be quiet! Shadow Wings 2 120mm/140mm Fan Review

How Will We Test These Fans?

In order to provide an accurate set of comparative results, the following methodology was used.

Test system:

• Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 9 Z270
• Intel Core i7-7700K Delidded w/ NT-H1 under IHS
• Radeon R7 Passive GPU with 2GB VRAM
• 8GB Crucial DDR4 2400 MHz
• 512GB OCZ SSD
• be quiet! Dark Power Pro 800W
• Lian Li T80 Test Bench
• All testing conducted using NT-H1 thermal paste
• Noctua NH U12S

We’d like to say a big thank you to Gigabyte, Noctua, Crucial, Intel, OCZ, be quiet!, and Lian Li for providing us with the above testing equipment and their on-going support.

Testing Methodology

• Each fan is separately connected to the motherboard on the ‘System 1’ connection. This is an independently controlled output that supports both 3 and 4 pin fan connectors.
• The fan is temperature tested at normal operation and at full speed.
• The speed is set under the bios using the ‘full’ profile to ascertain their true maximum speed.
• Fan speeds are measured based on the reports taken from the bios and confirmed again via CPUZ.
• Fan noise output is measured under full speed ‘stress’ conditions.
• Each fan will use their standard connectors. No third-party adaptors or extensions are used.
• Noise levels were tested using a DBA volume tester at a range of around 6″. We usually do not test in such close proximity, we did, however, wish to get more varied results and emphasise louder fans to quieter ones.

Tests Conducted

Two separate tests were conducted for comparison

• Fan RPM speed – Reported compared to true.
• Acoustics – Noise levels produced under stress testing at full fan speed.

Software Used

• CPUZ
• HWMonitor

Please Note!

In regards to fan speed, although the packaging does not indicate as such, most fan speeds are given a 10% (above or below) allowable variance.