Be Quiet has been quietly dealing with another set of fans for our gaming PCs, the Silent Wings 4 and Silent Wings Pro 4. The expectation with these units is that they convey all the more universally useful performance in all manner of situation — whether that's as a front of case fan to suck in cool air or attached to a radiator.
Be Quiet is touting both high airflow and high static pressure with both version of Silent Wings 4 fan. That makes a change from the previous Silent Wings 3 fan, which was more for moving air over your components than it was suited to a CPU or GPU radiator.
Be Quiet has made a couple of adjustments with the Silent Wing 4 to make this happen, namely by redesigning the blades to draw slightly nearer to the fan frame. All Silent Wings 4 models manage to close up tip clearance to 1mm, down from the 1.2mm on the Silent Wings 3.
The result is around 130.31 m³/h (cubic meters each hour) from the Silent Wings 4 120mm at its balmy top speed of around 2,500 RPM. At a calmer 1,600 RPM, it pushes around 82.74 m³/h.
To crank up the performance, and the RPM, the Silent Wings Pro 4 offers a 3,000 RPM mode capable of 142.5 m³/h.
Compare both of those to the Noctua NF-S12B revival 1200 PWM, our favorite PC fan (opens in new tab), at 100.6 m³/h at 1,200 RPM, and you're probably taking a gander at running the Silent Wings at a higher RPM to match that airflow rate. In any case, with the Silent Wings Pro 4 you really can crank up the RPM something wild in the event that you could do without the noise.
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Where the Silent Wings 4 finds more success is with regards to pressure. The standard 120mm model manages 1.79 mm/H₂0 at 1,600 RPM, however up to 3.86 mm/H₂0 at max throttle. That makes it a great fit for radiators, and up there with the likes of Corsair's SP120 static pressure fans at 1.45 mm/H₂0 at 1,400 RPM. The Noctua NF-S12B isn't the fan you'd want for this purpose at 1.31 mm/H₂0 at 1,200 RPM, instead you'd be better off with something like the NF-P12 revival.
In that lies some of that adaptability that Be Quiet is talking about with the Silent Wings 4, and in the event that you're the sort to reuse fans for all manner of purposes over their lifetime, perhaps they're a better all-round fit than some individually. However that also means they're perhaps not as really great for each task as a more bespoke designed fan would be.
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