SilverStone FM122 120mm Fan Review

 

Cooling fans come in all shapes, sizes and colors. When choosing a cooling fan, whether it be for your CPU cooler or just as a case fan, you have many choices. What makes one fan stand out from another? Form me it would have to be the noise to performance ratio, by that I mean how well does it cool while being quiet and does it cool enough to justify the added noise that some fan can put out? Today for review I have the FM122 120mm fan from SilverStone, it is a bit larger than the standard 120mm fans available today, does this larger size add to the performance? Read on to find out what I learned about the FM122 from SilverStone…


 

SilverStone FM122 120mm Fan

Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos

Sponsor: SilverStone

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

The FM122 is a powerful 120mm fan package with manual adjustable fan controller. Equipped with 9 fan blades and possessing a thick 32mm frame, it offers tremendous amount of highly pressurized airflow at levels beyond what typical 120mm fans can produce at the same speed. With the included aluminum speed controller, finding the preferred amount of airflow and noise ratio is a simple task. Constructed out of high strength white colored plastic and finished with calculated grain surface, the FM122 is the ultimate solution for any PC enthusiasts looking to upgrade their 120mm CPU or chassis intake fan.


Features:

High air pressure 120 x 120 x 32mm design

All white fan blades and frame

800rpm ~ 2400rpm speed range

Long-life dual ball bearing motor

Stylish aluminum fan controller

Specs:

DIMENSION: 120 x 120 x 32mm

MATERIAL: Plastic (PC)

COLOR: White

BEARING: Dual ball bearing

RATED VOLTAGE: 12V DC

START VOLTAGE: 7V DC POWER ON / OF

OPERATING RANGE: 7V~13.2V DC

RATED CURRENT: 0.65 Amp (MAX 0.65Amp)

RATED POWER: 7.80W (MAX 7.80W)

SPEED: 800 ~ 2400rpm

STATIC PRESSURE: Max 5.89mm

NOISE LEVEL: 21dB(A) @ 800rpm/42.2 dB(A) @ 2400rpm

LIFE EXPECTANCY: 50,000 hours

A Better Look at Things

:

I have to say that I have always liked the style and look of SilverStones’ packaging. It is subtly done but yet stylish and informative. The front of the box has some basic specs along with a picture of the FM122 and its’ fan controller. There is a small cut out window so you can get a glimpse of the fan itself.

On the back of the box we find the full list of specs and features in a few different languages. The box is fairly thick and will withstand a lot of abuse during shipping, nice quality packaging.

{amazon id=’B0009VGAM2′ align=’RIGHT’}

Unpacking the box we can get a better look at the FM122 and the rest of the contents. The first thing that struck me about the FM122 is that it is larger than most 120mm fans I have seen, actually larger than all the 120mm fans I have, by larger I mean the thickness of it. Included in the box is the fan itself, fan grill, fan controller and installation screws.

The fan itself is very white, I think SilverStone is the only company that makes white colored fans. There are nine blades on the FM122 that seem a bit more curved than a standard fan. In the center of the fan is the SilverStone name and logo.

The back of the fan has another identifying sticker with technical info and and the SilverStone logo again.

The connections on the FM122 include a separate fan speed sensor to connect to your motherboard so you can monitor the speed of the fan. We also find a fan control connector to connect to the 3.5 bay fan speed controller, and a regular Molex connector to power the FM122.

{amazon id=’B000233ZES’ align=’RIGHT’}

The SilverStone fan speed controller is made entirely of aluminum and has some stylish decorations on it, along with the SilverStone name and logo. The control knob is fairly thick and made of aluminum as well, there are marking on the bay plate to indicate the settings of the fan speed.

The actual cable to connect the fan is fairly long and should be able to reach anywhere in any size case for easy installation.

The FM122 120mm fan is heavier than most fans, at first I actually thought the FM122 was metal, but upon further inspection found it wasn’t. I assume the weight of the fan is due to the increase in size and the thickness of the fan housing, it is quite a bit thicker than standard 120mm fans.

The FM122 itself seems very sturdy and well made, and the 3’5 bay insert is well designed as well.

Installation, Testing and Comparison

To show you just how much larger the FM122 is than other fans here is a picture of the FM122 between two standard sized 120mm fans. You can see there is quite a bit of a difference in the thicknesses of them. The SilverStone FM122 seems to be a heavy duty fan, something like and industrial grade product might be.

Installed the fan speed controller is very easy, you just need a free 3.5 bay. It mounts the way a floppy drive or other 3.5 bay device does with screws for mounting.

For the fan installation I thought of just using it as my case fan but then I was wondering just how I would test it’s performance… Then it hit me, I just received a Thermalright SI-128 CPU cooler and it does not come with a fan, so I thought what better way to test the performance of the SilverStone FM122 than to use it to cool my CPU.

{amazon id=’B000BT0GJU’ align=’RIGHT’}

Ambient temperature was approximately 27c during testing. To achieve load Prime95 was run for approximately 35 minutes.

The comparisons are for the SilverStone running at the lowest possible speed, at 1200RPM to match the Coolermaster 120mm used in the original tests, and on full speed to see the differences that the speeds make.

According to the specs the fan is supposed to run between 800 and 2400RPMs, the lowest I hit was 600RPMs and the highest I hit was 2700RPMs. I am assuming that the differences are the motherboard sensor. I used two different programs to monitor the speeds, ASUS AI Booster and ASUS Probe, both of which came fairly close to each other in reporting the speeds of the fan.

Up to about 1600RPMs the FM122 is barely audible, after that it gets progressively louder to an actually annoying level at the 2700RPM mark or 2400RPM as the specs say, but according to the specs it is running at 42.2dba at that high speed so yes that is loud and is expected to be, but when the case is close, or the side panel is on, the sound does get noticeably lower.

The results of the tests show that the SilverStone FM122 is not a bad choice for a fan, but not that great of a choice either for a CPU cooler fan. Combining the Thermalright SI-128 and the FM122 still does beat the Intel stock cooler by a wide margin though.

Next I decided to see how the FM122 helped cool the case, I had to switch the CPU coolers as the Thermalright SI-128 is quite large and it blocks the installation of a rear exhaust fan on this particular case. So I installed the Scythe Mine cooler, which works fairly well at cooling the Intel CPU.

To test how well the FM122 cools a case and system, I will be using the motherboard temperature sensor, CPU sensor and the JetArt ThermoEye (watch for the review of the JetArt ThermoEye soon!) to measure ambient temps of the case. I will be measuring the temps with the SilverStone FM122 on high speed and low speed only.

Sensor #1 is located directly on top of the Scythe Mine CPU Cooler, while Sensor #2 is located on the bottom of the case. The CPU Sensor is the built in motherboard sensor as is the MB sensor. I unplugged the SilverStone FM122 as well to see what the comparison is with no fan at all.

Onto the testing part of this…

From this set of tests we can see that using the SilverStone FM122 does drop the overall case temperatures a couple degrees. We can also see there is an obvious improvement over using no fan at all, which is to be expected.

One final note, and it’s a personal opinion, but I think the SilverStone FM122 could use a couple white LEDs added to it as I think it would make it look very good. Those with windows in their case can appreciate the addition of the white LEDs, and it would really show off the fan as well.

Summary:

Obviously having an exhaust fan on any computer will help it out quite a bit, but there are system out there that do not come with exhaust fans, usually those are the pre-built types of systems. Lots of times some of those systems do come with fans but they are just not that high of quality and don’t last long, they also don’t have controls for the speed of the fan either. I’ve found that sometimes fans that come pre-installed are noisy as well, this can be either with an empty case or with a pre-built system. So if you need a new fan, or just want to upgrade or add a fan to an existing case then the SilverStone FM122 might just be what you are looking for. It is very well made, looks cool, and has an included fan controller as well. The SilverStone FM122 does what it is advertised to do and there are no surprises here about the performance or noise level, it tells you right on the box what to expect in terms of decibels.

DragonSteelMods gives the SilverStone FM122 a 5 out of 5 score.

{amazon id=’B000BWEIFU’ align=’RIGHT’}

Pros:

-Cools well

-Looks great

-Separate bay fan controller

-Long wires for easy installation

Cons:

-Loud at high speeds as stated in the specs

I would like to thank SilverStone for the chance to review their products and their continued support of DragonSteelMods.