Sunon40x40x20mm 3 pin fan #KDE1204PKVX

Jumping from page to page in my browser looking for a specific fan and the best price. I got it here on Amazon because the prime shipping and all that.I had the fan picked out and found the best price/shipping combo. It arrived and it's the wrong fan.The fan I was ordering is the one pictured on the sellers listing, MB40201VX. What I got was the KDE1204PKVX.It is half my fault for not noticing the item listed in the description is not the same as the one pictured. However it's just bad that they didn't display the correct item or enough information in the description to know the difference (the CFM is different 6.8CFM vs 10.2CFM)In addition to that the other major let down is the fact that it does not come with screws for mounting, so keep that in mind as well. This is the first time I bought fans of any kind that did not include screws.

Sunon is an industrial grade fan supplier (vs all the PC-grade Chinese junk fans out there). Other industrial grade fans are Delta, NMB, Panasonic, Orion, and Papst, Sunon Maglev fans tend to be very long lived. A good bearing design and lubrication is especially important in 40mm fans as they run at much higher RPM than larger fans. The higher speeds create more wear. Maglev bearings are also quieter than ball bearings. But, running at full speed, this fan isn't exactly quiet. It will, however, start and run on 5 volts (instead of the intended 12 volts) and is nicely quiet but, obviously, doesn't move nearly as much air on 5 volts. If you have a motherboard that will control a 3 pin (vs 4 pin PWM) fan, or have another way to slow it down, this is a good choice. Beware that some 4 pin motherboards will only speed control a 4 pin PWM fan.40mm fans are either noisy or move very little air. You can't have both. At least this is 20mm thick which helps it move air than 15mm or 10mm thick fans for a given speed and noise level.

Air bearing fans, often called magnetic bearing, used to very expensive. But this was even cheaper than a less reliable ball bearing fan and only a little more expensive then a sleeve bearing fan, the type that failed. There are YouTube videos showing how to take out the failed fan, lubricate it and reinstall it. The works for a few hours at most. If going through all the trouble to save a $100 charger, much better to install a quality fan instead. I've replaced failed fans on video cards, power supplies and so forth with these magnetic bearing Sunon fans and none have ever failed. 20 years ago, I was paying $30-40 for a fan like this, couldn't believe the low price.

These fans are a little noisy but do move a lot of air for their size. I am using them on the cold side of a peltier cooler to replace some cheap 40x40x10 fans that have stopped working... likely due to the condensation. Hopefully these will last longer. The higher CFM fans have brought the time to make a 10 degree drop in the cooler from 10+ minutes to just a few minutes. As I understand it, MagLev results in less heat generated by the fan VS a normal bearing fan.

I bought this to replace my noctua fan that I bought to replace the original fan that came with the 3d printer. My printer kept on clogging and assembling/disassembling the extruder, I changed the extruder cooling fan to this one instead. Bit louder than noctua fan but a lot stronger than noctua fan but ever since I changed it I never had a single clog.