New Metal Alpacool Apex Stealth Fan with some Impressive Numbers

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Igor of Igorslab seems pretty excited about these new fans from Alphacool.

He claims them to be revolutionary, with static pressure and airflow at low noise levels that previously has never been seen, and compared to other fans like Noctua's NF-A12x25 he may have a point.

https://www.igorslab.de/en/alphacool-apex-stealth-metal-power-fan-in-an-exclusive-review/

Reportedly Alphacool had to completely reinvent the wheel with these fans. I bet they won't be cheap, but they seem pretty awesome.
 
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These fans look pretty bad ass. I think they going to go for around $30 each which is not too crazy for a high end fan. I am not willing to drop $300 to replace all my fans for them tho.
 
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When it comes to the performance, wow is really the only appropriate word. If these really do sell for the ~30 euro mentioned in the article, it will be hard to purchase any of the other fans. Looking specifically at the comparison to the Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM, the Alphacool gets up to about 1900 RPM before it gets to the noise level that the Noctua starts out at! As a case fan, these will be hard to beat. Due to their weight, they may not be the best choice for tower coolers or radiators.

Now as to Igor's enthusiasm to the process of making these fans, there really isn't anything that revolutionary to them as the basic principles used are well-known. What is revolutionary is a computer fan company taking these principles and putting them into an affordable package. At 30 euro, I can't imagine Alphacool has a very high markup right now, so if you can get some on the market for that price, probably be good to snatch them up quickly.
 
t1337duder said:
So...who wants to be the first one to lose a knuckle?
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I'd be kind of curious about how dangerous they are. If they can cause scrapes and scratches fairly easily, that might be a deal breaker for me. I accidentally touch fans all the time when making minor adjustments in my case.
 
No RGB? pass, ill wait for the good shit to come out, not this industrial looking crap.
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I'd be kind of curious about how dangerous they are. If they can cause scrapes and scratches fairly easily, that might be a deal breaker for me. I accidentally touch fans all the time when making minor adjustments in my case.
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I have metal fans ive used in other projects, i just put the wire grill on the backside as well
 
Guess we are coming back to the high rpm delta days where you had to have fan grills on everything. I wasnt worried until I finally got bit by a delta, then it was grills on all my fans after my blood sacrifice to the computer gods.
 
Starfalcon said:
Guess we are coming back to the high rpm delta days where you had to have fan grills on everything. I wasnt worried until I finally got bit by a delta, then it was grills on all my fans after my blood sacrifice to the computer gods.
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Right? like we have had high performance fans forever. Then the shift did move toward fancy ones with leds or led arrays in the blades to display images, then the ugly brown silent fans got popular. Now we are wanting high air flow again.
 
cool, bet theyll cost a pretty peny but did i skim to quick? cause i dont see "metal blades" only "metal frames"...
 
Darunion said:
No RGB? pass, ill wait for the good shit to come out, not this industrial looking crap.

I have metal fans ive used in other projects, i just put the wire grill on the backside as well
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How much does the grill effect air flow and noise?
 
i have 4 case fans (3 intake, 1 exhaust) and 2 fans on my DH15. Thats 6 fans, so $180. Not sure if that is worth it. Maybe just replace the four Artic P12s?
 
vegeta535 said:
These fans look pretty bad ass. I think they going to go for around $30 each which is not too crazy for a high end fan. I am not willing to drop $300 to replace all my fans for them tho.
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When considering good Noctua, Corsair and Lian Li 120mm's can be $35-50ea, these fans don't seem expensive comparatively, assuming similar performance.

Really like the look of the metal, and won't be surprised if they get copycatted by lower-tier manufacturers.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm with you on that, but another solution could just be to have some discipline and power it off before sticking your hands inside :p
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Yeah, that's not going to work. How many times do I need to get zapped by the electric fence before I unplug it before I mess with things? Fan injuries are just part of doing business.
 
This does look impressive from a performance standpoint. Its nice to see some materials and design improvements as wel as new tech. I wonder why they're not using maglev bearings on something like this? Cost and/or patents perhaps? The info PDF there says an ARGB version will be on the way for those who prefer it so that should be interesting.

NightReaver said:
Only fans I'd be wiling to pay a premium ones for nowadays are the ones that can be linked together without wires.

When slapping 8 fans on a rad I get a bit tired of the wires.
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This seems to be a big feature in latest generation "high end" (and high priced) fans, along with things like embedded sensors and the like. Hopefully Alphacool will be able to offer that featurea as well at least at some version of these fans.
 
Well I mean if you flip them so they go between the filter and the radiator then no place for fingers to go.
With proper cable management having things touch the blades and get shredded shouldn’t be much of an option.

But given their stats these make good radiator fans.
 
Need to see some more reviews, but if these can move the same or greater air at higher static pressure while having lower noise in a given RPM band, then I think I'll be giving up my mix of Noctua F and AF chromax radiator fans.
RanceJustice said:
This does look impressive from a performance standpoint. Its nice to see some materials and design improvements as wel as new tech. I wonder why they're not using maglev bearings on something like this? Cost and/or patents perhaps? The info PDF there says an ARGB version will be on the way for those who prefer it so that should be interesting.


This seems to be a big feature in latest generation "high end" (and high priced) fans, along with things like embedded sensors and the like. Hopefully Alphacool will be able to offer that featurea as well at least at some version of these fans.
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Several of those I believe are limited to 3 fans in sequence while I have two 4x120 radiators, so I'll deal with the cabling especially as I don't really want RGB lights on the fans which is where those inter-fan connectors are most useful.
 
They seem to be pretty bad ass but they're so aesthetically different than anything else, it's kind of an all or nothing swap. I have 4 140s so I'll wait for those to hit before deciding. Or ideally wait for them to offer all black options.
 
Teenyman45 said:
Need to see some more reviews, but if these can move the same or greater air at higher static pressure while having lower noise in a given RPM band, then I think I'll be giving up my mix of Noctua F and AF chromax radiator fans.

Several of those I believe are limited to 3 fans in sequence while I have two 4x120 radiators, so I'll deal with the cabling especially as I don't really want RGB lights on the fans which is where those inter-fan connectors are most useful.
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I think its one of those nice to have options - the amount of people who need 4+ fans is pretty small and enthusiast leaning, so their ability to also set up cables should not be limited. For the others who are setting up 2 or 3 fan configurations (or double that, in the case of push pull which...I know still happens but seems to be rarer these days. Haven't looked into it) the ability to have cableless connectors that can basically all sync together fan speeds, report temperature sensors or other info, and lighting if the user desires it could be beneficial ; its less needs for external fan controllers and/or separate on-board connectors. It seems it should be possible to do both things on a high end product like this.

Edit: reading through the PDF it seems there is some sort of daisy chaining solution which is nice, but it may very well just be a channel to hide the standard connector as opposed to those embedded separate ones on stuff like the LianLi UniFan or Corsair QX series.

hititnquitit said:
They seem to be pretty bad ass but they're so aesthetically different than anything else, it's kind of an all or nothing swap. I have 4 140s so I'll wait for those to hit before deciding. Or ideally wait for them to offer all black options.
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According to the PDF that Darunion posted, the all black version is one of the launch variants. Apparently its going to be a black fan in all of these cases, but the frames will either be Chrome / Silver, White, Black, or Gold. There will also be a normal version of each of those colors which caps out at 2000rpm and a Power Fan variant that goes up to 3000rpm (while still being 12V rated for both it seems). Those are the ones released in the first wave. They claim that the 140mm versions, the ARGB versions, and the Enterprise Solutions version w/integrated fan grill will come later.
 
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NightReaver said:
Only fans I'd be wiling to pay a premium ones for nowadays are the ones that can be linked together without wires.

When slapping 8 fans on a rad I get a bit tired of the wires.
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I'm just going to chime in that I posted this in my build thread (and all over the internet) a few years ago before these things hit the market.


Zarathustra[H] said:
Also, here is where I give away a free business idea to any premium fan manufacturer who wants it.

1.) Make a fan. A good fan. Static pressure, low noise all of that.
2.) Give it a detachable modular fan cable.
3.) Put little golden fingers on all four 8 sides of the fan, connected by wires internally to the motor.
4.) Manufacture little jumpers, you can just press down, joining two adjacent fans electrically.
5.) Voila. Now you only need one fan wire to the fan closest to the source. The rest are joined to eachother using jumper clips.
(be sure to include either two different sizes, or universal joiner clips so they fit the two different spacing standards for radiators)

Feel free to steal this idea. I'm sure as hell never going to use it.
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Maybe someone reads my bullshit after all? :sneaky:

You're welcome :p
 
I'm using nearly all alphacool fans right now (8 120s and 1 140) and have been really liking them vs my previous corsair and TT fans.

modmymods.com is a stateside distributor that I did 99% of my new build through. Awesome guys.
 
What's the refund/return like stateside? That's a lot of change to be taking a risk over
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm just going to chime in that I posted this in my build thread (and all over the internet) a few years ago before these things hit the market.




Maybe someone reads my bullshit after all? :sneaky:

You're welcome :p
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We had some of that 20+ years ago with the panasonic panaflo fans. They were the best fans back then, quiet and moved a lot of air. Still going strong in a few of my cases since I got them in the late 90's. Rip sidewinder computers though, bought so many panaflos and deltas from them.
 
so reddit is saying that no way this review was unbiased, that igor has taken money etc.. in the past. Any truth in this? I am tempted to see how these perform as case fans to upgrade the Arctic P12s.

hmm, modmymods has them coming out in a few months and 10% cancel fee. I'll wait for reviews

"Alphacool Apex Fans Now Available for Pre-Order

Estimated Ship Date: Late 2023 / Early 2024​

*Please note: Any cancelled pre-orders will be subject to a 10% cancellation fee*"
 
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