It's nice having the biggest heatsink on the planet, with the biggest, loudest fan you can find. What some people neglect however, is the system cooling. Properly routing your internal wiring is a good first step, and investing in quality case fans is another. You can buy generic fans for about 5$, and higher quality, higher RPM ones for a little more.

As you probably know, faster fans usually, always result in more noise. Now, to be honest, in about 99% of all cases, your heatsink fan will likely drown out the noise of the case fans (more on how we can fix that later), but cutting down the decibals with quieter case fans is a good start. In comes Thermaltake's Smart Fan. For those of you who've read our Volcano 7 review, you already know about it, because it's the same fan. Whereas before, it only came with the heatsink, now you can buy it off the shelf as a standalone fan.

Specifications

P/N: A1214
Fan Dimension: 80x80x25 mm
Rated Voltage: 12VDC
Started Voltage: 7VDC
Rated Current: 0.18AMP ~ 0.45AMP
Power Input: 2.16W ~ 5.4W
FAN Speed Control Setting: 2900 rpm at 25°C~, 5000 rpm at 35°C
Max. Air Flow: 46 CFM at 2900rpm, 53 CFM at 5000rpm
Noise: 27 dB at 2900 rpm, 39 dB at 5000 rpm
Bearing Type: Two Ball Bearing
Life Time: 50,000 hours
Connector: 3 PIN

Like on the Volcano 7, you get the nice Tt fan grill. I'm not going to get into aesthetics too much, but if you're tired of the regular fan grill, this is a nice change. Either way, at the very least, a fan grill will keep stray wires from interfering with the operations of the fan blades.

Here's a shot of the fan itself, the good ole 80mm Everflow. There are two connectors not pictured here, one for power, and one for RPM monitoring. Thermaltake also includes all the needed screws and 3 to 4 pin adapter in case you don't have enough on your motherboard.

The Smart Fan's claim to fame is the thermal sensor. Basically, the role of this sensor is to monitor the case temperatures and adjust the fan speed accordingly. Warmer temps will cause the fan to spin faster, and lower temps will slow it down. Now, this is a good idea in theory, but in practice, it may not work as well as it could for most users. To reach it's highest speed of 5000rpm, your case temperature is supposed to be at least 35°C. I don't know about you, but my case temps rarely pass 30°C.

Another problem is the proximity of the sensor to the fan itself. Because this is supposed to be mounted on the wall of your case, temperatures will likely be lower in that area because air is either coming in or leaving the case by there, therefore the temperatures in that area will be slightly lower. It would be better if the sensor could be extended, so that you can place it closer to where hotter components reside, and depending on how warm they run, the fan can speed up or slow down more effectively. Anyhow, for those of you good with splicing wires, you can probably make this mod yourself.

Another use of the fan is something it was originally designed, or at least sold, for, and that's putting it on a heatsink. 60mm heatsink users will need to invest in a fan adapter, but here in the Lair, we advocate big coolers, and nothing here is bigger than our Swiftech MCX462. Performance is important to me, but either I'm going deaf, or getting old, but the noise generated by our 68cfm Delta 80mm is starting to get on my nerves. To combat the noise, and test performance, we'll be swapping the Delta for the Smart Fan.

Performance

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.75v) @ 1.53GHz
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.85v) @ 1.61GHz
Abit KG7-RAID, with socket thermal sensor touching the bottom of the CPU
Lian-Li Case, with only the Enermax power supply fans, and rear exhaust fan on.
Prime95 is run for 20 minutes, or about 30 tests
Room temperature is maintained at ~23C/74F

First off, we'll test performance of the Smart Fan as a rear case fan. Temperatures of the stock fan and Smart Fan will be compared...

Because the Sunon fan is spinning at it's full speed all the time, the ambient temperatures are about one degree lower than the Smart Fan. Under full load, both perform the same, which would lead me to think the Smart Fan is reaching 50cfm as well. The Smart fan was spinning at ~3500rpm at this point.

Next up, we're going to be replacing the Delta on our Swiftech with the Smart Fan to test it's performance as an 80mm heatsink fan replacement...

Considering that the Delta is a lot bigger, I wasn't surprised with these results. The Tt Smart Fan does perform decently, and it's still under the 45°C mark. Anyhow, I know none of you care about stock speeds, so...

Here, we see the temperature inching towards the upper 40s. This is by no means in the danger zone, but performance freaks may say bah! The fact that it doesn't hit 50°C (which for me, is the maximum safe limit), looks like the Smart Fan is doing it's job of cooling off the Swiftech. By this point, the Smart Fan was spinning along at 4400rpm, so unless we mod the sensor to touch the base of the heatsink, I don't think the performance will improve much more than this.

Final Words

Although the performance may not seem that impressive, you'll have to remember that the selling point of the fan is noise control. Even at it's highest level, the fan was hardly noticable. Keep in mind that we're accustomed to Deltas around here, so to me, it's silent. At idle temperatures, I actually opened my case up at one point to see if the fan was on.

I wasn't terribly thrilled with the sensor placement, and I know modders can fix this, but Thermaltake could have saved a few people the hassle by making the wiring for the sensor a bit longer. Also, for those who just don't care about noise, a high cfm case fan will do just as good a job with cooling.

For me, I found the noise control worth the price of admission alone. It wasn't an awesome performer when paired with the Swiftech, but it performed well enough that overclocking was still possible, and temperatures were under control. Performance was up to par with most "standard" 80mm case fans in it's cfm-class range, and the fact that the sensor placement can be fixed (I saw this good guide at ) still makes this a decent purchase as either an additional case fan, or a replacement 80mm heatsink fan.

Thermaltake:

Pros: Noise controlled, easy to install, multi-purpose application.

Cons: Poor sensor placement.

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