AF140L Fan VS ML140

I bought a corsair case the other day, that is fitted with AF140L fans. They seem quite reasonable actually. They mainly seem to be running at about 700 rpm. I need to add another fan to the case and I was wondering whether to get another AF140L ( cheap option ) or whether there is any mileage in replacing them with some ML140 ( not PRO ), which you probably know come in cheap packs of two. I am not that worried about amount of noise rather than quality of noise. I gather the ML are slightly lower in tone so they may sound better, but I am not really sure whether there will be a lot of difference at 700RPM. Unfortunately I can't find a spec for the AF1400L noise levels.

If you want to get right down to it, with your ear next to the fan, an AF140 is going to be quieter than ML140 at like RPMs and certainly at 700 rpm. It's not really an issue of fan quality, but blade design. The steeper, more numerous blades of an AF will make less noise traveling through the air than the flatter and broader ML style blade. At 700 rpm, the AF will move more air if there are no other restrictions. However, those steeper blades will draw air in and move air out across a wider conical pattern. This can be a plus or minus, depending on the intended location and purpose.

 

I have a pile of both these fans and they are some of favorites. The ML140 is one of better radiator fans out there, however you probably do not want to run it at 1500+ RPM on your front intake. An AF140L is the stripped down version of AF140 retail fan, without the heavier frame. The ML140 grey twin pack is the same thing in relation to the ML Pro. I can tell slight differences in sound between a AF140L and AF140 in a front intake. However, that is mostly related to resonance and frame weight and will certainly be different in depending on case and mounting location. I am also extremely picky about this stuff, so I do mean a slight difference and nothing more.

 

I think the choice comes down to intended mount location, the case, and what is on the other side. For rear exhaust, I like an AF140 most of the time. In that circumstance, the wide conical draw is useful. Generally the same for top exhaust, although on certain motherboards a ML fan may draw air across the VRM heat sink with noticeable improvement. The front intake is the trickier analysis. The more focused flow of the ML twin pack might have benefits for drive, board, or GPU cooling. This is even more true if you have a front dust screen. However, at 1000 rpm the ML will start to be noticeable and if the case is on the desk or the front close to you, this might bear some thought as to what you really need and if temperature reduction even matters for your hardware.

Thanks for the reply.

 

I have been experimenting with a PC build. At the moment there are two 140mm fans on the front of the case and one at the rear. That is actually well balanced, with an overall slight positive pressure. The front fans are SP140L's and the rear one is an AF140L.

I was playing with the fans to see what is the best setup for my system and for the way I use the PC...etc and came to the conclusion that the existing fans are running at about the right RPM and producing an excellent overall effect with about the right noise level.

However, experimenting, with some "other make" fans I discovered that by adding a fan at the bottom of the case blowing upwards and in to the case, it does help the cooling a little, albeit not much. Then I added another identical top fan, just to re-balance the air flow through the case. I tried this and it certainly seems to work well, so I am tempted to buy the necessary AF140L's to implement this properly but I am not sure, the temperature difference was not that significant.

So what case did you end up getting? Based on the possible layouts, it appears you went went 760T, 780T, or 750D and you have the H115i in the front as intake?

 

On that assumption, you might get some benefit from putting in fans in the bottom as additional intake. The radiator is a substantial restriction to airflow. At the terrifying full speed of 2000 rpm, you won't move 90cfm per fan. More like 45 each. Anything past 1000 rpm is going to be loud and that means it will be close to 45 cfm total front intake. That doesn't matter for normal use, but if you have an open design GPU and do some gaming, a higher rate of air exchange is helpful. Bottom fans may be enough to supplement the intake and force air out the top. If the case sits on the floor by your side, top fans might be noticeable. They can also be set at very low speed which should be hard to detect and is better than passive exhaust. I would recommend AF140s for the top. I would also say the same thing for the bottom where you want the fan to pull air from the sides (and not through the desk), however if you have a bottom dust screen in place and really only want low speeds, a flat blade fan will work better. That is what I use on my Air 740 in the bottom. I have plenty of intake, but the bottom fans are for direct cooling of my m.2 drive and GPU when things get warm.

 

If you tire of the SP140L fans, the obvious replacement for those are the ML series. I find them to be step up in sound quality and pretty much everything else. I can run mine on a 280 radiator up to 1100 rpm before I notice them. That is plenty of air for CPU cooling.

Ha! You guess well. It's actually a 740 with a front mounted H115i. I find the system is balanced to slightly positive with a single AF140L at the back, which surprised me because I thought the SP140L's on the radiator would shift more than they actually do. And overall it concerned me very slightly that the entire system was not as well ventilated as I had planned. But it does work very well. The only minor issue was that I have a bit of a dead spot under the graphics, hence why I fitted the bottom fan ( Having placed an order for a bottom filter - which cost $4 and is coming all the way from China, lol. ( Shame on you Corsair, please provide a filter! ). The system is not noisy but it led to me wondering about fans. I think I will replace the fans on the H115i though, since these can be a bit unpleasant sounding when they really spin up. I used the original fans from the case on another PC thinking I wouldn't need them, but it's no worries, replacements are cheap. Of course having to buy them made me wonder whether it was worth replacing them with a different fan.

Well then... The only reason you need the bottom fans is because of the H115i in the front intake. I have been running multiple 540 and 740 cases for a couple of years and have moved the exact same hardware from 540 to 740 and back at times. Even with dual GPUs, the bottom fans do not have a significant impact on interior case cooling. In fact, too much speed on the bottom fans would actually push waste heat from the GPUs up into the motherboard area. I would have warmer motherboard and surface temps in the 740 with the extra fans. I likely would not use ML140's on the bottom of the 740, unless you are doing it for LED lighting aesthetics. It's just too much fan and when they spin 2000 rpm on power up, it will probably rattle the desk a little. I have used multiple fan types on the bottom of the 740, including AF140's. There is not a tremendous difference between any of these and all I really want it for is light supplemental airflow so I can keep the speed on my front 120x3 down. For that reason and if you do intend to put an air filter on the bottom, you may want something with a slightly flatter blade. There isn't a lot space between the plastic mesh and the fans when you put them in. That means you likely have to tape a filter element to the bottom of the case or I think the better way is to set a 280mm framed filter on the top of dual 140mm fans. Dust may still accumulate inside the fan itself, but that is an easy wipe and clean every now and then.

 

I saw your post regarding the gurgling pump. I'll let the discussion of that issue germinate there, however I am wondering why you decided on the front intake mounting position for the CPU radiator. The 740 has a very nice recessed top area for a radiator fan combo. The difference in CPU temperatures is meaningless unless you are sport overclocking and need the 1-2C difference from radiator temp zone placement. It is a pretty breezy case. With the H115i up top exhausting and the rear 140 as exhaust, that then gives you the option of 3x120 front or 2x140 and skipping the bottom fans entirely, making the dust filter installation easy. 2x140@700 rpm will be slightly quieter than 3x120@1000 rpm (an approximate airflow equivalent). However, 3x120 has some direct cooling benefits for components, specifically things like m.2 drives. With 2x140 front, I used to run +5-7C warmer on my Samsung 950. The 3x120 was better positioned to directly affect critical areas. As for the gurgling, the standard procedure is to tip the case over on its side while the pump is running and see if the air bubble works itself out. An occasional gurgle is normal. I don't like the prolonged nature of the event. You are supposed to be able to mount these AIO coolers in whatever orientation is needed. Most people would be unable to front mount of a H115i with the hoses down because of length and GPU interference. The 740 has a nice short front to center run so its possible, but you should not have to fight with it to get it to behave. If the gurgling does not stop when turned over (and then back right side up), I would exercise return options. That would be faster than a RMA through Corsair.

Ah, this is not my pump, but I have found a recording on youtube that is the same noise.

 

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Mine is not as bad as that, but it also has the somewhat random nature.

 

That is somewhat amplified in the video, but its definitely the same noise. Also mine got a lot louder earlier today. I am thinking at the moment that some air passed through the pump at it amplified the noise. But I am not sure. It hasn't done it since. But it is still making that ticking noise heard in the video.

 

Right now I can get it replaced instantly, if you think I would be wise to try that.

 

Well the front mounted was just it seemed easier at the time. Two fans on the front, one on the back. Had I realised though that the H115i throughput was as low as it is, I may not have opted for that approach. I was a little nervous about the top mounted radiator because I have the type of video card that vents in to the case so listening to the arguments it did make sense that it would make the CPU a fair bit warmer if the radiator was directly above the graphics card ~ but having never tried it, I wasn't sure.

I am of the opinion that is electro-mechanical noise and not bubbles. The gurgle I was referring to would be more reminiscent of an aquarium. The video is more like the clicking/ticking often associated with this generation of coolers. If you can hear that over your fans with the case shut from your desk, I would replace it. However, be aware this is a somewhat frequent complaint. There is no guarantee on the next one.

 

As for the front vs top mounting the H115i, in a 740 the GPU heat should not be a big deal. If I can run 2x970@225w each, then only a 980 Ti or similar AMD card would even register. Most people do not need to lower their CPU temp by 3C when gaming and gains in case air management outweigh any secondary heat added to the coolant. In a smaller case, I would not be so quick to dismiss it, but lots of room in the 740.

 

One thing to know ahead of time is those SP140L fans are even less friendly when inverted as exhaust in the top. This is related to the bearing design and is a very common issue with the majority of fan types. The fan will sound a bit coarser when inverted as the blade rubs against the bearing instead of "floating" above it. ML140 and AF-14i fans have different bearing types and do have the grinding issue when inverted. I might secure a replacement set of fans before moving it up top.

 

One possible way to approach this would be to get a pair of AF140's or the other fan we discussed for the bottom of the case. They would also work well in the top. With the H115i in front, put 2x140 on the bottom and the let the case vent air out the back and passively up top. If you were to top mount the H115i, Those same fans can go the front intake, leave the bottom area filter with no fans, and the top and rear as exhaust. You would still be able to maintain your positive air pressure in both configurations by altering the front fan speed. Again, if you have more direct cooling concerns for components, the 3x120 in the front would be more effective than 2x140, which could then go back to the bottom as supplemental intake. As you mentioned, you don't need to do all of this at once a pair of 2x140 seems like all you need for the next step.

Hi hi!

Thank you for the reply.

I think the pump is OK. I have been paying attention to it today and it seems that the ticking noise is very quiet. I did, however, discover that the Corsair PSU I have is making the same ticking noise only louder and is very intermittent, which may well have been confusing things. Anyway, I will keep an eye on things.

 

I have bought two ML140 PRO fans that will be here shortly, to try them out!

 

I will report back later!!

When I moved the H115i radiator to the top of the case, the GPU temperatures came down by about 3 degrees and the GPU fan also slowed down, making the entire PC sound less stressed. However, the CPU H115i fans went up by about 400 rpm and the CPU temperature went up about 8 degrees. I quickly discovered, though, that this was controllable. The case fans on the 740 sit there at about 700rpm, but if you force these upwards then the CPU temperature starts to drop. You can drop the H115i fans back down to about 1200rpm, and with the case fans at about 1000rpm the temperatures are almost back to the same as the front mounted radiator. I believe what's happening is that when the CPU radiator is at the top of the case you absolutely can not allow it to just intake all the air from the GPU. You have to greatly increase the flow of air through the case to vent as much of the GPU heat as you can. The more you vent the better everything is. The sweet-spot seemed to be about 1000rpm for the three AF140L case fans. This would indicate that I would have to change the case fans for ML140 PRO's as well to give the case fans a bit more range. But honestly, it seems worth it. Not only does the system sound better, becuase the GPU fan is going slower, but also it just makes more sense. Add to that to the fact that is you change the graphics card ( to a radial type or hybrid type ) then you just need to drop the speed of the case fans rather than move everything around. My motherboard seems to pretty much run the case fans at the same speed all the time, so I think that they should in fact to linked to the H115i. So I need three more ML140's. Maybe! I am not sure whether it would be wise to run a total of five ML140 fans from the H115i though? If not, what could I do about that?

I think the only remaining issue may be case pressure. I have three fans blowing out and only two in. I could play with that later on.

 

Thoughts anyone?

No, you can't run 5 ML140's through the H115i and you would need something like the Corsair Commander Pro to tie your system fans into coolant temp. My preference in the past has been to use VRM temperature for fan control. On Asus boards with an Optimized power phase setting, that value would scale up and down nicely with CPU/GPU use making things easy. However, they have been screwing with the BIOS power phase control options for the last several months and this no longer works. Your hardware specs are not listed and I don't know what board you are on, but your options are directly related to that. I am not sure I would take the time, effort, and expense to tie everything in the coolant temp, unless you can't find another viable means of control.

 

Don't get too caught up in trying to shave 2-3C of a temperature value that is only in the 40's or 50's well below the limits or even the caution zone. Sure, you can probably lower case temps a few more degrees by blasting ML140's at 1900 rpm, but I wouldn't necessarily consider that a good plan for most people. Everything will start to get loud in the 140mm size as you go past 1000-1100 rpm, no matter the fan.

 

Just a rough calculus at 1000 rpm all the way around:

 

Intake: 2xAF140 front intake (60 cfm x2) = 120 cfm

Exhaust: 1 AF140 = 60 cfm + 2SP140L (radiator restricted) ~45 cfm combined=105 total

 

That is a rough estimate to be sure and gauging exact flow rates requires specialized equipment, but the easy thing to do is dangle a little string behind the rear mesh/PCI-E slats in back. I will probably blow out a little. That is what you are looking for. You can always adjust fan speeds to tinker with the ratio. Running the same fans and cases, I found 700-800 RPM to be the sweet spot for the AF140 family when gaming. The gains above that were irrelevant compared to increases in noise.

 

CPU core temps are dynamic to say the least and very application specific. What you are really trying to do is manage the coolant temp (H115i temp) in the radiator. That is your basis for CPU temperature and the variable directly affected by the radiator fans. You should not need 1200 rpm on the SP140L when up top. You can probably get away with 500 at idle and 800-1000 max(!) during non-100% loads. I routinely cap my fan speeds at 1200 when testing and it makes little difference on a CPU pulling 215 watts. You are a lot less than that.

 

The default presets Quiet/Performance etc are not golden values and the entire system is temperature dependent. In Winter, the presets may be just fine. In Summer, if you start at coolant temp of 33C at cold boot, you are going to hit the 2000 rpm@40C as soon as your start doing something. You don't need that and you can't reduce the coolant temp below the initial room/case temp ambient. Coolant delta is going to be 6-10C for most prolonged activities. You may find little difference between fan speeds and recognize that 35 vs 37C coolant temp represents a 2C CPU core temp increase. Probably not worth an extra 600 rpm to achieve. This has a secondary effect of drawing in too much heat into the radiator zone if you blast the H115i fans and overpower the rear 140mm exhaust. You want the rear exhaust to get as much GPU waste heat out as possible and not through the radiator.

Hmm, yes, that all sounds about right.

 

I actually think my main issue right now is that I don't have reasonable control of the case fans. As you say, I need 500rpm at idle and 1000rpm at full load ( or something similar ). I also, perhaps, need to play with the rear fan speed independently. But right now they are sat at 700rpm pretty much all the time. They do vary, but not by enough and the important thing is that when the system goes to full load they don't go up enough and are too slow to respond anyway.

 

My plan to run them from the H115i may well improve matters, but it could easily end up with the system making too much noise. I would guess that I would end up in a case fan range of 900 - 1300 ish. A bit too high. And most importantly I can't do anything about it if it makes too much noise.

 

It may be easier to buy the Commander now and keep the AF140L's.

 

Just that Commander is SOOO expensive.

OK I looked in to the alternatives and decided ( largely based on just pure fun factor ) to buy a Commander Pro. I like the Link software so I really thought it would be just cute to open up it's full potential. I also bought a new RM750i power supply to replace my existing supply which developed a strange noise. It works perfectly but the noise is seriously annoying. The RM750i is more than I need, but it just so happened it was on sale this week, so cheaper than the lesser supplies. At the moment the plan is not to replace the AF140L's, but this is a learning exercise so I won't be disappointed if I have to.

It can be tricky to find a good control variable for case fan speed. I still use VRM temperature, but not all boards have that as an option and Asus ruined my fun by blocking off the optimized phase setting in the BIOS. Another option is your motherboard likely has 1 temp probe 2 pin connector on your board. A $6 thermistor wire can then be used to monitor a specific temperature. Hopefully, your BIOS allows you to base fan control from that. The Commander Pro certainly will and can handle up to three of those. I use one on the exit end of my GPU radiator to control its fan speed. Unless you are trying to directly cool a component by putting a fan on it, the purpose of your case fans is to remove the air from inside the case and replace it with cooler external air. To that end, slow and steady often does just fine. The case air will heat up because the GPU is now cranking out 250w at each interval. You can't stop that, only keep pushing its radiant heat out. To that end, one potential placement for a thermistor would be the same as mine --- exhaust air temperature. It would the same as your ambient case temp at idle (~25-33C) and likely rise quite a bit when under constant GPU load. That would give you a large scale to make gradual adjustments. You could also place it somewhere in the interior for a true ambient temp reading (away from the GPU), but the scale would be smaller. Lots of potential uses there.

 

I wouldn't worry about the AF140L fans. That is definitely not a limiting factor at this point and I somewhat long for the days when I had 5 of them of my Air 540 and it was this quiet little box.

The Link software is fun. Although I am finding the Commander Pro disappointingly buggy ( it really hates controlling the AF140L's ) it is still great fun playing with the fans. Honestly I am surprised at Corsair for not testing this product before they released it. I may well be forced to replace the AF140L with PWM fan, because the Commander simply will not recognise voltage controlled fans properly. What amazes me is they are Corsair fans. You'd think it would recognise it's own fans. Anyway, that's not a bad thing because playing with the fans I really have noticed that the AF140L's can be rather noisy. They aren't bad, but they aren't smooth at all. I don't mind this, I always accept that mistakes will be made with money while experimenting!! But I am still disappointed with some of the Corsair products I have purchased.

Overall I like Link and the Commander Pro, but I can also see that Corsair really need to get their act together on these products. They are going to lose a lot of customers because they simply do not work as advertised.

The new power supply is extremely disappointing. It makes even more noise than the old one. The moment it's under load ( and my system barely loads it at all) it makes an extremely irritating electrical noise. That's being replaced today but if that makes any noise then I am afraid it will be the last Corsair PSU I will ever buy.

I do like the way that the Corsair PSU integrates in to the Link system but it's not really essential. If I have an overall criticism of Link ( other than the fact that it doesn't work ) it is that it should integrate better with the motherboard and other manufacturers products. It is simply not reasonable to expect people to buy 100% Corsair.

I like Link because it very quickly allows me to fine tune things, with a nice user interface, and everything is in one place. It's great. For example, I discovered that placing an additional top and bottom fan in the 740 I could keep them still during light load and was able to switch these on when the graphics card gets above a certain temperature. This had the effect of cooling the graphics card, and knocking off a few degrees, but importantly the graphics card fan speed fell by 30%. Since it makes more noise than anything else in the system the overall effect was to reduce the noise the PC makes when working hard. I suppose this wouldn't work for everyone, but it certainly does work well for this system.

Well the new PSU arrived and thankfully that is silent. So now I am just trying to sort out the Commander Pro. It's getting close!