I love the drama that’s developed. Also playing your signature smoke test music beat quietly before transitioning over gets the blood pumping! OH YEAH BABY!
*buildup to smoke test hype* “Did you know that this belt was made with magnets? It’s called a groove belt, you thought I was going to say ring didn’t you?” Skip ad Hype significantly lower
You need two different categories: Fans that are IN the fan housing like a normal fan, and fans that extend outside of the fan housing. It's not fair to compare the two directly.
@Zeta Darus Consider the motorsport alternatives. In a homolgomated, or otherwise regulated league, you receive results that are more indiciatve of the realistic baseline. While Formula One test the absolute limits of engineering, both mechanical, and aerodynamic, leagues like group N are closer (albeit not accurate reflections of the abilities of the publicly available models) to real world results. It would be reasonable to divide the pool across, "best for a laboratory/open air test bench", and "best direct blade replacement to the a12x25". I don't know about you, but I would never consider installing a cheater fan in my case(as much as I respect the engineering, and the results), HOWEVER, if there was a drop in replacement for my fans that could increase performance or reduce noise, I would ABSOLUTELY buy a set.
true, although it is nice to see the difference between them. I'm more affraid that in some time everyone will be sending monster fans just to beat the cheater and regular ones will disappear
@@witchdoctor6502 "I'm more affraid that in some time everyone will be sending monster fans just to beat the cheater and regular ones will disappear" So far there have been an endless stream of new, regular fans. The vast majority of the fans shown have been simple blade replacements.. I think your fear is irrational. Just my opinion though.
The cheater recognizes an important factor... The maximum energy that can be extracted from that motor requires allowing the motor to spin at a decently high RPM. Bogging it down with a huge fan actually wastes potential. For a given voltage input to the motor, there's certainly going to be a "peak power" RPM that a fan design should be tuned to operate at. I suspect the designer may well have performed a power vs rpm characterization of the same little noctua hub motor before proceeding with the fan design. Furthermore, the fan blade, center hub, and stator design all look like something right out of a highly optimized cooling tower or underwater screw design.
Absolutely. You need to know the power curve of the motor and design accordingly to reach peak performance. In other applications, the design process is often done backwards where you design the output and then find a motor/gearbox combo that can run it; here everyone has the same motor, and whoever understands its capabilities best has a significant advantage
I completely agree and I believe this test has shown time and time again. just because a fan is larger doesn't mean it will be better and in fact tend to spin slower. A good representation of this was the overdrive fan that even with the over driven gear set it still spun slower do to the increased resistance.
100% The Cheater beater... while it had a good idea... fails to take into account that the fan motor just isn't gonna be able to spin it at fast. By a weird twist of fait, it probably would have done better with less blades.
@@MrRadicalMoves The Cheater Beater also fails in one more aspect, and that is that it tries to accelerate flow through a narrowing cone that is quite severe, and you can see in the smoke test that there is fan surge coming out of the edges of the fan. This is due to the fan design not being able to create enough pressure to accelerate the air flow through the forcing cone.
@@MeesDeppe_Official It's not apples to apples though. The cheater blade was designed with the shrouds in mind. It could be a synergy type thing where the shroud and blades have to work together to get the performance. I want to see the test, I'm just not sure it would separate the performance of the blades from the performance of the shrouds. I guess we could run the cheater blades without the shroud too to see if there is any synergy effects. For instance if the cheater blade without shroud is worse than the a12x25 blade without shroud, but the cheater wins when they both have the shroud this would pretty clearly show the synergy effect.
I think we are looking at this the wrong way. Instead of trying to beat the cheater we should try to improve it. For instance I have always wondered how foaming tpu would perform as a fan. It’s popular with the model airplane community because it’s lighter then pla. Let’s be honest the real limitations we are hitting are due to the limited torque output of that little motor, a few grams of savings could make a big difference. 🤷♂️ great video as always
maybe LW-PLA rather than TPU... the foaming TPU is really soft and might not be that good for this purpose. But yeah! lighter material should equal more rpm shouldn't it? So print the fan part of cheater in LW-PLA and see if it gets even better results? :)
All else being equal, lighter weight improves *acceleration*, not top speed. A lighter fan should spin up faster but the heavier fan will still reach the same revs.
The cheater's shroud and fan design is just very well designed. The cheater beater seems to have some backflow, plus its shroud's overall shape does not look efficient with the way that the big opening shrinks down towards the fan chassis.
I think to increase the attack angle of the fan blades and keep the number of blades so we can take the nozzle of Cheater Beater and make a bigger attack angle. ( my thinking is, bigger attack angle = better flow but is more drag) so whoever wants to do that try to fine equality of flow/drag
Excellent work! THis is my favourite series on youtube. I'd love to see the cheater "housing" with the A12x25 fan blades, just to see how much the "housing" and bell mouth improve the flow! Keep up the good work! Looking forward to your next Vid!
See, that's real scientific inquiry. That's not what Major Hardware is about. I don't have the time to start my own fan-test channel, but will gladly submit designs and pledge to subscribe to anyone who does and tests using all the data that's important.
Well that sort of answered my question pre-emptively: Do you run any particular fan, even the base Noctua fan, at regular intervals to make sure the hub is putting out a reasonably consistent amount of power etc. Running The Cheater again and seeing the same high results really answers the question though.
@CheaterBeater. …. Your convergence cone is too short. the back of the blades are Stalling. On a Turbine engine we call that “ Compressor Stall” where the air backs up under compression and Burps out of the inlet…as noted on this smoke test… the reverse puffing. Kill the scallops on the trailing edge…. Stretch that cone out and think more GE high Bypass
Damn you sound smart i actually have no idea what you said can you take a look at my comment if that made anysense i dont really know anything about this so i would like to hear your opinion:)
Watching the smoke with the bat fan made me think that it would be really cool to see a video of just that and you adjusting the lighting like maybe with a flashlight and the speed of the video to see how clearly you can see each slice in the smoke
Having a strobe light that runs at the same frequency as the fan would be really cool to see, like an oscilloscope for fans. I wonder if that RPM meter could be hooked up to an arduino?
Yeah, the blade design on the beater is better suited to static pressure. I think higher angle and some gaps between the blades would have made a big difference. Maybe the designer anticipated a higher rpm and more resistance from the 120mm opening
i doubt it, take a look, even with an open back it has backflow problems. The fan has too many blades, take 30% of them off and it might work a but you cant simply add more blades with lower angles of attack and expect infinite static pressure. Static pressure is about constrainment, in such a way that it wont allow backflow, the more constrained the higher the static pressure.
The fan is surging like in a jet engine, that's what the regular bursts of turbulence coming out the front and sides are unfortunately I can't remember how you'd fix that >~>
I liked the extra smoke test footage and comments on what was observed, that was quite interesting. I’m now wondering how expensive an entry level 2400 FPS camera is to build 😅
Free Idea: A convergent-divergent fan housing, to try and implement the same idea as a rocket nozzle. It would be interesting to see if the cheater beater would perform better with optimized print settings. It seems to wobble a little, and that's wasted energy. The 'puffs' at the front are a stall condition, similar to what happens inside a jet engine when the pressure inside is greater than the pressure entering the front. The combustion effectively 'backfires' through the compressor and fan, which is notably not good for bearings and other things. I feel the same is happening here. If the housing were taller, it would allow a smoother transition of the airflow, and should increase performance.
I feel that the stators that were behind the blades introduced an obstruction to the air flow rather than help to guide it. I also think that a smaller number of blades here may have helped as they were very wide and could have been interfering with eachother.
@@Bluemaxx83 I think he’s somewhat good on the size of the blade in relationship to the diameter. It is the surface area of the blade that moves the air… having said that …there’s a fine line separating Just Right vs. Too Much. The BIGGER the fan = the slower it will spin. Bigger meaning overall mass of which diameter will mostly dictate. I noticed his blades were FAT ..or PhAt.. lol. I would like to see them thinner across the mean chord and SMOOTH….. the printing process left noticeably raised ridges and that will cause a loss of Laminar Air Flow … the ridges on the blades create turbulence before it ever gets started pumping any air… A INCREASE in the cone behind the blade will give the air time to run… in a straight line and adding a Expansion Chamber at the opposite end will give the faster moving air a place to expand… and SUCKING everything with it. This is why the “CHEATER is working so good. #1 REDUCED ROTATIONAL MASS ( Weight Watchers for blades )
I like the rocket nozzle idea, but I believe the static pressure would need to be much higher. Depending on the throat-exit-ration you imagined. I would proposae more compressor stages and having the stator end before the converging part.
There are many, many well designed fans in this series that fail for the same reason: Mass. There's simply too much material used, which limits the blade speed to the point where they are no longer efficient. The cheater beater is a great example of this, and I suspect that, even the cheater itself could be improved by simply removing unnecessary material.
I’m not sure about that, when a heavy blade spins up it takes longer but it also carries more momentum. I do think that thinner blades do move air better and less weight might spin faster as it puts less load on the motor. But yeah that’s all speculation
@@MeesDeppe_Official Remember, heavy is a problem because it puts additional load on the bearings of the motor, and thinner airfoils tend to be better in general, provided they're designed properly because they can offer less drag. Additionally, these fans are all using planar gcode, so, they could very likely see some significant improvements in strength, and therefore weight, by providing nonplanar gcode with the use of support material, and that's exotic enough that it'd probably get printed too.
@@jttech44 You need to know a lot about your printer when using non-planar G-code otherwise you’ll have a crash. I still also don’t see how that helps you avoid needing lots of support material.
@@jttech44 It's not that much added weight though, so i'd be interested to see if a difference in mass between two of the same fans would make a difference. What ís important is the shape, a thick blade that doesnt flow nicely does indeed impact performance. if you look at airplane wings for example they're actually rather thick in the middle, same with older aircraft propellers. but then again i'm not an expert :)
I still want to see a competition where it's limited to standard profile fans. Or a separate board for such. I really don't like the oversized designs.
Agreed, make it about the blade design not the intake/exhaust channeling. Even though I like the intake scoop that the cheater has, every fan should be able to use it when testing and comparing against it.
100% A regular el cheapo room fan will beat an a12x25 but it isn't designed to fit in a standard 120mm computer fan spot. All these oversized fans are "cheaters" and it's pointless to compare them to fans designed with the same form factor as an a12x25.
@@emeraldoracle8706 probably wouldn't work as well as you think. Keep in mind the fan and diffuser of the cheater were designed to cooperate as a singular unit. Adding a fan that wasn't designed around that won't net the same performance boost or might even be hindered since the fan is moving air one way and the diffuser is moving air another way which might end up conflicting and cancel out to some degree.
I wanna see a 3rd competition where people just make a front/backs for a12x25. Then I also want to see the best fans with the best front/backs. But it would be a cool mode to slap some plastic on your fans and make them better.
I think the back part of the cheater fan is the deciding factor in it's performance. It reduces the turbulence after the motor. None of the other designs do that.
Which is why I suspect that the rankings would be substantially different if they were all pushing air through a radiator or heatsink. None of these are really being tested under load.
The cheater beater had too many blades, too much mass too far from the hub. you can see the rpm is only 1012 compared to cheater's 1753. The turbulence kicked back is from the shape of the shroud and shaft extension. Would love to see a a compression shroud like in a jet turbine engine and fewer blades on the fan with majority of mass near center. I would be interested to see what numbers the cheater puts up without the back shroud turbulence stabilizer.
I wonder how the standard A12x25 would perform with the "splitter" and velocity stack from the cheater and how the bare cheater fan would perform without them.
I'd love to see a parallel competition making the fan design more scientific by reducing the number of variables to one or two per challenge. e.g. 5 designs per episodes where the design is constant but variables such as blade pitch, hub design, airfoil choice, sweep angle, trailing edge shape, tip design etc are changed one by one., and the base design for the subsequent episodes is updated with the winner. Eventually we will have a crowdsourced ultimate fan design from your community.
Flow dynamics of the Cone looked really nice. It looks to be a very performant fan for one that fits the chassis properly. It appeared to be using it's surface area efficiently.
I understand the idea behind the Cone, it's just that physics doesn't work that way. Just because the smoke is drawn in towards the center doesn't mean that the rest of the fan blades are any less efficient. In fan designs the hub is a necessary evil that you really would want to make as small as possible to maximize the fan blade area. There were even some fans made using a design where the motor was not placed in the hub but in the rim. These were called something like tip magnetic drive fans, and all that the hub was used for was housing the bearings. These were however expensive, complex and made it necessary for the rim to be thicker which cut into the area available for the fan blades. So it's been a few years since I saw one or heard about any developments. Where there are improvements to be made is mostly in the shape and number of the fan blades. Aerodynamics is pretty complex and as shown there's not one simple shape that is best. In these tests it's pretty obvious that there are compromises in all of them. These are either in dimension, sound or a combination of both. The Noctua fan has a lot lower noise than just about every other fan design tested, and yet it's near the top. The Cheater is pushing a lot more air, but doing it at the cost of being physically much larger and a lot louder. The Cheater Beater is interesting in that while it pushes less air than the Cheater it is still pushing more air than the Noctua and at pretty much the same noise level. It doesn't beat the Noctua by much, but it's notable that so far it's the one fan that manages to match or beat it in both categories. And the trade off this time is it's immense size.
Hey, I've watched this series on and off for a while but never really payed attention. Can I ask anyone who wants to reply, if I make a cone like funnel for the front or back of my 140mm fans can I increase the air volume it blows? What's the best angles/dimensions and should it go on the front or the back? Any help is appreciated thanks
I feel like people are missing the big revalation we got from that dick fan in season one or two, less blades is actually good! Cheater has 5, maybe less would work? Also cheater gets really close to the edges iirc, also there were some episodes where you talked about laminar flow more, maybe some wings or cuts on the fan blades to increase laminar flow? I feel like if someone went back and took not of all the revelations from the previous episodes and made a fan with all those things, and then put it in a similar housing to the cheater (taking care to finesse the rough edges on the cheater design) it could definitely beat it. Then again, I'm personally hoping for some random ass looking fan to just blow everyone out of the water, that's the most fun situation
I personally don't see the Cheater as like the boss to beat, purely because it's ducted. I mean, that's why it's called the Cheater, it has an inherent advantage over any fan that isn't using a duct. I feel like it should be in it's own category, or only it's unducted performance should be counted towards the actual scoreboard.
The cheater is the submission to beat. Other submitters can also submit whatever the hell they want, ducted or not. It's not like this is industry-standard fan certification test, it's just an entertaining UA-cam video series.
You must make the updated version of the all-fan PC case, but fully functional and only using custom showdown fans. Major Hardware is the only tech channel that can pull this super-meme off
The Cheater Beater needs a taller plenum to increase air velocity and thus hopefully developed better laminar flow on the housing walls. I'd also consider removing 2 blades from the Fan itself to reduce vortex interference OR, go with 2 more blades that have a less aggressive AoA at the tips.
So I think people are tackling the cheater the wrong way. Instead of focusing solely on the housing, we must also analyze the fan. It uses a variable pitch fan vs the majority of fans maintaining the same pitch along the entire blade length. I think the best way to beat the cheater is to add more blades with larger diameter utilizing variable pitch blades. The cheater beater was on the right track, but the blades maintained the same pitch. I would submit a fan, but to be honest, I can barely operate my phone. Lol. Just a suggestion for those of you who are more tech savvy than myself.
I would like you to instead of fans like BATFAN that can never win against even the standard fan to compete in their own bracket. Like "funny fans" or such. Or atleast like award them at the end of the season.
To beat the cheater a funnel behind the fan is needed in my opinion. Just like the cheater has it, the thing I call funnel makes it so the air can flow even behind the hub which would normally block parts of a cooler. In terms of airflow? Well, I have no clue how it's gonna help with that but I'm sure cooling performance will benefit from it
The more I see the Cheater the more it looks like a bow thruster, in the realms of such engineers have found placing the blades facing inwards inside a large stator produces optimal flow with reduced cavitation. I wonder whether with a bit if creative out of box designing a fan with a low central mass and centre facing fan blade edges can mimic these new type of bow thrusters in pushing air not water...
Got to wonder how much more effective the cheater beater would have been if it was actually aerodynamic instead of being rougher than velcro. I suspect that is where a large amount of the turbulence was coming from. Didnt you display print material in a previous season that you were able to smooth out with some solvent?
Contra rotation is really a pandoras box and I fully expect that more fans are going to be made with that design, and optimization in mind, so long as it is made out of abs, smoothed, with mas reduced, it’ll be legendary.
The Cone intrigued me and its methods are clearly effective . A Cheater sized fan/casing using the same methodology would stand a chance to take down the cheater.
How do you feel knowing this is what you're famous for? Frankly I'm jealous. No one has done anything like this before, and it's been an incredibly fascinating journey. I love this series.
i have a question, not sure if it this was previously tested before, How does the cheater perform without the tail section, how much efficiency is lost if any?
It looks like the Cheater could be run without its shroud or stator. I'd be curious to see what the performance is like without the stator, without the shroud, then without either.
My thinking is that if the Cheater Beater was slimmed down and tweaked a bit, it could perform even better. There looks to be a lot of weight savings to be had.
7:24 you can also see some recirculation going on with this. Its pulling air in from the bottom of the frame in the rear. Where it should be expelling. Ill bet it had an effect on the thermal performance
So, what if you put the back of the cheater on the beater? What my theory presupposes is that maybe the secret sauce is in the rear ducting and those static fins. Oooh, maybe you could test the cheater with a rear duct that has straight or no static fins. That would probably take a lot of time.
I miss the thermal test you used to do with this. Would have been interesting to see if Floreon was right in his idea. Even if it wasn’t the highest cfm or quietest fan.
I though it looked to be very efficient and the flow looked very universal across the entire surface. I was thinking the same as you. I would like to see how it performs in a real-world scenario
Nice video again. Could you do a different series with a more powerful fan motor? I'd love to see more complex designs like the gear fans and larger fans.
Can we all appreciate the insane quality these smoke shots have gotten to? Especially the side shots are sooo perfect! (Also: The Cheater Beater is the first fan to _really_ beat the A12x25, because it produces higher airflow on less noise - but then again, it's cheating…)
With the advent of the cheater we might need to separate the showdown into classes. Class A (single piece) Class B (multi piece in frame) Class C (out of frame anything goes)
did you see the fireball tool video What Happens if you put a Giant Propeller on a Bike? loads of people made comments about you because he was testing a big prop on the back of a bike with smoke.
The blades on the cheater beater seem to be static pressure optimized, compared to the cheater's airflow. You could probably tweak it for airflow and get better results.
anything unbalanced or with gearing will loose, like someone else said below, they need to work at peak motor power, see what RPM is, and make the best possible blade design that will make the fan work on that specific RPM, (usually they design to run a bit higher, so under some air resistence they'll reach the peak power)
Welp, if you're going to call the Cheater *_the de facto_* Fan Showdown "Boss"... I think it only fair that there be a ~5min "Boss Battle Breakdown" video lol _(since I don't recall you covering this?)_ In it, you'd show: - Full Assembly airflow numbers and smoke - Fan-Only airflow and smoke [heretofore: #&S] - Fan + Inlet #&S - Fan + Outlet #&S - Stock + Inlet *and* Outlet #&S - [the other two individual tests only if you want; seems superfluous] That way it can be determined where the efficiency gains lie, for us to know how the Cheater's cheater-parts allow it to cheat without _actually_ cheating physics! 😏☺️
You should consider trimming or compressing the audio in post. You aren't the loudest speaker, but your voice can be quite boomy with the variations in your timbre.
I think if the roughness on the cheater Beater's blades was smoothed down. It would have a noted performance Increase. It looked really rough at some angles...
I think the cheater beater has the blades at too shallow of an angle and too densely packed. From the front it's just a wall. It probably has good static pressure but this is an airflow test.
REQ: Cheater individual test. That means: fan alone, fan with scoop, fan with back part only, …. Wen want to learn which part brings which improvements and which could be omitted
Can you install the cheater with full assembly in a PC and find its optimal positioning? Like can it full assembled actually work in a PC...? With benchmarks plz? I'm thinking either lower front intake for max GPU cooling or as rear exhaust where the cone/shroud really boosts a tower air cpu cooler...
16 CFM less than the Cheater Not even close.... This shows how GOOD the Cheater is... . In Theory a bigger fan should beat the Cheater, but in practice, small defects hurts exponentially with size, especially the balancing. Im not sure anymore that the Cheater can be beaten with normal printed fan.
would love to see how the A12x25 fan performs on the cheater housing.
This needs to happen. And maybe the cheater housing with some of the other top fans! (The ones without housing.)
@@CameronHarris1986 yeah, i wonder how much of it is the housing and how much the actual fan...
@@gagaronpew4382 this is exactly what I want to know.
@@Zdoc9 Memento Mori
I miss that channel. I also love that this profile pic connects the community together.
This. We need to test this.
I love the drama that’s developed. Also playing your signature smoke test music beat quietly before transitioning over gets the blood pumping! OH YEAH BABY!
*buildup to smoke test hype*
“Did you know that this belt was made with magnets? It’s called a groove belt, you thought I was going to say ring didn’t you?”
Skip ad
Hype significantly lower
I need to know what song that is so bad
@@yeetsus5449 just look up “royalty free music”
@@yeetsus5449 Look Where That Got You - Mattie Maguire
The journey across japan music?
You need two different categories: Fans that are IN the fan housing like a normal fan, and fans that extend outside of the fan housing. It's not fair to compare the two directly.
There's not that many of those
@Zeta Darus Consider the motorsport alternatives. In a homolgomated, or otherwise regulated league, you receive results that are more indiciatve of the realistic baseline. While Formula One test the absolute limits of engineering, both mechanical, and aerodynamic, leagues like group N are closer (albeit not accurate reflections of the abilities of the publicly available models) to real world results. It would be reasonable to divide the pool across, "best for a laboratory/open air test bench", and "best direct blade replacement to the a12x25".
I don't know about you, but I would never consider installing a cheater fan in my case(as much as I respect the engineering, and the results), HOWEVER, if there was a drop in replacement for my fans that could increase performance or reduce noise, I would ABSOLUTELY buy a set.
true, although it is nice to see the difference between them. I'm more affraid that in some time everyone will be sending monster fans just to beat the cheater and regular ones will disappear
He has a leaderboard. You can see which one is the fastest fan and which one is the fastest shrouded fan.
@@witchdoctor6502 "I'm more affraid that in some time everyone will be sending monster fans just to beat the cheater and regular ones will disappear"
So far there have been an endless stream of new, regular fans. The vast majority of the fans shown have been simple blade replacements.. I think your fear is irrational. Just my opinion though.
The cheater recognizes an important factor... The maximum energy that can be extracted from that motor requires allowing the motor to spin at a decently high RPM. Bogging it down with a huge fan actually wastes potential. For a given voltage input to the motor, there's certainly going to be a "peak power" RPM that a fan design should be tuned to operate at. I suspect the designer may well have performed a power vs rpm characterization of the same little noctua hub motor before proceeding with the fan design. Furthermore, the fan blade, center hub, and stator design all look like something right out of a highly optimized cooling tower or underwater screw design.
Absolutely. You need to know the power curve of the motor and design accordingly to reach peak performance. In other applications, the design process is often done backwards where you design the output and then find a motor/gearbox combo that can run it; here everyone has the same motor, and whoever understands its capabilities best has a significant advantage
I completely agree and I believe this test has shown time and time again. just because a fan is larger doesn't mean it will be better and in fact tend to spin slower. A good representation of this was the overdrive fan that even with the over driven gear set it still spun slower do to the increased resistance.
finally someone who actually proccess, thank you.
100% The Cheater beater... while it had a good idea... fails to take into account that the fan motor just isn't gonna be able to spin it at fast. By a weird twist of fait, it probably would have done better with less blades.
@@MrRadicalMoves The Cheater Beater also fails in one more aspect, and that is that it tries to accelerate flow through a narrowing cone that is quite severe, and you can see in the smoke test that there is fan surge coming out of the edges of the fan. This is due to the fan design not being able to create enough pressure to accelerate the air flow through the forcing cone.
Was the cheater ever tested with the stock a12 fan blade? I want to see that.
I would like to see this as well
Or any other fans, for that matter. Is the fan blade just that good, or is it the housing that does all the heavy lifting?
This!
Now i’m really curious what only the shroud does and how much of the cheaters performance is in the actual fan
@@MeesDeppe_Official It's not apples to apples though. The cheater blade was designed with the shrouds in mind. It could be a synergy type thing where the shroud and blades have to work together to get the performance. I want to see the test, I'm just not sure it would separate the performance of the blades from the performance of the shrouds. I guess we could run the cheater blades without the shroud too to see if there is any synergy effects.
For instance if the cheater blade without shroud is worse than the a12x25 blade without shroud, but the cheater wins when they both have the shroud this would pretty clearly show the synergy effect.
I think we are looking at this the wrong way. Instead of trying to beat the cheater we should try to improve it. For instance I have always wondered how foaming tpu would perform as a fan. It’s popular with the model airplane community because it’s lighter then pla. Let’s be honest the real limitations we are hitting are due to the limited torque output of that little motor, a few grams of savings could make a big difference. 🤷♂️ great video as always
maybe LW-PLA rather than TPU... the foaming TPU is really soft and might not be that good for this purpose. But yeah! lighter material should equal more rpm shouldn't it? So print the fan part of cheater in LW-PLA and see if it gets even better results? :)
Oh hey there! Good points. I always think once we find the best of the best we gotta keep tweaking it!
All else being equal, lighter weight improves *acceleration*, not top speed. A lighter fan should spin up faster but the heavier fan will still reach the same revs.
@@warpedweirdo that would be something to to test it sounds logical I would like to see it worked out!
@@802Garage dude we watch all the same channels! I swear to god I see you in the comments of every other video I watch lol 😂 🍻
The cheater's shroud and fan design is just very well designed. The cheater beater seems to have some backflow, plus its shroud's overall shape does not look efficient with the way that the big opening shrinks down towards the fan chassis.
How to Optimize a Propeller or Fan Design | SimScale Webinar
ua-cam.com/video/V7uYORB116k/v-deo.html
And most importantly its way too heavy.
I think to increase the attack angle of the fan blades and keep the number of blades so we can take the nozzle of Cheater Beater and make a bigger attack angle. ( my thinking is, bigger attack angle = better flow but is more drag) so whoever wants to do that try to fine equality of flow/drag
Its possible the cheater beater has too much mass for the 120mm motor. Smaller fins might be better with such a massive fan.
Excellent work! THis is my favourite series on youtube.
I'd love to see the cheater "housing" with the A12x25 fan blades, just to see how much the "housing" and bell mouth improve the flow!
Keep up the good work!
Looking forward to your next Vid!
See, that's real scientific inquiry.
That's not what Major Hardware is about.
I don't have the time to start my own fan-test channel, but will gladly submit designs and pledge to subscribe to anyone who does and tests using all the data that's important.
Why are you replying to many comments with just "channel bad, creator bad"? Legitimately curious, what's the point?
Well that sort of answered my question pre-emptively: Do you run any particular fan, even the base Noctua fan, at regular intervals to make sure the hub is putting out a reasonably consistent amount of power etc.
Running The Cheater again and seeing the same high results really answers the question though.
@CheaterBeater. …. Your convergence cone is too short. the back of the blades are Stalling. On a Turbine engine we call that “ Compressor Stall” where the air backs up under compression and Burps out of the inlet…as noted on this smoke test… the reverse puffing. Kill the scallops on the trailing edge…. Stretch that cone out and think more GE high Bypass
I like the way you think!
Damn you sound smart i actually have no idea what you said can you take a look at my comment if that made anysense i dont really know anything about this so i would like to hear your opinion:)
Exactly what I was thinking using auxiliary inlet/outlet at bottom
Watching the smoke with the bat fan made me think that it would be really cool to see a video of just that and you adjusting the lighting like maybe with a flashlight and the speed of the video to see how clearly you can see each slice in the smoke
Having a strobe light that runs at the same frequency as the fan would be really cool to see, like an oscilloscope for fans. I wonder if that RPM meter could be hooked up to an arduino?
the problem with the cheater "beater" is that its too big and also has too many blades. Static pressure should be good on that one though?
Yeah, the blade design on the beater is better suited to static pressure. I think higher angle and some gaps between the blades would have made a big difference. Maybe the designer anticipated a higher rpm and more resistance from the 120mm opening
i doubt it, take a look, even with an open back it has backflow problems. The fan has too many blades, take 30% of them off and it might work a but you cant simply add more blades with lower angles of attack and expect infinite static pressure. Static pressure is about constrainment, in such a way that it wont allow backflow, the more constrained the higher the static pressure.
The fan is surging like in a jet engine, that's what the regular bursts of turbulence coming out the front and sides are unfortunately I can't remember how you'd fix that >~>
Nah, it's a pretty bad design with that much turbulence.
I liked the extra smoke test footage and comments on what was observed, that was quite interesting. I’m now wondering how expensive an entry level 2400 FPS camera is to build 😅
Do you mean 240?
Free Idea: A convergent-divergent fan housing, to try and implement the same idea as a rocket nozzle.
It would be interesting to see if the cheater beater would perform better with optimized print settings. It seems to wobble a little, and that's wasted energy.
The 'puffs' at the front are a stall condition, similar to what happens inside a jet engine when the pressure inside is greater than the pressure entering the front. The combustion effectively 'backfires' through the compressor and fan, which is notably not good for bearings and other things. I feel the same is happening here. If the housing were taller, it would allow a smoother transition of the airflow, and should increase performance.
*_Stall warning_*
*_Stall warning_*
_bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep_
*Ace Combat and Project Wingman PTSD intensfies*
I feel that the stators that were behind the blades introduced an obstruction to the air flow rather than help to guide it. I also think that a smaller number of blades here may have helped as they were very wide and could have been interfering with eachother.
How do you need divergent housing when moving air like .... less than 0.1 mach....
@@Bluemaxx83 I think he’s somewhat good on the size of the blade in relationship to the diameter. It is the surface area of the blade that moves the air… having said that …there’s a fine line separating Just Right vs. Too Much.
The BIGGER the fan = the slower it will spin. Bigger meaning overall mass of which diameter will mostly dictate.
I noticed his blades were FAT ..or PhAt.. lol.
I would like to see them thinner across the mean chord and SMOOTH….. the printing process left noticeably raised ridges and that will cause a loss of Laminar Air Flow … the ridges on the blades create turbulence before it ever gets started pumping any air…
A INCREASE in the cone behind the blade will give the air time to run… in a straight line and adding a Expansion Chamber at the opposite end will give the faster moving air a place to expand… and SUCKING everything with it. This is why the “CHEATER is working so good.
#1 REDUCED ROTATIONAL MASS ( Weight Watchers for blades )
I like the rocket nozzle idea, but I believe the static pressure would need to be much higher. Depending on the throat-exit-ration you imagined. I would proposae more compressor stages and having the stator end before the converging part.
there is regular crastination, then then there is pro-crastination lol (edit: that blue beast looks like it should be on an outboard motor)
There are many, many well designed fans in this series that fail for the same reason: Mass. There's simply too much material used, which limits the blade speed to the point where they are no longer efficient.
The cheater beater is a great example of this, and I suspect that, even the cheater itself could be improved by simply removing unnecessary material.
I’m not sure about that, when a heavy blade spins up it takes longer but it also carries more momentum. I do think that thinner blades do move air better and less weight might spin faster as it puts less load on the motor. But yeah that’s all speculation
I've looked a few of these and thought the same; the blades often look good but sometimes way to chonky.
@@MeesDeppe_Official Remember, heavy is a problem because it puts additional load on the bearings of the motor, and thinner airfoils tend to be better in general, provided they're designed properly because they can offer less drag.
Additionally, these fans are all using planar gcode, so, they could very likely see some significant improvements in strength, and therefore weight, by providing nonplanar gcode with the use of support material, and that's exotic enough that it'd probably get printed too.
@@jttech44 You need to know a lot about your printer when using non-planar G-code otherwise you’ll have a crash. I still also don’t see how that helps you avoid needing lots of support material.
@@jttech44 It's not that much added weight though, so i'd be interested to see if a difference in mass between two of the same fans would make a difference. What ís important is the shape, a thick blade that doesnt flow nicely does indeed impact performance. if you look at airplane wings for example they're actually rather thick in the middle, same with older aircraft propellers. but then again i'm not an expert :)
can you do a video testing each component of the cheater like only the fan, fan + rear, fun + front? let's dissect this thing
I still want to see a competition where it's limited to standard profile fans. Or a separate board for such. I really don't like the oversized designs.
Yeah this contest needs to be forked into a Standard and an Unlimited class.
Agreed, make it about the blade design not the intake/exhaust channeling. Even though I like the intake scoop that the cheater has, every fan should be able to use it when testing and comparing against it.
100%
A regular el cheapo room fan will beat an a12x25 but it isn't designed to fit in a standard 120mm computer fan spot. All these oversized fans are "cheaters" and it's pointless to compare them to fans designed with the same form factor as an a12x25.
@@emeraldoracle8706 probably wouldn't work as well as you think. Keep in mind the fan and diffuser of the cheater were designed to cooperate as a singular unit. Adding a fan that wasn't designed around that won't net the same performance boost or might even be hindered since the fan is moving air one way and the diffuser is moving air another way which might end up conflicting and cancel out to some degree.
I wanna see a 3rd competition where people just make a front/backs for a12x25. Then I also want to see the best fans with the best front/backs. But it would be a cool mode to slap some plastic on your fans and make them better.
I think the back part of the cheater fan is the deciding factor in it's performance. It reduces the turbulence after the motor. None of the other designs do that.
Which is why I suspect that the rankings would be substantially different if they were all pushing air through a radiator or heatsink. None of these are really being tested under load.
Please never stop doing the sound test. Love hearing how each one produces different pitches & such
That Batfan did significantly better than I was expecting!
The cheater beater had too many blades, too much mass too far from the hub. you can see the rpm is only 1012 compared to cheater's 1753. The turbulence kicked back is from the shape of the shroud and shaft extension. Would love to see a a compression shroud like in a jet turbine engine and fewer blades on the fan with majority of mass near center. I would be interested to see what numbers the cheater puts up without the back shroud turbulence stabilizer.
I wonder how the standard A12x25 would perform with the "splitter" and velocity stack from the cheater and how the bare cheater fan would perform without them.
I'd love to see a parallel competition making the fan design more scientific by reducing the number of variables to one or two per challenge. e.g. 5 designs per episodes where the design is constant but variables such as blade pitch, hub design, airfoil choice, sweep angle, trailing edge shape, tip design etc are changed one by one., and the base design for the subsequent episodes is updated with the winner. Eventually we will have a crowdsourced ultimate fan design from your community.
Flow dynamics of the Cone looked really nice. It looks to be a very performant fan for one that fits the chassis properly. It appeared to be using it's surface area efficiently.
I understand the idea behind the Cone, it's just that physics doesn't work that way. Just because the smoke is drawn in towards the center doesn't mean that the rest of the fan blades are any less efficient. In fan designs the hub is a necessary evil that you really would want to make as small as possible to maximize the fan blade area. There were even some fans made using a design where the motor was not placed in the hub but in the rim. These were called something like tip magnetic drive fans, and all that the hub was used for was housing the bearings. These were however expensive, complex and made it necessary for the rim to be thicker which cut into the area available for the fan blades. So it's been a few years since I saw one or heard about any developments.
Where there are improvements to be made is mostly in the shape and number of the fan blades. Aerodynamics is pretty complex and as shown there's not one simple shape that is best. In these tests it's pretty obvious that there are compromises in all of them. These are either in dimension, sound or a combination of both.
The Noctua fan has a lot lower noise than just about every other fan design tested, and yet it's near the top. The Cheater is pushing a lot more air, but doing it at the cost of being physically much larger and a lot louder. The Cheater Beater is interesting in that while it pushes less air than the Cheater it is still pushing more air than the Noctua and at pretty much the same noise level. It doesn't beat the Noctua by much, but it's notable that so far it's the one fan that manages to match or beat it in both categories. And the trade off this time is it's immense size.
i'm convinced Major forgot about the Slug mk2 👀
Four blade bat fan looks like it would have some potential...
I think next season we should move to the Noctua Industrial PPC 3000 rpm fan as the base to really get some power into these bigger designs.
And govern it to 2000 rpm under full load using a feedback loop
Hey, I've watched this series on and off for a while but never really payed attention. Can I ask anyone who wants to reply, if I make a cone like funnel for the front or back of my 140mm fans can I increase the air volume it blows? What's the best angles/dimensions and should it go on the front or the back? Any help is appreciated thanks
There should be a fan showdown with a more powerful hub.
Imma just send you an RC High Bypass Turbofan Engine...
There we go.
145 dB with +500 CFM
I feel like people are missing the big revalation we got from that dick fan in season one or two, less blades is actually good! Cheater has 5, maybe less would work? Also cheater gets really close to the edges iirc, also there were some episodes where you talked about laminar flow more, maybe some wings or cuts on the fan blades to increase laminar flow? I feel like if someone went back and took not of all the revelations from the previous episodes and made a fan with all those things, and then put it in a similar housing to the cheater (taking care to finesse the rough edges on the cheater design) it could definitely beat it. Then again, I'm personally hoping for some random ass looking fan to just blow everyone out of the water, that's the most fun situation
I personally don't see the Cheater as like the boss to beat, purely because it's ducted. I mean, that's why it's called the Cheater, it has an inherent advantage over any fan that isn't using a duct. I feel like it should be in it's own category, or only it's unducted performance should be counted towards the actual scoreboard.
Or 3 categories:
1) everything allowed
2) no duct
3) not outside frame
I kinda like this idea. Like fan only and complete package categories, with the cheater ducts being used with standard fans as a benchmark.
Agreed. This would be good for next season
The cheater is the submission to beat. Other submitters can also submit whatever the hell they want, ducted or not. It's not like this is industry-standard fan certification test, it's just an entertaining UA-cam video series.
Starting to feel like we need two divisions, Regular and Cheater.
I want to see fans beating the A12x25 within the same margins, personally.
You must make the updated version of the all-fan PC case, but fully functional and only using custom showdown fans.
Major Hardware is the only tech channel that can pull this super-meme off
The Cheater Beater needs a taller plenum to increase air velocity and thus hopefully developed better laminar flow on the housing walls.
I'd also consider removing 2 blades from the Fan itself to reduce vortex interference OR, go with 2 more blades that have a less aggressive AoA at the tips.
So I think people are tackling the cheater the wrong way. Instead of focusing solely on the housing, we must also analyze the fan. It uses a variable pitch fan vs the majority of fans maintaining the same pitch along the entire blade length. I think the best way to beat the cheater is to add more blades with larger diameter utilizing variable pitch blades. The cheater beater was on the right track, but the blades maintained the same pitch. I would submit a fan, but to be honest, I can barely operate my phone. Lol. Just a suggestion for those of you who are more tech savvy than myself.
The airflow tests are always satisfying to watch.
I would like you to instead of fans like BATFAN that can never win against even the standard fan to compete in their own bracket. Like "funny fans" or such. Or atleast like award them at the end of the season.
I wonder what would happen if the cheaters design and the little beetle size would be combined
Interesting fans. However, how are these fans ever to be used in an average case? The size of some of these is highly restrictive.
To beat the cheater a funnel behind the fan is needed in my opinion. Just like the cheater has it, the thing I call funnel makes it so the air can flow even behind the hub which would normally block parts of a cooler. In terms of airflow? Well, I have no clue how it's gonna help with that but I'm sure cooling performance will benefit from it
I dare anyone to count how many times he's said Noctua A12x25 up to this point lol, gotta be a high number
The more I see the Cheater the more it looks like a bow thruster, in the realms of such engineers have found placing the blades facing inwards inside a large stator produces optimal flow with reduced cavitation. I wonder whether with a bit if creative out of box designing a fan with a low central mass and centre facing fan blade edges can mimic these new type of bow thrusters in pushing air not water...
Got to wonder how much more effective the cheater beater would have been if it was actually aerodynamic instead of being rougher than velcro. I suspect that is where a large amount of the turbulence was coming from. Didnt you display print material in a previous season that you were able to smooth out with some solvent?
Contra rotation is really a pandoras box and I fully expect that more fans are going to be made with that design, and optimization in mind, so long as it is made out of abs, smoothed, with mas reduced, it’ll be legendary.
The Cone intrigued me and its methods are clearly effective . A Cheater sized fan/casing using the same methodology would stand a chance to take down the cheater.
How do you feel knowing this is what you're famous for? Frankly I'm jealous. No one has done anything like this before, and it's been an incredibly fascinating journey. I love this series.
You should use the Noctua IPC 3,000 RPM fan for next season fan base
why is the cheaters cfm value look VERY similar to 1 atmosphere in kilo pascals
i have a question, not sure if it this was previously tested before, How does the cheater perform without the tail section, how much efficiency is lost if any?
how can fair use apply to batman when for one, everyone knows you didn't invent it, and for two, nobody knows who invented it?
I laughed at this time stamp 2:20 because I am literally watching this instead of studying for my heat transfer final.
The outflow air on the batfan looks like the video is lagging, weird optical illusion.
It looks like the Cheater could be run without its shroud or stator. I'd be curious to see what the performance is like without the stator, without the shroud, then without either.
My thinking is that if the Cheater Beater was slimmed down and tweaked a bit, it could perform even better. There looks to be a lot of weight savings to be had.
Cheater Beater is just trying to shove more air than the flow on the back end is allowing.
The cheater bearer is surprisingly quiet for being fourth place by comparison to all the other fans in that range!
7:24 you can also see some recirculation going on with this. Its pulling air in from the bottom of the frame in the rear. Where it should be expelling. Ill bet it had an effect on the thermal performance
So, what if you put the back of the cheater on the beater? What my theory presupposes is that maybe the secret sauce is in the rear ducting and those static fins.
Oooh, maybe you could test the cheater with a rear duct that has straight or no static fins. That would probably take a lot of time.
not related to fans but where can I buy one of those rainbow crew dragon prints, those are beautiful!
This is just his cover up to vape mad clouds and we all know it
the Cheater Beater Eater, im submitting the 'X12905.
To be fair it looked like the cheater was alot louder than cheater beater so maybe the cheater beater would win in noise normalised test?🙂
I too should be studying for my heat transfer class...
Is there a place we can get the design files of fans presented in the show we can print for ourselves?
Has anyone done a contra rotating fan? Two sets spinning in opposite directions, similar to a stator.
Batfan is the best
Try testing other fans in the cheater's housing.
The size of the Cheater-Beater is just comedy at this point.
Salatschüssel -
The Cheater Beater looks like a salad bowl.
I miss the thermal test you used to do with this. Would have been interesting to see if Floreon was right in his idea. Even if it wasn’t the highest cfm or quietest fan.
I though it looked to be very efficient and the flow looked very universal across the entire surface. I was thinking the same as you. I would like to see how it performs in a real-world scenario
2:02 :D 😄👍
Best series
My idea is to take a jet engine fan and put it in the cheater housing.
Bat Fan was so stylish ^^ ... I liked it...
How did the Batfan manage to do so well?!
is. is that flocked plastic????
The Batfan did exceptionally well at a direct flow. I'm honestly really surprised.
Nice video again. Could you do a different series with a more powerful fan motor? I'd love to see more complex designs like the gear fans and larger fans.
I think the hub on this fan is the key. Most other fans have integrated hubs vs the pressfit that the 12/25 hub.
I was watching Anime, but then I saw this.
ファンがすばらしい
Can we all appreciate the insane quality these smoke shots have gotten to? Especially the side shots are sooo perfect!
(Also: The Cheater Beater is the first fan to _really_ beat the A12x25, because it produces higher airflow on less noise - but then again, it's cheating…)
With the advent of the cheater we might need to separate the showdown into classes. Class A (single piece) Class B (multi piece in frame) Class C (out of frame anything goes)
did you see the fireball tool video What Happens if you put a Giant Propeller on a Bike? loads of people made comments about you because he was testing a big prop on the back of a bike with smoke.
The blades on the cheater beater seem to be static pressure optimized, compared to the cheater's airflow. You could probably tweak it for airflow and get better results.
It's amazing how a simple device can be designed a countless different ways with massive performance differences.
yeeeee lets go batman adamım
anything unbalanced or with gearing will loose, like someone else said below, they need to work at peak motor power, see what RPM is, and make the best possible blade design that will make the fan work on that specific RPM, (usually they design to run a bit higher, so under some air resistence they'll reach the peak power)
Welp, if you're going to call the Cheater *_the de facto_* Fan Showdown "Boss"... I think it only fair that there be a ~5min "Boss Battle Breakdown" video lol _(since I don't recall you covering this?)_
In it, you'd show:
- Full Assembly airflow numbers and smoke
- Fan-Only airflow and smoke [heretofore: #&S]
- Fan + Inlet #&S
- Fan + Outlet #&S
- Stock + Inlet *and* Outlet #&S
- [the other two individual tests only if you want; seems superfluous]
That way it can be determined where the efficiency gains lie, for us to know how the Cheater's cheater-parts allow it to cheat without _actually_ cheating physics! 😏☺️
You should consider trimming or compressing the audio in post. You aren't the loudest speaker, but your voice can be quite boomy with the variations in your timbre.
I think if the roughness on the cheater Beater's blades was smoothed down. It would have a noted performance Increase. It looked really rough at some angles...
It's the _Ford_ Mach-E even if we _do_ know about it. Did you mean "in case" instead of "if"?
I think the cheater beater has the blades at too shallow of an angle and too densely packed. From the front it's just a wall. It probably has good static pressure but this is an airflow test.
Hey Major! Print the Cheater in a way you get Surface RIBLETS. I mean vertical with supports instead of horizontal !!!
Batman güldürdü :D
You should get a different mic. sounds like you have yours inside a cardboard box
REQ: Cheater individual test. That means: fan alone, fan with scoop, fan with back part only, ….
Wen want to learn which part brings which improvements and which could be omitted
Can you install the cheater with full assembly in a PC and find its optimal positioning? Like can it full assembled actually work in a PC...?
With benchmarks plz? I'm thinking either lower front intake for max GPU cooling or as rear exhaust where the cone/shroud really boosts a tower air cpu cooler...
16 CFM less than the Cheater
Not even close....
This shows how GOOD the Cheater is...
.
In Theory a bigger fan should beat the Cheater, but in practice, small defects hurts exponentially with size, especially the balancing.
Im not sure anymore that the Cheater can be beaten with normal printed fan.
her masada varız :D