Antec Blue 80mm UV Fan review
A few days ago I reviewed the Antec Trilight LED Fan. Today I'm going to take a closer look on another type of fan from the 'modding scene' also from Antec. It cools your system and lights up under UV light, I'm talking about the Antec UV Fans. I've got the blue one for you, which in my opinion looks the coolest. They're also avaible in green and orange.
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Just like the LED fan the UV fan came in a white box and not in a nice retail package, but I'm sure it'll have one when you buy it in a shop or directly from Antec's website (if you're living in the US or Canada). The fan had a transparent blue color, thus bringing in some more color in your case. But I do think that it would have been nice if they also had some UV fans available with a clear UV reactive coat.
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The fan has a 3-pin connector (for RPM readout only) and also a passthrough Molex connector. Special about the passthrough Molex connector is that it doesn't exist out of 2 Molex connectors but out of a special type of passthrough connector that combines a male and female Molex connector into one connector. This is nice because it generates less cable mess. Another feature to decrease the amount of cable mess is the black sleeving of the Molex connector wires.
Features and specifications of this fan
Overall these specifications are like most other 80mm fans. They aren't super high performance 80mm fans which push out 70CFM or more and produce a LOT of noise. But the Antec UV fans have an average airflow and the noise production is also average. Compared to most other UV fans they have a good noise/airflow ratio.
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Also included with the fan was a bag with four case screws. Nice that they thought about it!
Testing
Now I'm going to do some testing to see if this baby is really able to cool down my system. I first took out my intake and outtake fan. I let my system running for a while like that and the heat raised quite a bit. The only running fans were the ones in my PSU, my CPU cooler and my GPU cooler. I wrote down all temperatures I could gather and let the Antec blue UV fan run for 15 minutes as an outtake fan (close to my CPU and GPU) and compared the difference. The room temperature was about 18°C. I've also monitored the RPM of the fan it was running slightly higher than the specs on the site of Antec told me, it was running between 2780 and 2850RPM
Overall from these results, I can conclude that this fan is able to provide good cooling for my system. But how does it looks?? Check out the following pictures to get an idea about it :-).
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The illumination of this fan under direct UV light is very good, but when the UV light points in at the fans at an angle or some distance the effect starts to get weaker. Outside your case like on some of the pictures this isn't a problem but in your case, it gets a little bit harder. You'll have to make sure that the UV light reaches the fan to get a good illumination. A very good solution for this is a round Cold Cathode like you can see in the last three pictures!
Conclusion
The illumination with a normal Cold Cathode in your case is very good but with a round Cold Cathode, the Blue Antec UV Fan really kicks ass! If you're worried about his performance, this fan performance well. See the test results for more details about this.
Price is $7.99 at the Antec Store (for US and Canada) which isn't too expensive, take a look here if you live in another country.
The Good Stuff
- It cools your PC
- The blue UV reaction looks very cool, especially with a round cold cathode
- Passthrough connector combined in one Molex connector and also 3-pin connector for RPM readout
- The black sleeving around 4-pin wires
The Bad Stuff
- Relatively noisy
- Good UV illumination requires UV source to be close by
Added: April 10th 2003
Product reviewed: Antec Blue 80mm UV Fan
Reviewer: LSDsmurf
Score: 8/10