Gadgetory

every once in a while a new piece of PC hardware arrives and I look at it and I'm like why didn't I think of that why didn't somebody else think of that they should have done this a long time ago and case in point Coolermaster has a new SF series of fans which are square fans that's a little bit less innovative what I think was sort of unique and yeah kind of gave me the feeling of like why wasn't this done before they've done a dual fan version and a triple fan version so most computers have at least a few fans to move air through the system to keep things cool that's their primary function they also serve to introduce dust into the system and as is often the case now since all in one liquid coolers have become more popular to cool down the radiators that have liquid flowing through them most radiators are gonna have at least two sometimes three fans sometimes as little as one but for those that use two fans or three fans if you've ever gone through the installation procedure you know that it can just be a little bit complicated especially getting them all in position wearing them all up properly and now that RGB is pretty much everywhere you now have possibly a second set of cables not just connecting up the power so that the fans spin but also RGB and sometimes you might have addressable RGB that is even a little bit more complicated so to simplify things for the installation procedure as well as connecting up those precious RGB LEDs we have this solution and the SF 240p and the SF 360 are now there's you might notice that the P options are here on my right and the our options are on the left that's simply because there's a different set up for the addressable RGB LEDs these fans over here have eight LEDs per fan and then these on the rights have 24 individual addressable LEDs per fan if you're looking at a single hundred twenty millimeter version and then this fatty SF 240p actually has 56 because they added individual addressable RGB LEDs around the edge to which I think might look pretty cool but let's get these out of these box take a closer look so the actual functional part of all of these products would be the fans at the center and the fans at the center are pretty much all the same with some slight variance in fan speed and static pressure as far as the box ratings go at least these are all rifle bearing fans and they're all rated at h2 30 DBA when it comes to the noise level they're all four pin PWM controllable fans as indicated by their plug as well as of course the packaging and it looks like Coolermaster sticking to 120 millimeter size for this product lineup at least for now rotational speeds are 650 to 2,400 RPMs for the P series over here and then it drops to 2,000 rpms on the SF 120 R and then down to 1,800 rpm for the triple fan version here although the fact that you have more fans is going to overall produce more airflow the SF 360 are beyond that the fan blades themselves according to Coolermaster are designed with inspiration from helicopters and jet planes although I think they're just saying that so it sounds more badass and then outside of those fan blades is of course the fan housing and the SF series that all of these are part of are part of this trend to go back to a more square style fan housing which honestly they they used to do a lot more and then they feel like a lot of fan manufacturers started to get fancy with the housing around here and make it like look different but honestly especially if you're putting this up against the radiator or as a intake in your case or anything you want as little space or gaps for air to get through apart from where the fan is actually pulling the air through as possible and the square design is supposed to line up with radiators line up with van intakes on the case or exhausts so you get the most air flowing through the air flow apart versus leaking out elsewhere another design consideration for all these fans is that they have put rubberized pads on all the contact points front and back so that is nice as well that's not the most crazy innovative feature or anything a lot of fans have been doing that for a while but it is good to have that especially for a reduction of vibration and again especially if you have this fan or fan assembly mounted up against a radiator then the last thing I was looking for when it comes to accessories is the ability to chain the fans together according to cooler master and that is actually only on these 120 millimeter versions which I guess makes a little bit more sense because you're more likely to want to chain them together basically all this means is that if you have an addressable RGB header or extension coming from your motherboard the little three pin kind you can plug it in right there and it's got a little extra one coming off right there so you could daisy chain more addressable RGB LEDs to that so that is convenience especially if you're connecting up multiple fans and you're not going for the integrated triple or dual fan combo other than that 120 millimeter fans come up with mounting screws these bigger ones come with mounting screws as well as this little plan stick piece which is actually made to go over your addressable RGB LED headers you connect them up pop them into that and then that keeps them from pulling loose I actually think that's pretty useful I have taken addressable RGB LED headers and cases and taped them together simply because there's nothing to really hold them and they can pop loose easily that's this is just a nice little piece makes a little bit more professional also be a little bit more clean if you had to do a connection like this somewhere where it was visible finally the 360 millimeter version here the SF 360 far does come with an addressable RGB LED controller just plugs in via a SATA power connector and then gives you the addressable RGB LED header for that so if you don't have the capability from your motherboard to connect that in you can use this it's just got a single button so you can cycle through some basic lighting profiles so we spent some time doing some basic setup with these fan arrays fan grids whatever you want to call them just to give you guys a little bit better idea of how they work in everything first thing I wanted to point out here is that there is actually a difference between the SF 120 our fans just fan blades themselves or the different style than all the other fans that I mentioned and I only want to bring that up because I said at the beginning that all the fans themselves are the same there is some slight variation there just so we could fire up the fans and the RGB LEDs I have connected up this Zalman zmm FC 3 multi fan controller which does have a PWM out so you can control the RPMs with it and then I'm using this little RGB LED controller which is compatible with addressable RGB LEDs and that actually came with this cooler master 240 all-in-one liquid cooler I do want to point out that when it comes to the RGB LED controller that ships with the triple fan version of the 360 are up here it is a simpler controller and this actually will only support up to it seems 24 addressable RGB LEDs and I've discovered that because I connected it up to the 240p here which has 56 addressable RGB LEDs and only about half of them lit up I was worried that the unit itself was defective but then I just switched to a different controller and all of the LEDs started so just keep that in mind if you do get the 360 version of this you're not going to be able to use that controller to daisy-chain additional RGB LED devices from it so just want to keep that in mind to give you guys a little bit better idea of how this will look when actually connected up to radiator I connected it to radiator the Coolermaster ml 240 our RGB and I've connected up the SF 240p a RGB dual fan to it just so you can see it does line up I do want to point out that when it comes to radiators there is some variance when it comes to the actual mounting holes from them there especially can be some difference in the gap between the holes for the two different fans and these fans do actually have slightly elongated holes for mounting there so that should provide a little bit more compatibility depending on what type of radiator you're connecting it up - I think this configuration might be particularly appealing to people who are really into the RGB LED thing because it gives you this nice long light bar that's going to point sideways out of your case so if you have a case with a nice big clear window you should be able to see that and it should be pretty visible and of course you can switch around between the different color cycles and color patterns I'm just using the controller that I have here which has a limited number but if you directly connect it has compatibility for like a CS or a sync as well as MSI gigabyte and as rock's software for controlling RGB LEDs so you might have more options available there over in this system here which we're in the process of disassembling but it does still have the almond the KU cooler installed which is a cooler master 360 millimeter AO which is being used to cool in 9900 okay we were able to quickly see that there is a definite plus when it comes to ease of installation because the three fans that were on there we all had to remove individually and then each fan had two cables that were wired up to the back after getting all three removed it was just a matter of holding that entire unit up there together so like just a couple screws to kind of hold it in place and we're able to go and mount the rest of them and then again just two cables to pass through to the back to connect up for the power for the fans and the addressable RGB LEDs so that I think is the biggest selling point of these sort of combo units here and one of the things we're like of course if that's what you're planning to use it for it makes perfect sense to buy this type of fan configuration because you know it's going to be self-contained and if you're dealing with sort of a nightmare cable management scenario it really does simplify connecting up all the fans and all the LEDs and getting them to work now the thing that I need to point out I can't leave this video without mentioning to you guys is that both of these units were exhibiting some electrical noise sort of a high-pitched whining noise I think had to do with the PWM frequency depending on the RPMs we were running them at we have the fans turned up most of the way that seems to fade away but when the fans are running at medium and low speed there was a definite noise that I was hearing and it was the same on both units so I'm going to contact coolermaster about that and let them know I'll wait to hear back from them and then update in the comment section down below if that's anything to say about that often times early samples can have problems like this but then they fix that for the retail run but I'll hopefully confirm that and let you guys know that potential manufacturing defect decide what are the sort of pros and cons to going with the configuration like this as opposed to buying your own individual hundred and twenty millimeter fans the pros of course are going to be that ease of installation and then for a configuration like this I'd say a visual look that you can't really get going with normal fans you can't have a uniform LED display like this I have seen ad on LED devices that you can do sort of something similar to this but I would say this is unique at least in my experience the negatives are going to be first off that if you have any errors with any of the fans like I'd say especially in the triple fan unit if one of those fans goes bad or starts to develop a rattle or a hum or something like that you're probably gonna need to replace the entire unit and that may or may not be a matter of great inconvenience for you and then of course you have the fact that you're going to be locked into sort of a larger or medium sized form factor if you're going with a 240 or 360 version of this if you for example swapped out your AIO in the future to a 240 millimeter version or if you went with a large elect 280 for example you would either have to have a weird overlapping situation where your triple fan sticks out longer than your radiator or you just wouldn't be able to use it anymore because it doesn't fit the new size radiator that you're changing to so to kind of sum up if my question at the beginning of this video was why hasn't anyone really done this before I would say kind of the pros and cons outweigh each other if you're not dealing with addressable RGB LEDs just having to connect up three fans and install and mount three fans really isn't that big of a deal but when you add in the cabling that's required for connecting at multiple addressable RGB LEDs and the fact that these are all just automatically going to be in sequence with each other I think that adds some value and some convenience that makes these a lot more practical in today's market than they maybe were three or four years ago before RGB was everywhere one other potential positive for the multi fan units is price or the possibility that you're buying in bulk so maybe you're getting a better price per fan of course that's somewhat subject based on the prices that were listed the Coolermaster 120-millimeter argb SF series fan is 35 bucks by itself which is pretty steep for a single fan but you could get two of them in the master fan SF 240p that I've been showing you for a mere fifty five dollars at least according to the current prices on Amazon so that is a savings of fifteen dollars if you were to buy two of the $35 fans for $70 or one dual unit for 55 similarly the SF 120 our fans are 25 bucks each which again is a little on the steep side for a fan but you know their Pro Series fans and they've got RGB and everything but three of those of course would then cost you $75 or the triple fan version another savings here of I guess about 11 or 12 bucks because it's currently 63 dollars and 45 cents on Amazon so that may or may not be a selling point for you so if you guys are interested I'll post some links to these SF series fans down in the video description below thank you so much for watching this video and let me know what you think of these fans especially the 2 & 3 fan units of them are you interested assuming they fix that electrical noise whiny issue and if so let me know why and if not let me know why not as well thanks again for watching this video guys hit the thumbs-up button on your way out and we'll see you next time