Performance

 

Fans are often considered a necessary evil, despite their obvious benefit the by product is noise and often times dust. That being said, fans can often be a simple way to spruce up the appearance of your build, and the Vortex is indeed a sharp-looking fan. We weren't disappointed in the amount of air it pushed, and the engineering of the fins seemed to pay off with a nice, centralized air source. This makes the Vortex an especially appealing candidate for items like heatsinks or water cooling, but unfortunately those sort of applications don't play well with the rubber pin approach. You're more than likely going to have to use the traditional fan screws to mount the Vortex in most cases other than a chassis solution, which severely affects the anti-vibration design of the mounting points. True, you still have the pads, but these are somewhat shallow; the threading of the screws still make contact with plastic inside. 

Additionally, though the hydro-dynamic-bearing technology provides a great 300,000 hour estimated life, it didn't help reduce noise as much as we'd hope. The 120mm fan is rated at 17.9dB, it was louder than we expected considering its design especially when compared to fans like the Noctua's tested in the LanOC office. Take that lightly, however: the Vortex is still a quiet, efficient cooling solution, we just think that the Db rating given to it is a little low. 

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The cable is also sleeved black, which is great in any build to help blend in, and maintains the orange-and-black color scheme that identifies the Vortex in such a unqiue way.

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