Unboxing & Review: be quiet! Silent Wings 2

be quiet!'s product has received various awards for having outstanding performance, especially on power supplies, cooling fans and CPU cooler. We too, have a very pleasant experience with be quiet!'s products, especially for the Pure Wings 2, Dark Rock Pro 3 and Shadow Rock Slim. 

We'll be examining the be quiet!'s Silent Wings 2 120mm in today's review, courtesy of be quiet!. The Silent Wings 2 is retailed at $ 23.99 (approximately RM69) and can be purchased from NCIX and Amazon. Without any further adieu, let us proceed with the review and see what the be quiet! Silent Wings 2 is capable of.

Specifications

Dimension	120mm x 120mm x 25mm
Bearing	Fluid Dynamic Bearing
Net Weight	180g
Fan Speed	1500 rpm
Noise Level	15.7dbA
Airflow	50.5/85.8 CFM
Static Pressure	1.63mmH2O
Connector	3-pin
Rated Voltage	12V
Rated Current	0.08A
Input Power	2.4W
Input Current	0.08A
MTBF	300,000 h/ 25°C

Unboxing

The Silent Wings 2 comes in a dark minimalist themed box with a silver lining at the left labeled high-end, indicating that the Silent Wings 2 is a premium product in be quiet!'s fan line up.

At the back of the box, there's technical specifications and brief description on the feature of the fan is written in english/deutsch.

There's more details of the fan's feature on the lid such as interchangeable mount, unique fan blade design, bearings etc. At the right you'll find the fan and its interchangeable plastic/rubber mount.

Accessories

The user's guide containing instructions on the installation, where most people don't even bother to read it.

A 3-pin fan splitter with different voltage for voltage based control on the fan speed.

The Silent Wings 2 comes with 2 type of mount, first is the plastic mount shown above comes with 2 type of mounting holes. The rounded hole is used for securing with metal screws, while the other one is used for metal wire fan clip to be mounted on CPU coolers.

The other will be the rubber mount, which we find to have a rather unique because of the letter L and S on each side of it. As written in the user's guide, you'll have 1mm gap between the fan and the mounting spot when the L side facing the fan mount; while the S side gives a clean direct contact between the fan and the mounting spot. 

The washers and push pins that is only applicable for rubber mount.

The main section of the fan consists a 7 specially designed fan blades for silent operation without compromising the overall performance.

 The back of the fan is where the 'high quality' motor controller located (under the sticker). be quiet! claimed that the motor controller is able to minimize electronic noises, but we'll have to find out if that's a legitimate claim.

Sleeved cables is much expected for its premium positioning and it's good to know that be quiet! uses nylon sleeve instead of rubber sleeve.

 Performance Test

Test Rig Configuration
CPU Cooler	Corsair H80
CPU	Intel Core i5 3570K @4.5 GHz
Motherboard	ASUS Sabertooth Z77
Memory	Corsair Vengeance @ 2133MHz
Primary Hard Drive	Crucial M500 120GB
Power Supply	SilverStone ST60F-P 600W
Chassis	Corsair Carbide 300R

We've conducted a system stress test with the test rig as above to generate the amount of heat needed for our test with the Corsair H80 as the only exhaust to remove heat from the chassis. 

Below are the list of 120mm fans used in the test, this is probably the biggest case fan roundup for 120mm fans category we've ever done:

• Noctua NF-F12 IndustrialPPC 3000RPM
• Noctua NF-F12 IndustrialPPC 2000RPM
• Noctua NF-S12B Redux
• be quiet! Pure Wings 2
• be quiet! Silent Wings 2
• Cooler Master Silencio FP 120 PWM
• Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP-15
• Corsair SP120 PWM High Performance Edition
• BitFenix Spetre Pro 120
• Arctic Cooling F12 PWM
• Aerocool Shark 120mm Blue Edition

Temperature

With ambient room temperature of 28°C, we started off by building up the heat inside our system and 40°C is the highest achievable temperature without any intake fan to feed the system components with fresh air.

The best performer in this test is the Noctua NF-F12 IndustrialPPC 3000RPM, capable of providing enough fresh air to cool down the internal temperature to 33°C. The be quiet! Silent Wings on the other hand, placed 4th along with be quiet! Pure Wings 2, Corsair SP120 and Arictic Cooling F12 PWM as the average performer. Still, these fans has done some good job chipping 3°C away from the 40°C is not too bad for a fan of its size.

Noise Level

Moving on to noise level test, our ambient noise level is measured at 42db but as we move our noise level meter near to the test system, we're picking up extra 2db from the system without front intake fan which appears to be coming from other moving parts in our system.

The noise level meter is left stationary in front of the fan tested for 5 minutes each and the average reading is taken as our final data. The winner of this round are both be quiet! Silent Wings 2 and Pure Wings 2 turns out to be the quietest among all fans tested with 48db. The Noctue NF-F12 IndustrialPPC 3000RPM as best performer in cooling performance, scoring the noisiest fan with noise level of 75db. 

Our Verdict

While the be quiet! Silent Wings 2 performs as average performer that is able to produce a fair amount of airflow, its acoustic performance was simply excellent. We can barely hear any noise even when its running at full speed with 12V and supplying 7V allows it to reach a near silent operation by sacrificing some of the performance.  

There's not much to complain about the fan except for its mounting option. The mount provided never actually caters for any application on water cooling radiators as it doesn't allows screws to pass straight through it. It's such a waste for such a good fan to be limited only as case fans and fans for air cooler.  

The retail price of $23.99 is still a pretty reasonable price for a fan as capable as the be quiet! Silent Wings 2 and we highly recommend it to silent PC enthusiasts who desires ultra silent case fan with a good noise over performance ratio. 

Pros

• Aesthetically pleasing
• Solid build quality
• Near silent operation
• Good noise over performance ratio
• Included with adapter for voltage based fan speed control 

Cons

• A little costly
• Not compatible with most self-contained liquid cooler