Antec Blue LED 80mm Fan: Blue keeps everything cool.
Written: Jul 08 '03 (Updated Jul 24 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Pleasing blue color. Quiet and easy to install.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: Blue LEDs are as cool as it gets.
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| rice75's Full Review: Antec 80MM Translucent Case Fan w/Blue LED 80MM Bl... |
I have almost completed the reviews of all my new toys that make up my new PC and fit nicely in my Antec Lanboy Case (review coming soon). Everything up until now has been fun and exciting to write about because those parts are the meat and potatoes of the system. But there is one component that is very important to the system. While it won’t give me any more frames per second in Quake III, it is essential nonetheless. That component is none other than the Antec Blue LED 80mm Fan. I liked it so much, I have two in my case.
We must keep cool.
Even with the heatsink and fan on the CPU and the GPU on the video card, it still gets warm inside the case. With the faster machines of today, everything that is made of silicon (every chip in your computer) generates heat. Think of it this way. The AMD CPU is a little slab of silicon, no bigger than a fingernail. There are 37 million transistors within that little piece of silicon. Each one of those transistors has electrons flowing through them all the time. It takes a lot of energy to move those electrons, and that generates a lot of heat. And that’s just the processor. Add in the video GPU, the memory sticks and the motherboard chipset and you get a bunch of heat. Without cool air being introduced into the system, things can get hot in a hurry.
With a pair Antec Blue LED 80mm Fans, we have an effective way of getting cool air in and hot air out. At the front of my case, near the bottom there is a cage for one of the fans. Here I make sure that the fan is drawing air into the case. Near the top of the case in the back is another spot for the second fan. Here the air is blown out. Think basic science: hot air rises. Therefore, in tandem with the fan on the power supply, the second fan whisks away the hot air. Everything inside is cooler, allowing the heatsink/fan combos to work there heatsinking magic.
Appearance is everything
Installation is a snap, just see my forthcoming article, Building your Dream Machine, which will explain how easy it is to install case fans, including this particular one.
The Antec Blue LED 80mm Fan certainly adds a bit of pizzazz to the system, too. They actually look cool, with the blue LED’s positioned in such a way that each fan looks like it has three blue spotlights, shining in the direction of the fan. The light is a pleasing color; it matches the blue from the power supply and really adds a nice touch to the interior of my case. My Lanboy case has a nice plexiglass window, revealing the innards of my system, and the blue LEDs add a great accent to the whole system.
The system, as it stands right now:
Asus A7N8X Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2600
512 MB PC2700 RAM, PNY Technologies
Asus V9280/TD GeForce-4 Ti4200 8X 128 MB Video Card (AGP)
Western Digital 120 GB HDD, WD1200JBRTL
Cendyne 48x24x48 CD-RW
ViewSonic A90 19” Monitor
Antec Lanboy Case with 350W SmartBlue ATX12V power supply
Antec 80mm Blue LED Fan
With the current craze of modding your case, the Antec Blue LED 80mm Fan adds both function and form to your computer. And to top it all off, these fans are quiet! It is such a change to have quietly running fans. Gone are the days of blah-looking black plastic fans that roar like jet engines when the computer was powered on. Goodbye boring black, say hello to geek high-class.
Recommended:
Yes
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rice75
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Member: Tony Rice
Location: Columbus, OH
Reviews written: 73
Trusted by: 66 members
About Me:
Resident Evil 4 will own your soul. Do not resist.
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