Be Quiet Silent Wing 3 Review

Introduction

be quiet! is known for many things. But for the most part, it has to do with Fans. The most important of which, should be their Silent Wing 3. 

In total, there are 4 different versions of be quiet!'s Silent Wings. A pair of 3-Pin voltage-controlled Fans, and a pair of 4-Pin PWM-controlled fans. Both of these sets then have a "slow" and a "High-Speed" version. 

This review will solely be focused on the Silent Wing 3 PWM High-Speed version, as we also believe this should be the most important of them all.

What's in the Box?

Once a be quiet! Silent Wing 3 box is opened up, we will find the Silent Wing 3 Fan itself as well as a small box containing some extra installation hardware.

Down below we also summarized the Silent Wing 3 PWM High-Speed's spec sheet:

Installation

Installing be Quiet!'s Silent Wing 3's is not quite as standard as the usual Fan.

Due to the 2x included mounting Systems, we first need to partially assemble the fan.

There are 2 different Mounting Systems. The system made out of plastic can be used with the usual Fan Screws or Radiator screws, while the Rubber System can only be used with Radiator Screws or the included plastic click-in screws.

By spec, the rubber mounting should be minimally better at taking vibrations out of the fan, but we have never been able to measure this accurately due to the difference being so minimal.

No matter which installation method you choose, but has to be positioned on the left side of each fan corner and then slit onto the fan by using sliding it from left to right.

From here, use either the radiator or fan screws to install them wherever they were meant to be, and connect the 4-Pin PWM connection for power.

Appearance

be quiet! hardware, in general, can be described with a few words: Simple, Minimalistic, and Clean.

Their Silent Wing 3 are no different.

With a discrete logo used in the center with only the "quiet" part in orange, there is absolutely no other usage of any color except plain black.

The wings of the Silent Wings are covered in the usual be quiet! grooves that are circling around the central piece and creating many layers of circles once the fan is spinning.

The frame around the fan is slightly shaped in an octagonal form, with each corner slightly protruding outward and the front and backside covered in a thin layer of rubber. Although this is hard to measure accurately, this shape and usage of rubber should help to accelerate the air and therefore enhance the fan's performance.

Overall, the fan as a whole comes with the exceptional build quality. It is highly rigid and the materials used are giving it a very "high-quality" feeling without losing any of this "premium" to unnecessary optical extras,

Benchmark

Of course, we needed to benchmark this monster of a Fan.

By using our usual Benchmark setup, we let the be quiet! Silent Wing 3 PWM High-Speed spin at 100% Fan speed.

Here, be quiet!'s most known fans were able to keep the 3700x at 44°C, slightly behind the NF-A12x25.

Once the fan speed is turned down and the numbers are normalized, we can see that although the Silent Wing 3's are starting off as the second loudest of our fans due to their 2200RPM, they quickly group themselves into the other fans and are ending up at the 4th place once the speed is turned down.

Conclusion

All in all, it is natural that the Silent Wing 3's are starting off at a relatively loud noise due to their 2200RPM. But once the speed is turned down, they are able to keep the CPU at the same temperature while being as loud as the upper 25% of our so-far tested Fans.

Overall, the SIlent Wing 3's are able to deliver very good Max Performance while in Noise-to-Performance, the average in the upper class.

While their performance can be described as good, their build quality is exceptional and hard to compare to any other fan out there.

The only thing which we were not a fan of, is the mounting system. Even though it was easy to install one of the clips, it is extremely hard to take it off again to switch it. The method of doing so is easy to understand as there is only one possible clip that needs to be pressed in, but the rigidness of the fan makes it so incredibly hard to press that clip in that we would rather just live with our first decision.

But ignoring that one small detail, the fan is able to perform very well with exceptional quality, therefore we can only recommend it to anybody who is looking for a good fan in a minimalistic style.