Introduction

Silence is a wonderful thing, especially when it’s with your computer. With the rise of HTPC’s and the gamers demand for silence when shooting there favourite alien, many companies have jumped onto the band wagon and created silent or at least very quiet fans. Vizo is one such company and they have bought out the ultra quiet super muffle and the automatically speed adjusted freezer fans. Let’s see if they can offer some silent peace in a usually loud case.

About Vizo

VIZO Technology Corporation is a leading global manufacturer and designer of computer peripheral products serving customers around the world. Established in Taiwan in 1992, VIZO has expanded and now operates in the market completely reorganized and prepared to meet the demand for high quality products which are “Made in Taiwan”.

Features

• Magnetic long-life bearing dramatically extends fan lifetime
• Automatic fan speed control via a thermal sensor (Freezer only)
• Reliable & stable
• Ultra quiet / long life

Specifications

Freezer:

• Dimensions : 80 x 80 x 25 mm
• Rated Voltage : 12 V
• Operating Voltage : DC 7 V ~ DC 13.2 V
• Starting Voltage : DC 7 V
• Power Consumption : 1.7~2 W
• Fan Speed: 1900~3000 R.P.M.
• Air Flow : 28.5~44.3 CFM
• Noise : 20~34.5 dBA
• Life Expectancy : 50,000 hrs

Super Muffle:

• Dimensions : 80 x 80 x 25 mm
• Rated Voltage : 12 V
• Operating Voltage : DC 7 V ~ DC 13.2 V
• Starting Voltage : DC 7 V
• Power Consumption : 0.84 W
• Fan Speed: 1500 R.P.M.
• Air Flow : 24.5 CFM
• Noise : <17 dBA
• Life Expectancy : 50,000 hrs

The Package

Both the fans come in the same basic package consisting of a box with an odd, angled opening. The super muffle (innuendo or not you decide) comes with a green and grey colour scheme which looks good with its bright / dull contrast. The freezer comes with a blue and black colour scheme, and a window in the front. Both boxes have features splashed around on the front.

The back of each of the cases is again, basically the same featuring the Vizo logo and fan name at the top followed by features, specifications, a diagram explaining the magnetic bearing and a “what the package includes” section. This is well laid out and informative, nothing to get excited over but it still gives you what you need to know.

In the package there is the fan (obviously), 3-4 pin power adapter and 4 mounting screws. It’s a shame that there are no anti-vibration pegs to help lessen noise even more.

When out of the boxes the fans feel fairly well made and look quite nice with their blue and green centre stickers. The wires feel good as they are covered in braided material and then coated with some sort of rubber which gives a feeling of quality and durability.

The 3-4 pin adapters are very useful for those of us who don’t have enough 3 pin sockets on our motherboards or who want to run all their fans from a single 4 pin Molex plug. 

One potential problem I noticed with the fan blades is that they are not entirely smooth which could trap a lot of dust, thus reducing performance, and of course more importantly, make your case look bad.

Installation

I am using an old centurion 1 case which only has 2 80mm fan slots on it. One of these is behind my hard drive cage and already has a fan that’s incredibly awkward to get out, so I left it there. Instead I installed the super muffle at the rear of my case and with a good’ol bit of British ingenuity I cable tied the freezer and the fan that was in the muffles place on to the front of my case. When I actually screwed the fan into the back slot it was a very easy install. It was then just a case of plugging the fans in.

Testing

To test these fans I’ll look at how well they perform in a loaded system by playing Half Life 2 on full settings. I will also see how quiet they are when performing day to day tasks and see the amount of dust built up on them after a week. For the freezer I will also test its thermal sensor and response to heat by placing a flame near the thermistor poking out of it and see how the fan speed changes.

First of all, putting my system under load, with half life 2 on full settings, made my computer heat up a fair bit. My motherboard controlled the fans automatically and with the fans running at full speed not much could be heard but the temperature stayed under 40 degrees (normal temp 32). The slight sound that could be heard coming from the fans was very faint and would have been inaudible with anti-vibration pegs.

Alternatively I plugged them into my fan speed controller and turned them down to about 2/3 of normal. This meant my system gained about a degree of temperature for the sake of silence – I’d call that a fair trade.

During normal day-to-day use, the fans were silent most of the time when both being controlled by my motherboard. However when my office got hot the freezer fan did start vibrating in its cable ties which rattled a bit but this was solved with a simple tightening of the tie – not the fans fault.

Holding a flame up to the thermistor on the freezer caused the fan to speed up massively in a very short amount of time. I was surprised at this and how much air it was pushing – it practically blew the flame out.

The dust build up after a week was surprisingly small for the freezer with just a little bit on the tip of each fin. However the muffle was a bit dustier being right under my PSU and opposite my CPU cooler. This was still only a little bit of dust that would take a while to build up to anything substantial.

Cost

At about £4 these fans are a real bargain. Perfectly adequate cooling and cheap, what more could you ask for?

Conclusion

Both these fans are very quiet and push a good amount of air. If I had to choose I’d definitely go for the freezer just because of its built in ability to respond quickly to its ambient temperature. However it might also be worth buying some anti-vibration pegs to take that last little whir away.

Pros

• Cheap
• Simple
• Fair looks
• Includes 4-pin adaptor
• Long life
• Not much dust

Cons

• No anti-vibration pegs