I recently brought some new rad fans. I was running 4x 180mm Phobya G-Silent 18 on my Phobya nova 1080 (9x120) rad. I have changed to Silverstone FM-181 fans (4 of them).

I was a bit concerned before I brought them, since I read that their current rating was 0.45 amps each, and I planned to run 4 of them on one aquaero channel, with a maximum current capability of 1.65a, not only that but my aquaero fan amp cooling is not even (maybe?) top notch - I don't have the waterblock - I made my own heatsink for the fan amps, and use a Scythe Mini-Kaze ultra, which is a thick 40mm fan on that heatsink, controlled from the aquaero itself.

For anyone else considering these fans with an aquaero, I can report they are fine. I have some vdroop in my system, getting only about 10.5v at maximum speed on these fans - I believe this is probably because of 5m long cables to my external radbox from the PSU in the PC. I am surprised it is this much, but it doesn't seem to be a big problem so far. The rad fans run only at about 80% of their rated speed, but I don't actually know if they would reach full rated speed at 12v anyway, and also I wouldn't want to run them at full speed in actual use due to noise.

Due to the vdroop, I measure a maximum current consumption for 4 of these fans at 1 amp. Even at a full 12v I expect they will come in well enough under the 1.65a limit.

Fan amp temperatures never get above 55 degrees in a 20 degree room, so my home made heatsink and the little scythe fan obviously do a nice enough job. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was possible to run 8 of these fans off the aquaero and maintain reasonable fan amp temperatures with my setup or an equivalent one like the waterblock or the aquacomputer heatsink with an added fan.

Although the Phobya G-Silents were nice fans for the money, and very quiet, I decided after a benchmark run that I needed something capable of more airflow when needed, and these Silverstone fans certainly are. Airflow, I cannot measure, but I can say at like-for-like RPM they move a lot more air (they are thicker), and they get up to around 1000rpm at 10.5v in my setup, wheras the phobyas maxed out at 600rpm, and that makes a huge difference to my temperatures. They move enough air at 10.5v that I can put my hand about 6 inches in front on the intake side of the rad (the fans are the other side in pull) and feel the air rushing in. They are also very quiet - at 1000rpm there is a fair bit of noise from the moving air, but none from the fans themselves that I can hear, and I am picky about things being quiet. In any case, on my rad, they will almost never need to run higher than 600rpm at which point they are silent.

They are double ball bearing, very nicely made. On my nova 1080, m3 x 30mm pan-head screws fit them perfectly, protruding about 3mm from the backs of the fans, enough to engage with the 4 x 180mm fan grill on the rad without coming too close to the fins.

Anyway, that's all - just thought anyone considering them might appreciate this, since I couldn't find a lot out about these fans before I brought them.

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks, but as reported they work just fine. I know fan manufacturers often under-report current draw, but in this case it seems they are either accurate, or slightly over-reported. I expect the 0.45 amps refers to the startup current at a full 12v.

I see a current draw of 1 amp at 11 volts once the fans are spun up. During startup, I have seen around 1.2 amps. It's possible the inrush current during startup goes higher than that, and that I don't see it because of the update frequency in the "fans" page, but in any case I have had no problems at all. I also use startboost at 9v, rather than 12v, so my actual inrush current during fan start would be smaller than what I've seen when testing since I just assigned the fans to a fixed output at 100% to test their startup current.

So certainly 4 is the maximum to run on one channel given the startup current requirements, but I think 8 on 2 channels would work.