SilverStone FN81 and FN82

Heat… it’s an unfortunate byproduct of the speed that we so desperately want out of our CPUs. With Intel and AMD upping the pressure on each other with each new launch, DDR2 coming into its own and the Red and Green teams both fighting for market share, there is one constant in the computing world right now.

Heat.

There are a few different ways to go about cooling your PC’s vitals. Some use water to keep their PC cool. This is a good way to effectively cool your PC but the results are somewhat limited by your ambient temperatures. Other chooses to take it a bit further and go with a phase change unit. This is a method that is not as limited by ambient temperatures and can cool your parts well below 0 degrees Celsius. The problem with both of these methods is the price.

Both are expensive and both aren’t for the faint of heart. This is where fans come into play. Fans are a good way to move air over the surface of your heat sinks and carry the heat away from those parts you are trying to cool. Today we are looking at a couple of fans from the fine people at SilverStone.

We have their 80mm fan, lovingly named FN81, and their FN82 which is an 80mm fan with 92mm blades. I am going to primarily look at the noise that is given off when both of these are on. As stated in an earlier fan review by Felger Carbon here.

About fans: they have blades and the spin to shove air from here to there. This is a necessarily produces sound; specifically the sound of air moving. This is a benign sound to most people, meaning not noise. But fans have bearings and such that produce mechanical sounds in addition to the air movement, and most people consider that to be noise. A quiet can is not one that produces no sound, but one that produces little noise.

I certainly couldn’t have said it any better. I am going to compare these 2 fans to the only other fan that I have readily available, a no name 80mm fan. Here are some specs for the 2 SilverStone fans: