned off The ambient noise level as recorded by our sound meter was 35.5 dBA and delta noise levels have been used in our graphs There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software There is approximately a 1dBA margin of error with our decibel meter Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Prime 95 Unigine Heaven Cooling Performance We can see that the SilverStone AP123 fans offer decent cooling performance in comparison to the premium Noctua fans we tested. For the price the SilverStone AP123s perform well. Acoustic Performance Comparing the normal noise output of the fans in isolation shows us that the SilverStone AP123 fans audible loud, but for 1500RPM fans they are actually very quiet. This is where the SilverStone AP123 fans are supposed to shine the most. We did some tests with a few 120mm fans we had laying around on the grille side panel of a Cooler Master HAF 912 to see how much difference this air channeling technology really makes. As you can see the SilverStone AP123 fans duly delivered offering the smallest noise difference when adding the grille. However, these numerical results really don't do the fans justice, they make a much more noticeable impact than the numbers suggest. The change they cause does affect volume slightly, as the results below show, but it has more effect on the pitch of the noise - lowering the pitch to a much more comfortable level, something we cannot measure. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4B82yQRUQc[/youtube] SilverStone's AP123 fans currently cost £12.20 each. This puts them towards mid-high end range of fans currently available on the market today. I will now try and be concise in explaining the good and bad about these fans. Firstly, for the money we can see the general case fan performance of these fans is pretty good. For 1500RPMs the acoustic performance is competitive too. The main feature of these fans is that they work to reduce audible noise when up close against fan grilles, filters and case vents. We tested this and showed this to be the case using a fan grille on a case side window. So in that sense the SilverStone AP123 fans do exactly what they are supposed to and do it very well. However, these fans are not perfect in what they offer. Firstly, the flexibility is limited. At 1500RPM you have an RPM that a lot of people would consider too loud. I myself would of liked to see either PWM support or at least one fan speed reducer cable, 1000 and 1500RPM would of been a good offering. Secondly, the multi-coloured cabling that comes from the motor should be concealed - it doesn't really do anything positive for the overall aesthetics of the product in my opinion. Finally, the choice of colour is a subjective one. I personally have no issues with blue but from a consumer perspective does blue really go with many cases? I think not. Offering black, white or some other more popular colours would most definitely help SilverStone in making this fans more appealing to a broader audience. The SilverStone AP123 is quite a niche fan. As a general fan, it doesn't really do anything out of the ordinary - you could fit out your entire case with these fans and the difference between it and another range of 120mm fans would be minimal. However, this fan does succeed very well in dampening the noise effects of fan grilles and side panel fan mounts so if your system has fan grilles/mounts on the side panel then you would most definitely benefit from acquiring one of these fans to fill that mount. That said, the R&D that has gone into these fans to achieve that is very impressive and the AP123 fans definitely deserve our innovation award because of that. The bottom line is that this fan is excellent under the right circumstances and usage scenarios but could still benefit from some more flexibility to make them more competitive as a general usage fan. We would like to thank SilverStone for providing these samples for review.