Aerocool Shark case fans

[slamscaper]

Anyone else have trouble with these fans in regards to their reliability? I bought over $100 worth of Aerocool's Shark red edition (of the 120mm and 140mm variety) case fans and a little over a year later the bearings are already starting to go. These fans seem to have a good reputation and they aren't exactly cheap, so I'm surprised that they are giving me these problems.

Two of the 120mm fans started grinding\buzzing all of the sudden and it was very annoying. A month later one of the 140mm fans started doing the same thing. This isn't something that goes away after lubrication and I can even feel it rubbing when I spin the fan manually. They utilize fluid-dynamic bearings so I would have expected them to last a lot longer.

 

[GhostRyder]

I have these:
http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16835129061
They are the Aerocool shark 140mm red edition (3 of them) and I've had limited problems. Two are mounted on a 140mm radiator vertically and they have had zero problems. The third is a bottom intake mounted horizontally and it's had a few minor issues. So far for me they are working fine and sounding good, the bottom one just had this odd grease appear on the fins which I cleaned off but it's still silent like the others.

I have not tried dissembling them yet, but if they are rattling, check if you can rma under warranty or try greasing them yourself.

 

[slamscaper]

Not sure why, but the link you posted doesn't work for me. From what you're saying you have the same exact fans I have though.

Maybe I was unlucky with the batch I got, but I find it strange that I would have these problems with three of these fans in such a short time span.

The 140mm Koolance (all black) fan I put back into my system is over 3 years old and it still works excellently. It runs at 1800RPM so it's not like it hasn't been beat on over the years either. I also have three 120mm Scythe S-FLEX fans and they still work great as well, despite the fact that they also have a lot of hours on them.

 

[GhostRyder]

Im sorry to hear that, I don't know what to tell ya because other than that strange oil appearing, the fans have been nothing but good to me, ive had them now I believe over a year because I purchased them on 7-18-2012 along with 6 Corsair sickleflow fans.

The link was for newegg, if your not in the US it may not let you view it easily so that maybe whats wrong.

If you want to give this a try, grab some fan grease and follow This Guide.

That should fix your problem with rattling and bearings getting old. I don't know why yours did that, but I have not heard many issues with these specific fans, but theres always a chance of stuff like this happening. I use 2 of my 140's on a radiator and 1 for an intake (Actually, they are all set to intake). If you don't want to mess with fan maintenance, id be happy to make a recommendation of the Cooler Master Jetflo or SickleFlow series of fans for an alternative!

Also Cougar do some Darn good 140mm Fans!

Btw I see your rocking the Corsair 800D Case and a GTX 580, I have that case right now rocking along and I used to have a pair of the PNY LC Edition of those cards. Great cards, great Choice of Case!

 

[slamscaper]

I haven't updated my specs in quite a while, lol. I still use the 800D but I replaced the GTX 580 with a GTX 670. Actually, I was running two 670's in SLI but I had to sell one a few months ago because I'm presently unemployed.

I actually have 4 120mm sickelflow fans laying around. I used them way back when I first bought the 800D (when it launched). I don't care for them because they cause a lot of vibration and noise, even when I'm using rubber dampeners. I try to stick with fans that use newer bearing technology, like fluid-dynamic, hydro-wave, or hydraulic bearings. The sickelflow fans use standard sleeve bearings, which is why they're so cheap.

I guess I'll play around with these sharks to see if I can get them running quiet again. I'm just so let down because I expected great things out of them, but they have been a let down for me. They don't even seem to move as much air as some of the other fans I own (even though the sharks are rated higher), like the S-Flex fans I have now.

 

[slamscaper]

Here's a few pics of my setup that I had been running. Now I no longer have the modded side panel with the two 120mm fans installed (I bought a standard factory side panel and reinstalled it), plus I got rid of one of my 670's. I'm also running a different PSU now, which is a Seasonic Gold X series 1050W.

EDIT* I really miss my secondary 670... These puppies were wicked fast in SLI mode. Of course, one of them is still very powerful. But I used to be able to max everything at 1920 x 1200 and not have to worry. Now I have to watch my AA\SSAO levels and such.

 

[GhostRyder]

Ill post a picture of my setup in a bit when I get home! That sucks to have to sell something like that, but I totally get that, it has happened to me in the past and I had to almost give up PC gaming because all I had was my old gaming laptop, I took a break from building rigs for 2 years because of funds.

As for the sickleflow, mine seem pretty good, I have one that has a slight rattle from time to time that im going to address this weekend actually, but its only when running it below 1200RPM or for like 2 minutes after boot up (So when its cold), but other than that they have been great!

I see you had one of those panels, I almost bought one because I needed more airflow/intake, but I ended up changing a few parts and rebuilding my liquid system and got the temp down an extra 6 degrees Celsius just by adjusting a few things which made me a lot happier. BTW those (or that) 670 would not happen to be the Short 670 that ive heard about? I was looking at it and I don't remember the PCB being that small on a 670.

Also, yeah I understand being disappointed in fans, it sucks when they just don't do what you were hoping for and things like this happen. Mine seem to move more than enough air at least in what I was expecting, but I do notice a strange thing about the intake one (Same fan, same spot like on your case) seems to register at only 1100RPM, I do not know why, im still investigating it because it seems to be spinning at the same speed as the other 2, but im wondering if its the fan controller or the fan is not doing what it is supposed to.

 

[slamscaper]

Indeed these are EVGA's reference 670's, which had the short PCB's. They are looked down on compared to the long PCB versions (FTW edition I think?), but honestly I never had issues with them. They OC'ed well and run cool. I had issues with one when I first bought them, but it turned out to be faulty. Once I replaced it, it was smooth sailing.

I had a decent job over the last ten years so I was able to upgrade very often. I owned two GTX 280's in SLI, a GTX 480, a GTX 580, and two GTX 670's in SLI.

I'm also in Newegg's eggXpert review program, so they send me hardware to review from time to time. The best part is I get to keep whatever they send me, free of charge. What really sucks is I had a X79 build planned because they were supposed to send me a high-end X79 MOBO made by MSI, but they ended up sending me the wrong board (it was a Z77 board) so my plans were shot. Now I'm stuck on X58 until I can afford to upgrade once again. I got sick of not having USB 3.0 so I bought a Roswill expansion card for $15 USD and it actually rocks. I have plenty of USB 3.0 external drives (Newegg is always sending me them to review) and they are around 5 times faster when connected via USB 3.0.

Hopefully, I'll start working again before long so I can get back into building more often. In the meantime I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Newegg will send me a new high-end MOBO. They rarely send me MOBO's land CPU's and such. Mainly they send me wireless routers, hard drives, mice, and keyboards and the like. I just got a couple 802.11ac routers recently.

 

[GhostRyder]

Yea, I just realized those were the reference models, I just forgot off the top of my head the PCB was that short originally. Cool thing about those were you can cram them in just about any case if you remove the stock cooler. I could build a really tiny machine with some liquid blocks on them which was cool because of the performance of the 670 being top notch.

Ah I see, so you had a lot of different 80's series GPU's in the past, I had skipped the 2 series of GPUs going from a pair of 9800s to a pair of GTX 460SEs and 4 480's (If your curious as to why, its because I bought them off a LAN place that went out of business for dirt cheap), then a pair of PNY LC Edition GTX 580's, to my now Pair of Powercolor HD 6990's. The only reason I even swapped from the 580's was because I wanted to go Quad again and I did not have a board that supported it at the time (Only support up to 3 way).

Wow cool, how did you get into that program, sounds like fun!

Yeah, im lucky with my job at the moment because Xerox (which owns the data center I work at) is partners with Best Buy so I can access their discount site and get returns, refurbs, or just overstock items for dirt cheap. I bought my MSI GT70 with a GTX 675m for instance for like 800 bucks so I can feed my need for powerful computers (Could no longer take my current desktop around, its too much of a pain and too heavy).

Im planning on possibly changing out GPU's again and seeing which company gets some Dual GPU cards out again and going from there. Im probably going to get either some Dual R90X Dual GPU cards or 780 Dual GPU Cards (A 790 maybe) and then possibly grabbing a Haswell-E board and chip when those are released.

BTW you would not still have the window for an 800D would ya or remember some measurements, I was curious on how much space between the top window fan and the Metal Frame is there because I was looking at one for my machine to possibly change up some airflow.