Kama are making some really interesting products of late, and there’s always new takes on old products stepping up to the plate. The PWM fan range means you get controlled power from a fan if your motherboard can handle the control in the bios. In short, for those that don’t know, PWM lets the motherboard step up the fan speed when it needs to, for higher loads, and slow it down to the preset minimum speed when it cools again. The result is a silent system most of the time until you load the rig up.

It’s very simple really, and if you want a lower heat thresh hold you can change all of those settings in the bios. This means you can have a fan that produces exceptionally high CFM levels, running on a low speed, ready in case you need the extra airflow. So noise is always kept down.

There are two fan sizes on test today, and we have the 120mm & 92mm variants. The larger 120mm fan can produce 53 CFM approx in a 25mm deep housing, while the 92 produces a greater 56 CFM approx. Now you can use them for case fans, heatsink fans, blowholes or anything else you want, but remember, at full throttle it will be loud.

The fitting of the fan is normal, but you have to firstly have a motherboard that can handle this connection type, or simply plug it into the supplied adaptor. Either way, you can find a method that suits you and your particular needs. The sound levels on full speed are not that high, but in some enclosed cases, it may produce that dull droning tone that some people find a distraction. (It’s around 31db for those that want it accurately)

So where to test them I hear you cry. The best place for a 120mm is on our heatsink in the new Aston system. The Scythe Infinity is always in need of some cooling and what better place. We set up some laser pointer markers by using the ring binder reinforcer’s so we have constant points to zap with the laser and get accurate temperature readings.

The default fan on the heatsink is the one provided, and it in general keeps the system at 35 degrees. The rpm is somewhere around the 1500-1800 rpm mark and we really have so far not heard it at full speed if I’m honest. So we set about changing the fan. I’m not covering details of how that was done so don’t fake being disappointed.

Anyway, the new fan installed and the system was left running as per normal for a little while. About 5 hours in fact as I got called away and the system was just left running. This put the system in the normal working temperature range anyway so it’s really no problem. The previous temps were 35 degrees @ 1500-1800rpm. The new fan however gave the same temps at a slower speed offering greater cooling at 1400-1600rpm. This time when the maximum heat was applied by gaming or load testing with SiSoft Sandra, the fan stepped up in a BIG way. The maximum speed was never reached once again, a credit to the fans made by Scythe but when it started to power up and cool it was not running that long. This shows it was cooling better, albeit with a slight increase in noise. Not something that I found to be a problem though. The radial heat pattern was less. The further out the thermometer was used the less external heat there was, the fan was doing its job better.

For cooling the case the 92mm fan could not fit sadly, so it was slapped into the 19” rack mount server for some testing. To be honest that server can be a pig to cool. I say that as it’s been the root of distain but it’s so big and spacious its perfect for adding multiple drives. This system is one I love to hate! The drive feeds are 92mm fans and the system feeds are 80mm, as there is no 80mm version we slapped it onto the drives. I never shut the system down to do this, not recommended but I can’t have down time. The existing fan was removed, the new one installed and the existing thermal sensors gave me the read outs I needed. All in all it was worth a couple of degrees, and to be fair the old board does not have the thermal control newer boards do. So it was a case of all or nothing, or a fan controller. Which took time to find a comfortable similar level of noise. In terms of Db for noise it was certainly less for the same sort of temperature, but with added CFM and offering a greater depth of air. This is to say it penetrated deeper into the drive area.

All in all, it’s a great product, versatile and well made. You don’t have to keep it as a PWM fan, so if you want to try it with ‘Full lock & load’ it will certainly step up to the plate. Worth an investment, backed by a fantastic company and expect to see more products similar to this fairly soon. I think it’s the start of something big.