Antec Cyclone Blower Case Fan for Any Expansion Slot
by Antec
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Antec Cyclone Blower Case Fan for Any Expansion Slot
Customer Review: Surprising little blower!
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this fan to move warm air out of the computer case. My experience with this product has been somewhat different than some of the other reviewers. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of products made in China but it's getting increasingly harder to avoid them. The fan I received was solidly built and did not appear shabby to me. Installation was a snap. I just removed the slot cover in the back of the computer case that was held in place with one bolt and installed the fan in it's place. The fan is nestled in the open slot above the fire wire card. I don't use the fire wire ports so I'm toying with the idea of removing the fire wire card to increase air circulation in the case. The power connector for the fan is the 4 pin Molex type and has both a male and female connector for added flexibility. This worked out great for me since my motherboard didn't have a provision to plug in another typical 3 pin connector. I just used the Molex connector that was available. If all your Molex connectors are being used, there are splitters that are available.
The fan is very quiet and I can barely hear it, if at all. (Maybe my hearing is starting to go in my old age!) I put my hand at the back of the vent to check the fan operation and was surprised at the amount of air it was moving out of the case. It seemed like a lot compared to the size of the fan. On a side note, the fan I received didn't look exactly like the one in the picture but more importantly, it does the job. All in all, I feel that this is a great product and well worth the price.
Customer Review: This little fan saved my graphics card!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been slowly upgrading my VAIO desktop pc and was nearly done until my NVIDIA 8800 GTS double slot graphics card started to freeze in midplay. I was sure it was the heat. The graphics card got way too hot. Unfortunately my power supply which had to fans and the pc fan were not cutting it. The graphics card was so big it left no room for ventilation. Upon touching the card after an hour of game play, I was supprised it had not burned out on me (literally). I sacrificed my tv tuner card to see if additional ventilation would help but it didn't. I nearly gave up on PC gaming as I had spent so much just to upgrade my pc so I decided to shop around and see if there would be a fan I could replace my stock fan with.
I then found this little gem....I had the extra card slot right under my graphics card so I decided to go for it. It's amazing how something so simple can resolve your high tech problems! Super easy to install. You don't even have to connect it to the motherboard. Just slip it in and connect the four pin collector. The fan is constantly on but it's quiet and I can actually touch my graphics card without pull away because of the heat. It's now touchable and feels only warm to the touch. More importantly, my graphics demanding games are now pushed to my graphics card limit and no freeze ups! If you have an open pci slot right under your graphics card or have any heat issues, this gem is highly recommended!
Customer Review: Fanless Fan
Summary: 3 Stars
This blower uses a turbine instead of fan blades, a novel idea. I installed the blower with my PC lying on its side, with the thin side of the blower facing up. However, when I placed the case upright, the unit began emitting a dreadful noise.
I kept changing the orientation of the case -- upright, noisy; on its side, quiet. So I removed the blower and noticed that when I pressed the rear label, the noise stopped. I removed the label and discovered that the blower rattles unless its shaft is pressed in.
Evidently, the label wasn't seated firmly and therefore wasn't pressing hard enough on the shaft. Gravity did the rest. I solved the problem by cutting a piece of tin the same size as the label and gluing it over the area surrounding the shaft with contact cement.
The blower comes with two Molex sockets, which is fine if you have compatible plugs in your PC. I don't. One of my other fans, a Vantec Stealth, came with two Molex and two three-pin connectors, which facilitated installation. Why don't all fan-makers include two types of connectors?
As far as the fan's functionality, it ejects a fair amount of hot air, enough to cause a 15-degree (F) drop in temperature at the graphics card. I give this blower 3 1/2 stars -- less one star for what I consider a design defect and half a star for not including alternative connectors.
Customer Review: Not effective for heavy cooling
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this blower to help cool off my video card, which tends to run hot and make some games cranky. However, the blower isn't overly strong. Also, the pictures online seem to imply that it could blow air INTO the case, but it only sucks air out. Unfortunately, my video card is long and the blower is short, so the area of my video card that runs hot (where the heat sink and its own fan are) doesn't even benefit from the blower. I'm better off by taking off the side panel and blowing a small house fan into the case, which cost me the same thing as the blower and does a better job of cooling off the entire machine.
The other problem I have is that the blower is rather tall, so by putting it under my video card, it practically sits on top of my sound card, which is two slots down from the video card. Not that I'm worried about my sound card, but if that was something more important, I could see the proximity of the blower's bottom causing heating issues there.
If you have only a very mildly hot machine, and you don't need one specific thing cooled to any great degree, then this might help you out. It seems it's made really to just sit in a wide open area of your PCI slots and cool your machine by only a degree at most. Unforunately, it didn't help me with my specific problem.
Customer Review: Great for cooling off the whole computer case
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this fan so I could get more airflow through my computer case and to keep my graphics card cool. It really does a good job at both. The temperature in my case is 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler since I added this fan. And it only uses 1.68 watts. So you can use one of your four pronged plugs that powers one of your hard drives, plug your hard drive into it, and plug it back into the drive. It comes with a male and a female connector, for just that purpose(it piggybacks on your hard drive's power connector). Or you can just plug it into a spare power connector if you have one. This is the old style power connector, PATA not an SATA power plug. This is also a good fan to cool off your graphics card because it's narrow, it fits between my graphics card and my sound card. There is not much space between my graphics card fan and this fan, maybe 1-2mm at most. But it takes the hot air coming from my graphics card and sucks it right in and out the back of the case. If you have a high profile graphics card, then you'll have to put this fan in another slot. The only thing I don't like about this fan, is the noise level. It's kinda loud. Before I put this fan in, I could hear my 2 internal hard drives. Now, this fan drowns out my hard drives. But other than that, it's a great little PCI slot fan!