Hark ye knaves! Thar be a fan in our midst!
Yonks ago you'd be lucky if your case even had a fan in it; the original ATX spec simply had the PSU exhausting all the air that was needed from the low-powered rigs of the day. Now, though, you'll be hard-pressed to have a computer that resembles those minimalistic builds, as the IKONIK case on Page 48 shows with its insane complement of 13 fans. Sometimes however, you do need a fan that's different to the stock case fans, whether they're too noisy or simply don't move enough air. That's exactly what the Excalibur aims at doing.
Constructed from incredibly light (and flimsy) plastic, the fan has hexagonal cutouts around the perimeter of the frame, giving a larger volume of air that can be sucked in and blown out. The design precludes this fan from being easily used with heatsinks thanks to the pillars between the screw holes at the corners, but that's nothing that cable ties can't fix. Breaking new ground is the Barometric Ball Bearing design, essentially a method of focusing the air pressure within the centre of the motor to keep things stable at high speeds.
And high they get, with a huge 0.45A drawn through the 12V rail, generating a very loud 73.9dBA at load. It's got a PWM cable on it, but this seemed to be ignored as it ran at full speed regardless of temperature. We threw it on our TRUE and recorded some great results, but the best application for a fan like this is a case exhaust - it moves so much air, you can feel it some feet away.
However it is also dangerously flimsy, and while running it fell onto the edge of a heatsink and promptly shattered one of its blades. Probably worth it for the cooling, but noise and shoddy build take it down a peg or three.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012