COUGAR CF-V12HPB 120mm fan Review

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Cougar Vortex Review
Today we are going to look at the Cougar Vortex CF-V12HPB 120mm fan and its effectiveness when installed on a radiator in a custom liquid loop.

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According to the packaging, they run at 800-1500rpm using a Hydro-dynamic bearing, and produce up to 70.5cfm while only dishing out 17.9 dBA. They do have a PWM connector if you wish to hook them up to the PWM headers on your mainboard. However, I chose to use my Lamptron Touch instead so I could manually set the fan speeds.

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Upon receiving my fans I immediately unboxed them. They have a good weight and don’t feel flimsy or cheap. The fans come with padded corners to reduce vibration.

After much work removing the old AP-15’s and reinstalling the rad, I was ready to go.


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I now decided it was time to test the fans and see how the performance was.

Test Hardware:
i7 930 running at 4.37ghz
EK supreme HF with jet plate #1
XFX 5870 with EK full cover water block
Radiators XSPC RX480 and RX240
Swiftech 655 Vario on setting 4. My choice of pump speed was completely arbitrary in this review

Loop order: pump/res>RX480>cpu>gpu>rx240>pump/res

I used 8 cougar vortex in push/pull on the RX480, and 2 in pull on the rx240 radiator
Software used:
Prime 95
Kombustor
Open Hardware Monitor

Methodology used:

The fans were set at the desired RPM and sat with nothing running in sys tray for 30 minutes before the start of the test to normalize water temp at idle relative to fan speed. Water temp readings were taken from thermal monitor on Lamptron touch.
I then started Open Hardware Monitor and checked the temp for CPU.
After which I started Prime95 with small ffts in place to produce maximum heat on the CPU, and started Kombustor to stress the GPU running highest settings to ensure maximum heat load.
After 30 minutes of stress testing, I recorded water temps again and then recorded CPU temps.
I proceeded to repeat this procedure for every fan speed level in this test.

Ambient temp stayed a consistent 22C throughout testing using the thermostat on the wall, and was checked before each run. I normalized temps at idle with the fan rpm I was testing next. Idle water temps did not vary from 24C, so I left the data out of the graph, it seems that fan rpms do not make a difference when idle, most likely due to the surface area of the radiators. So without any further ado, I present… the graph (insert melodic mystery music here)...

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As you can see from the data on the graph, the temps were pretty close from 100% 1800rpm to 65% 1230rpm, however at 50% the temps started to rise sharply in both water and CPU temps. At 35% the fans were just not doing their job well enough, and we see that water temps rose to 33C, and CPU temps rose to 77.5C. This is 11.5C higher than the fans at 100%.

During testing I also recorded noise level with the sound app on my phone (and thinking back I should have added the data to the graph).
I tested from 3FT and from 1” from the fans as a comparison. (Numbers recorded in dBA)
3FT 1”
100% 20 32
80% 16 26
65% 14 22
50% 12 19
35% 11 18

Looking at the numbers, you see at 3FT these fans are very quiet. Quite impressive actually considering the performance you get. The 1” measurements are less impressive, but that is with your ear practically on the PC, and I do not know anyone that would complain about noise when they do that. In all honesty, the fans are not audible over the Swiftech 655 pump until they start to run at 80%, and even then outside traffic and the TV could easily drown it out. On a side note, these fans are rated at 1500 rpm, however my fans all seemed to run at 1800. I’m not sure if this is a misprint or something unique with these fans, but I won’t complain.

In conclusion, I found the best 24/7 fan speed would be as low as 50% 990 rpm at idle, and under load, I do not recommend fan speeds below 65% 1230 rpm. Going lower sent the temps up too much for my liking. If you use a fan controller, I would say it is acceptable to run the fans at 50% 990 rpm idle and up to 100% 1800 rpm load. Again, the fans were inaudible with speeds up to 80% 1500 rpm at which time they became noticeable. Keep in mind though, sound level is a very subjective topic. These cougar Vortex fans had a much more pleasant sound when compared to the GT AP-15s they replaced which had a high pitched whine I found disturbing. This concludes my review of the Cougar Vortex CF-V12HPB.
 

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I have 12 of these and 2 of the 14's lol I ran push pull on this rig

I was impressed with these fans as I mentioned in the review.. they compared to the ap15 in performance and the noise was comparable as well ( without the GT whine)
 

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unfortunately, I didn't do this with the ap-15's . I had replaced them with these vortex fans in december and this was my first review. I am planning a small liquid loop on my Fiance's computer on which i may be able to get some data from that. ( however the numbers will not be directly comparable to this review as it will have a different heat signature and smaller rad. If you guys have any ideas, I am open to suggestions. I really don't want to remove the 480 from this beats to replace the fans ( real pia)

From a subjective point of view, I did not notice any change in temps myself. they are either the same or close to each other.