SilverStone SST-AP181 - Air Penetrator Computer Case Cooling Fan 180mm, High Airflow, black

Having read the reviews of other I choose to buy this PWM fan, once fitted an otherwise quiet PC started to sound like a Hovercraft! Even with the motherboard's (Asus Sabertooth Z170) fan control capabilities it's been difficult to get it to not sit there and dramatise vocally. I am left thinking it is the grille on the back of the fan that induces some of the noise. You certainly wouldn't want this fan running in a quiet room as the harmonics of the fan are really quite irritating, even pervading through any music being played.On the plus side it belts decent airflow/air pressure. I can see that a couple of these mounted horizontally pushing air up through the base of a dual chamber cube case would be a real boom; but mounted vertically the bearings do seem to struggle with the fan and this is where the noise is generated.Update: Since adding this fan to the current build I had noticed that the sensor for the motherboard temperature had consistently sat 10 degrees Celsius higher than it had ever done previously, this I have to put down to the current this fan is drawing from the header. According to Asus their fan headers are rated at 1.0 amp, if you use this fan on a motherboard fan header you may well be advised to ensure that you run it at a speed well away from its 400 rpm minimum speed as this is where I'm experiencing the greatest current draw.Update two ( 20/06/2020): I'm not sure whether it is that either, I have become more accustomed to the noise of the fan, or whether in use the bearing faces have become more polished and are creating less noise, part of me thinks it is the latter as the previously noted motherboard temperature sensor readings have dropped significantly, which is likely to be due to a reduced current draw to analogue element attached to the motherboard IE fans. It seems in some instances perseverance and run in periods are necessary.Update Three! (20/06/2021) Three weeks ago the fan started doing the raucous grinding death rattle that would decrease the longer it ran, the period of time taken for it to quieten down becoming longer. It must have just about seized as it stopped spinning. You could here the PWM circuit trying different things to get it to restart it and the motherboard monitoring software showing clearly wrong fan speeds as it did so. It's not good for a relatively expensive fan to fail in less than a year of less than 8 hours use a day. I wonder whether the directional flow forming grill built onto the back of the fan frame, that I often thought was the cause of the all pervading hum that's been present, has also caused enough back pressure to prematurely wear out the dual ball bearing fitted to the fan? As on inspecting the fan out of the case, the now 1mm play in the bearing is ridiculous, as the Japanese make some of the best bearings along with the Swedes. Silverstone are renowned as a premium brand, clearly they have an issue with the production of their fans, I won't be buying any more, defaulting to the Austrian designed brand with their strange two tone brown livery!

This fan did not come with the manual or screw pack mentioned in the description. The box was sealed with SilverStone stickers so the omission was most likely at their end. I did not need any of these so didn't look to RMA it.The Air Penetrator idea (a focused column of air) is reasonable, however it doesn't seem to take into account people using it as an exhaust fan. If you're using it as an exhaust fan the air column shape isn't going to matter. Also note that at time of writing you cannot easily source an 18cm fan filter. So if you are using this as a panel intake to focus on your CPU/motherboard either it'll be laying down unfiltered air or you'll be DIYing your own filter from tights (Google it).A previous reviewer mentioned voltage reduction cables. I received no such cables nor was I expecting to, as the fan has a switch marked LT that toggles the fan's speed. Unfortunately the switch is on a very long lead (it isn't attached to the fan) to suit certain SilverStone cases and there isn't any particular way to home that lead and switch on the fan housing itself. I ended up wrapping the lead around the fan housing and then finishing with a cable tie to keep it from becoming a nuisance.The packaging itself was basic brown cardboard as per the photograph above, with no mention of all the parts you should expect inside.Now to the meat of this review.The fan itself is solid and heavy; feels like quality. In operation it is extremely quiet considering the amount of air it is shifting. After setting the LT switch to on, I was able to tune the RPM right down (425RPM) and the fan doesn't squeal like the fans it was replacing. The only real noise made at this level is from the air itself, but there's no buzzing or throbbing like with poorly designed fans.This fan let me decide my perfect balance between dB and CFM and for that it receives 5/5.I have also compared this fan side-by-side against the  Phobya 180mm G-Silent 18 Case Fan : Black  and you can read the review there

I bought this to replace a stock case cooling fan for my Coolermaster Cosmos II case. I have replaced all the other stock smaller case fans provided by Coolermaster with Noctua fans. But decided to try this fan to replace the large coolermaster stock fan installed at the front of the case, which was noisy and didn't provide sufficient cooling air flow through the case. On the downside I had quite a bit of trouble resulting in significant time invested in getting this fan installed into the Cosmos case as the provided installation holes on the fan didn't match the brackets and mounting holes on the Cosmos case. However, I eventually installed the fan with the provided Cosmos brackets removed from the Stock fan which I managed to fit onto the Silverstone fan in such a way that it overcame my installation problem. Despite the initial installation issue I am very happy with the performance of this fan in terms of improved cooling air flow through the case and significantly reduced noise levels even when the fan is working at maximum RPM when compared to the Coolermaster stock fan. Therefore I recommend this fan to anyone looking to replace their stock fan with a better model!