[PLUG-TALK] Looking for quiet high reliability fans

[Keith Lofstrom]

Suggestions for reliable, durable, quiet case fans?

I'm looking for 40x40x20mm fans, but I expect the same
manufacturers that make quiet 120mm or 80mm normal sized
case fans will make quiet 20mm fans.  And I want reliable;
Silenx makes fans that are quiet out of the box, but many
claim that they go bad quickly.

This is for a Linksys 24 port gigabit switch I found at
the freegeek store a few days ago.  It works well but the
pair of 10cfm Sunon fans are old and noisy.  The switch
only draws 20 watts, and is going into a protected space,
so for now the top lid is off and the fans are disconnected.
I'm guessing it needs those fans stacked in a hot rack.

If I don't find quiet fans that retrofit, I'll just cut
a hole in the lid and put a very slow 120mm fan blowing
down on the router mainboard.

For the same CFM, fan noise goes down as inverse 4th to
6th exponent of the diameter, so a quiet 120mm fan should
be 16dB to 25dB quieter than a pair of quiet 40mm fans,
and much quieter than the grinders that are in there now.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com