Enermax TB Silence and Apollish Vegas Fans Review

1. Introduction2. Enermax Silence and Apollish Vegas Fans3. Testing Methodology and Performance4. Acoustics Performance5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

KitGuru staff always use the best quality fans we can find and this week we already reviewed the excellent Silverstone 18cm Penetrator.

Today we are going to look at several fans within new cooling ranges, from Enermax. The 120mm and 140mm TB Silence fans (UCTB12 and UCTB14) and a glitzy 140mm Apollish Vegas fan (UCAPV14A14-x).

These are no ordinary fans, because they have a rated lifespan of 100,000 hours which is significantly more than the 30,000 to 50,000 hours quoted by many manufacturers.

All three fans we are looking at today focus on reducing noise and the UCTB12 and UCTB14 are quoted to produce only 11dBa and 15dBa respectively. The 140mm Apollish Vegas is said to emit around 15dBa. They all also incorporate Twister Bearing Technology which we will detail later in the review.

Enermax Fan	UCTB12 (12cm)	USTB14 (14cm)	UCAPV14A14-X (14cm)
Dimensions (mm)	120x120x25	139x139x25	139x139x25
Bearing Type	twister bearing	twister bearing	twister bearing
LED Type	none	none	circular 18 LED light
LED Modes	0	0	7
Speed (RPM)	900	750	700 – 1500
Air Flow m3/hr	71.54	77.13	71.99 – 154.27
Rated Noise (dBa)	11	15	15
MTBF (hours)	100,000	100,000	100,000
Input Power (W)	1.8	1.8	4.8
Rated Voltage	12	12	12
Blades	(9) batwing	(7) turbine	(7) turbine

We received several T.B. Silence fans, a 120mm and a 140mm size. The Apollish Vegas is sold in 4 different colours, silver, green, blue and red. Ours is a blue 140mm model.

Before we look at the individual fans, lets take a look at the Twister Bearing Technology which is utilised on all three designs.

Twister Bearing Technology is an Enermax patent which incorporates a magnetized steel ball with a self lubricated nano bearing these are connected to coils and the concept also uses flexible magnets inside the rotor.

The 120mm and 140mm T.B Silence fans are finished in a plain black gloss colour (blades are partially transparent) which are sure to appeal to almost all enthusiast users on the market due to their inoffensive colours. The 120mm unit is a ‘Batwing' blade design which provides up to 20% higher air flow. The 140mm Unit uses Turbine blades which are a high pressure air flow performance design.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, BatWing!

Holy blade design Batman, they have named them ‘Batwing'! The 120mm model is built with a ‘HALO' frame which is to help with additional air supply and effective reduction of air turbulences. The modular frame is aluminum reinforced with a three piece design for a longer lifetime, this is also patented.

Both 120mm and 140mm fans have a removable blade design which means you can clean them much easier than a regular design.

The fans are supplied with a 3 pin to 4 pin molex adapter which is a great idea for specific build situations.

They come with a genuine sticker of authenticity which can be seen with our flash hitting it on the rear of the unit.

While the T.B Silence fans are high performance, low noise units with an emphasis on understated appearance the Apollish Vegas has been designed with as much glitz and visual impact as possible. That is not to say that the fan is a cheap internally designed unit, far from it. All the technologies incorporated into the T.B. Silence fans are fully utilised on the Vegas fan also. That means you have the Twister Bearing design to keep noise low and airflow high, and removable blade sections for easy cleaning.

This unit differs however because there is a LED lighting system with 18 diodes across the circumference and Enermax claim that the Apollish Vegas shines four times brighter than ordinary LED fans.

As you can see in the image above left, there is also a mini kit supplied with the unit, this includes a sticky mounting system for placing the control box outside the case, this box adjusts the speed from 700 rpm to 1500 rpm, and the air flow from 71.99 cfm to a whopping 154.27 cfm.

There is a nice flash demonstration of the seven available lighting modes on the Enermax website but we decided to take a high definition video of the unit in action.

The intensity of the lighting really does need to be seen to be believed, it can basically light up a whole room if you use the ‘all on' mode. Thankfully once you play about with your case and mod it out, if you are watching a movie at night, you can select the ‘off' mode if you find the lights distracting.

All of this clever lighting is controlled via the box, which has two knobs, one for fan speed and another a button which you can press multiple times to switch between the various modes. You can easily mount this control box on the outside of the case. There is a manual supplied which explains all the functionality of the unit.

You connect the box to the two cables running from the fan, and one of them is then connected to a header on your motherboard or via a converter to your power supply.

This control system can manipulate the 18 diodes separately and to create seven different light effects seen in the video above. The circumference of the fan reminds us of StarGate.

For testing today we are using an Antec Dark Fleet DF 85 Full Tower Chassis

Giving good real world test results of fans is not something thats particularly easy to do – quoting CFM is not much use to the general public and its boring, so for this review are attempting something slightly unusual.

Lets list the system first then I will explain our logic.

KitGuru AMD reference gaming system:
Processor: AMD Phenom 1055T (overclocked to 4.3 ghz at 1.52 volts)
Cooler: Thermaltake Contac 29
Motherboard: MSI 890 GXM-G65
Graphics: PowerColor HD5870 PCS+
PSU: Coolermaster 700w
Hard Drive: Crucial 256GB SSD
Memory: Kingston 8GB DDR3 1800mhz
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64bit

Our 1055T is a fantastic overclocker and we want to thank AMD for sending this hand selected chip to us. We have opted for a low price Thermaltake Contac 29 cooler with a single fan and as a reference point we are using 4 really cheap poor quality 120mm and 140mm chassis fans (30-45cfm and 48Dba rated) directly in the vicinity of the CPU.

Why are we using a low end cooler with such a huge overclock? We know the Thermaltake Contac 29 is going to really struggle to cool this processor with a single fan at such a high voltage. The Contact 29 is not designed to handle a six core cpu with massive increases in clock speed and core voltage.

We want to see what happens if we swap out those bog standard fans with 2x120mm Enermax TB Silence fans (rear left) and 2x140mm Apollish Vegas fans (top). The image above shows our chassis of choice for this review – The excellent Antec Dark Fleet DF 85.

The green highlighted areas are the positions of the 120mm fans (rear) and 140mm fans (top). We have switched the fan positions from exhaust to intake, which means we will have 4 fans blowing directly over the area of the CPU cooler. We also switched the front 3 x 120mm chassis fans from intake to exhaust, therefore basically reversing the airflow of the case. We don't recommend you do this real world as heat rises and this is not ideal … but for the purposes of this review we wanted to ascertain thermal differences between a handful of cheap everyday fans and the high quality Enermax units on review today. Can they help an £18 cooler maintain stable performance on a 6 core CPU at 4.3ghz with 1.52 volts?

Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2
CineBench R11.5 64 bit

First lets take a reference reading with the 4 ‘no name', cheap 120mm and 140mm fans. Room ambient temperatures were kept at a steady 25c throughout our testing via air conditioning. We use diodes to read core temperatures as AMD core temperature reading is still inaccurate via software methods.

The system was not stable and thermal throttling was also occuring, the machine BSOD'ed multiple times. We felt sorry for the Thermaltake Contac 29 but it got its revenge as we burnt our fingers changing over the fans to the Enermax units.

We switched the two rear fans to TB Silence 120 mm units and the top two to Apollish Vegas 140mm fans and set them to full speed which means they deliver a staggering 154 cfm per fan.

Changing the fans to the Enermax units made a significant difference with our CPU temperatures, but the noise levels also dropped. The 1055T was completing our benchmarks and although the diode read temperatures were still much higher than we would have liked, we were quite pleased to see a stable system (with a 1.5ghz overclock) on air with an £18 cooler (remember the voltage is a toasty 1.52v on a 6 core CPU)!

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is  passively cooled and we use a Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition graphics card which is also passively cooled. Ambient noise in the room is kept as low as possible. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

In this instance we have no need for a system so we are using a silent power supply hooked into the fans. The room rates as 21dBa  – the air conditioning unit in the far corner of the room causes this.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

All of these fans are clearly excellent products with the 120mm unit (Batwing blades) generating the least noise of all the fans we have ever tested. It was barely registering above the distant air conditioning in the room. The 140mm unit rated at under 25 dBa also which we would consider to be a class leading result. We can never achieve the same results as manufacturers, so when we see ratings of 15dBA we always know its going to be more, perhaps they measure noise from a greater distance.

The Apollish fan at lowest setting gives the same result as the TB Silence 140mm but when its cranked to full speed it becomes very noticeable. Slightly above mid way gives a rating of around 35dBa which would be perfectly fine for the majority of systems.

We are exceptionally impressed with these results which are lower than all competiting fans we have tested to date in our new sound room.

The Enermax TB Silence range is extremely impressive, the 120mm unit in particular is the quietest fan we have tested to date and barely registered on our monitoring equipment above the ambient noise of the room. The BatWing blades  on the TB Silence 120mm are clearly not just a gimmicky name designed to attract geeky sci fi fanatics.

The TB Silence 140mm is another great performer, with very low levels of noise meaning it is inaudible unless your ear is a few inches away from it. When you consider the airflow is also 77cfm then Enermax are onto another winner.

Our favourite fan today was the Enermax Apollish Vegas – it isn't apologising for being pure bling and ‘in your face'. The 18 LED's not only light up a room but they have more lighting modes than a Take That concert. The pleasure is that when you get bored of the lighting, or you want it off at night, there is a unit which allows you to do so – Enermax even supply a little sticky backed solution to mount it to the rear of your case for easy access.

You can therefore impress your friends and family with your new pulsating chassis, but you can turn the LED's off so you can keep your sanity. Underneath all the flash however the actual fan unit is as good as the TB Silence unit, which is massively important. We don't recommend shoddy products at KitGuru.

You can buy these in the UK from Scan. 120mm fan is £7.03. 140mm TB Silence fan is £8.19. 140mm Apollish Vegas is £21.49.

KitGuru says: These fans are certainly some of the finest quality units we have tested to date and the Apollish Vegas is also a lot of fun. Not often you can say that about a fan.

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