Cooler Master Excalibur Case Fan Review

Testing a fan is a rather trivial proposition and in most cases you simply need to trust and understand the spec sheet to know what you are getting.  During our tests we used this fan in 3 different senerios.  The first was as a case fan spinning at full RPM to keep heatsinks cool on the test bench.  The second test was replacing a 120mm x 35mm Sunon fan that we normally use on our watercooling setup, and The third was using 2 Excalibur fans on the new Cooler Master V6 GT heatsink.

As a case fan the CM Excalibur did an excellent job and was no louder than a GTX 260 fan spinning at full RPM.  We did have an issue making sure air was moving in the right direction since the pressure cone exiting the fan at more than 45 degrees thus dissipating most of the high pressure air away from the intended target.  As a watercooling fan we were extremely impressed and noticed no loss in cooling performance over the much larger 35mm counterpart.  Finally as a heatsink cooling fan we have to say our hopes were lost.  Not only were the Excalibur fans louder and spin slower than the stock fans, but we noticed a 2 degree increase in temperature under the same heat load.  Not exactly what we had hoped but having the airflow spread out quickly ment that less air was passing directly over the heatsink and allowing it to heat up.

Now for our list of good things and bad things  

PWM fan control
Easy Clean Option
Honeycomb vents
High Pressure Design
Good for Case and Water

Bad for heatsinks
Mounting posts require longer screws
Blade design for pressure not focused airflow

We would like to thank Cooler Master for helping to make this review possible