I thought the only fair way to see how quiet this fan is was to test it against an assortment of other 80 mm fans, and here are the brave competitors.

Starting from the left:

- A Sunon that I have had for some years now, it has been heavily abused but still keeps ticking.

- A fan I ripped out of a cheap PSU. The label on it says "Yate Loom". This is about as generic and cheap as they come.

- A fan that I pulled out of the PSU of an Chyang Fun Minicube. It's about half the thickness of an ordinary 80mm fan.

For testing, I used a spare PSU to supply the 12 volts, and a jug of boiling water to test the temperature sensor.

I connected the Acoustifan up to the 12 volt of the PSU, without the speed limiting resistor. I then listened. I could hear very little. The fan was extremely quiet. To see how loud it got when placed in a warm environment, I put the diode very near to the surface of the boiling water (and in it occasionally). I had to move my head very close to the fan to be able to hear it spin up a little more. There was a distinct lack of noise from the Acoustifan, almost bordering on silence.

I then rigged up the Sunon fan to see what sort of noise that gave out. I connected it up to the 5 volt of the PSU. I was immediately struck by how much noisier the Sunon was. There was this awful grating noise and the fan generally sounded unhealthy. I also decided to compare air flows between the 2 fans. The Sunon did seem to be shifting considerably more air than the Acoustifan. Even when I dipped the Acoustifan's probe in boiling water, the Sunon out blew it by a good margin.

Next I compared the Acoustifan to the "Yate Loom" fan running at 5 volts. The noise level was similar to the acoustifan, maybe ever so slightly louder if you put your head next to the them both. The "Yate Loom" also seemed to shift a little bit more air. It was difficult to tell, due to having to just close my eyes and place my hand in front of each fan in a vain attempt to see which was blowing hardest.

Finally I tested the fan I pulled out of the Minicube, running at 5 volts. The Acoustifan was slightly quieter than the Minicube fan, but not by a really noticeable amount. Both kicked out roughly the same amount of air. There certainly weren't any major differences between the two.

From these tests I can only conclude that it almost doesn't matter what fan you use, if you make it spin slow enough it doesn't make much noise. All the fans bar the Sunon were virtually silent, but the Sunon shifted the most air by a good margin.

If you want no hassle, care free, quiet computing then by all means buy an Acoustifan. The fan seems very well made and you could do a lot worse. Buying or scavenging a cheap fan and running it off 5 volts is almost as effective, and is a cheap and easy, if inelegant option. The Acoustifan's final resting place is in the PSU of my house server, because I don't want it to fail anytime soon, and the Acoustifan feels very well built.

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