Is this CHEATING? - Fan Showdown S3E3

Summary

In this Fan Showdown episode, Major Hardware introduces several community-designed fans and tests them in the A12x25 body to see which concept performs best. After noting some behind-the-scenes camera improvements and thanking sponsor Digital Storm, he showcases four designs: the Noctic, a hybrid of Noctua and Arctic-inspired blade ideas; the Oval Blade Boy, a Bernoulli-ring-inspired oval wedge shape; the Hectopod, a thick, alien-inspired fan influenced by Arrival; and the Cheater, a modular three-part build featuring a splitter, fan blades, and diffuser. The Cheater’s layered, more engineered approach raises the question of whether it counts as “cheating” or just smart design. After sound and smoke tests, the Cheater comes out on top, followed by the OBB, Hectopod, and Noctic.

Highlights

• The video opens with a noticeable production upgrade and a shoutout to the fan community 🎥
• The Noctic blends design ideas from two popular fans into one experimental blade set 🌪️
• The Oval Blade Boy turns Bernoulli-ring inspiration into a chunky, stylish airflow experiment 🧪
• The Hectopod brings a sci-fi, alien-hand vibe that somehow prints like a dream 👾
• The Cheater stacks multiple airflow-focused parts together and absolutely dominates the test results 🥇

Key Takeaways

• The Cheater won the round with the best cooling performance overall 🏆
• The OBB surprised by landing second place despite its unusual shape 😮
• The Hectopod looked wild, but its performance sat solidly in the middle 👽
• The Noctic had a cool hybrid concept, but blade flex and low RPM held it back 🌀
• Modular fan designs can outperform single-piece prints when done cleverly 🔧

Overview

Major Hardware kicks off the episode by talking about improved visuals, thanking viewers, and explaining how Fan Showdown works for newcomers. Community members submit fan ideas, he prints them, and the builds are tested in the A12x25 body to see which one performs best. A sponsor segment for Digital Storm leads into the main lineup of fans.

The first three designs are all about creative form: the Noctic mixes blade concepts from Noctua and Arctic, the Oval Blade Boy explores a collapsed Bernoulli-ring style cylinder, and the Hectopod draws inspiration from the movie Arrival. Each one prints cleanly, with the host repeatedly praising how easy they were to manufacture.

The final entry, the Cheater, takes a more modular approach with a splitter, spinner, blades, and diffuser, which the host jokingly questions as cheating. After acoustic and thermal testing, the Cheater wins the episode, and the host closes by celebrating the community’s creativity and inviting viewers to keep submitting designs.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Channel Update and Episode Intro The host welcomes viewers back to Fan Showdown Season 3, Episode 3 and says the channel should show improved visuals after overdue behind-the-scenes camera upgrades. He asks for likes to help gauge whether the changes are appreciated and mentions the show’s like record from a previous episode as a challenge to beat.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Sponsor Segment and New Fan Design Reveal The segment introduces several 3D-printed fan designs, starting with one that combines a blade design into a single fan. It looks good and printed easily, though there is some concern that the thin, outward-weighted blades could twist as the fan spins up.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Fan Structure and Velocity Stack Discussion This section explains the fan assembly’s two main airflow-conditioning parts: the velocity stack (called the splitter) and the diffuser. The velocity stack smooths incoming air into laminar flow before it reaches the fan, and the diffuser is meant to preserve that smooth flow after the fan.
• 07:30 - 10:00: Sound Testing and Cheating Debate The speaker explains that the fan had to be run at a very low RPM because anything above 1070 RPM caused the blades to touch the shroud and grind to a halt, limiting the test speed but still allowing some airflow for cooling. Smoke testing suggests the Noctua is at a disadvantage because of its lower rotational speed, though it still moves air. The results show the Noctua finishing at 88.1°C average with a 20.5°C room temperature (67.6°C delta), while the OBB finished at 78.7°C average with a 20.6°C room temperature (58.1°C delta).
• 10:00 - 11:40: Fitment Issues and RPM Limitations The chapter closes with temperature and delta measurements comparing the heptopod and cheater fans, showing the cheater finishing first, the OBB second, the heptopod third, and the Noctic fourth. Despite not matching the intended design perfectly, the cheater stands out as a strong-looking fan that performs extremely well, outperforming nearly every other fan tested in season three and even edging out the A12x25. The segment ends with a thank-you to viewers for their support, subscriptions, likes, shares, and fan submissions, noting that the channel’s content depends on the community’s crazy designs.
• 11:40 - 12:30: Temperature Results and Final Ranking The results are finalized by comparing fan temperatures at a room temperature of 20.6°C: the Heptopod averages 82.9°C for a delta of 62.3, while the Cheater averages 76.6°C for a delta of 56. The Cheater is placed first, followed by the OBB in second, the Heptopod in third, and the Noctic in fourth.

Is this CHEATING? - Fan Showdown S3E3 Transcription

• Segment 1: 00:00 - 02:30 welcome back to the fan showdown season three episode three this time and i'm hoping that you guys notice some much needed visual improvement uh of the episodes and hopefully all other content on the channel after this i've made some behind the scenes overdue changes to my camera equipment long overdue and i'm hoping it translates into like a better experience for you guys if it does uh or you just like the fan shout out make sure to click the like button so i know that things are moving in the right direction i think the record is 300 or no 35 658 likes from season two episode three that's like the record for a fan show on video so i think we can beat it let's uh let's give it a shot now if this is your first fan showdown welcome and how this works is you guys out there kind of design what you think is the coolest strangest funniest fan designing you send it to me i print them out we test them in the a12 x25 body and we kind of just enjoy the creativity of the community it's a it's pretty good satisfaction guaranteed performance is not if you want to get involved in the fan showdown make sure to get subscribed head down to the description i have all the information you need to figure out um the design constraints for your fan where to send the file what file type to send and maybe we'll see in a future episode now let's see what we got today right after this thank you to digital storm for sponsoring this video digital storm's passion is chasing performance their motivation is delivering the world's most advanced pcs with 20 years experience their computers are built from the ground up with unmatched engineering and thermal design combine that with industry partnerships featuring the latest technology and they
• Segment 2: 00:00 - 02:30 can deliver incredible power and performance that's trusted by enthusiasts gamers and content creators digital storm is committed to improving their craftsmanship to drive a better customer experience each pc is handcrafted with attention to detail including the placement of individual components and the routing of cables to improve airflow and upgradeability building a pc is only part of the journey digitalstorm is proud to back every customer with lifetime support from their team of in-house experts customers are family and they're dedicated to resolving issues as quickly as possible so if you're looking for a great experience a great machine and peace of mind choose digital storm for your next pc build check the link in the description below and thank you again to digital storm for sponsoring this video now first up we have the noctic fan which was created by andrew and this is interesting for two reasons those being i think the noctua a12x25 and arctic p12 andrew said that he took two of the best fans in his opinion and combined their
• Segment 3: 02:30 - 05:00 blade design into one fan this is interesting because i don't think we've seen anyone take this kind of approach before when designing you know their own fan as for design it does look cool it printed pretty easily which i'm always appreciative for the only concern that i do have is the blades are very very thin which is normally not a bad thing but based on how the blades are shaped you got a lot of mass towards the outside so i'm fearful that they might do a little bit of twisting as it spools up but we'll just have to we'll have to give it a shot and find out now this next fan shouldn't have any flexing issues that's for sure this is the oval blade boy or obb and it was created by craft centric craft centric said that they set out to create um a bernoulli ring repeated a few times and the idea was to end up with like an airfoil wedge shaped cylinder that's kind of collapsed now craft centric said that they didn't get exactly what they set out for but i do think it looks pretty cool and as long as it moves some air and keeps the cpu from throttling i think yeah i think you nailed it also again another fan that printed very well no support needed good contact area didn't have any peeling issues uh all in all when a pran when a fan prints well it makes me happy now this next one is one of the thickest boys yet this is the hectopod one and it was created by ricardo hi i'm deuce biggest lady i've ever seen that's a huge the inspiration for this fan came to ricardo while he was watching the movie arrival and if a rival if you haven't seen it it's about like a a spaceship that lands on earth and like humanity is trying to figure out ways to communicate with these weird creatures within it it's a pretty good movie i think but um that's where the inspiration for this fan came it's to me
• Segment 4: 02:30 - 05:00 it looks like the inspiration for the fan was that one scene where one of those aliens like pushes its hand thing against the glass if you took like that hand and you kind of twist it a little bit i think that's exactly what this fan would look like also as a bonus i know i've said it twice this printed really easily as well this is probably the easiest one of the bunch maybe this one actually i've ever printed it has a humongous contact area and a very shallow overhang so there was there was literally no problem printing this now i've saved the most complicated for last we've already covered three fans this next fan is a fan comprised of three different parts this is the cheater and it was masterminded by nesto you can probably guess why nesto refers to this fan as a cheater but if you ain't cheating you ain't trying so i'll allow it now as you can see the cheater is broken into three parts or four if you consider that the fan
• Segment 5: 05:00 - 07:30 disc is comprised of two parts or maybe more than that because each blade is a part but semantics the first being what nesto calls the splitter but you might recognize it as the velocity stack or a velocity stack we've seen these used before on the channel and they all they actually work really well the main goal of a velocity stack is to smooth and even out the air flowing into the intake also known as laminar flow after that smooth air enters the fan it interacts with the next part of his design which is the fan now nesto went above and beyond when he created his fan normally as we see and how i've done in the past as well if we print the fan as one unit or design it as one unit and printed out as one big part but that doesn't mean you have to do it that way this fan is broken into two parts the first part is the spinner which is very important if we want to maintain that laminar flow that nesto is going for and then after that we have five blades with progressive pitch that slides little grooves that are made in the spinner and once everything's installed i had to go then back and glue it all together and the glue that i normally use actually i always use for gluing my pla is called weld on four i've used it in the past for acrylic it's really meant to weld acrylic together but for some reason it worked really good with pla and i've used it for a long time and it's very thin so it seeps into the cracks and joints really easily and that's what i used to glue this fan together and it worked phenomenally now the last component is what nesto is calling the diffuser the job of this part is to maintain that smooth flow think of like the noctua aas that we made in that one video and how we were able to cool that cpu at such a far far distance assembling all this together we get an absolute unit now you out there might think that this is cheating hence the name uh but i would call it
• Segment 6: 05:00 - 07:30 clever engineering but i don't know what do you guys think do you think this is cheating do you think we should allow it what are your thoughts i kind of like assemblies like this but i don't know let me know in the comments i guess what you think well let's see how they sound the cheater came in at 49.6 dba the obb came in at 47.7 dba the hectopod came in at 48.1 dba and the nautic came in at 44.6 dba now this is where we should talk about something that we ran into with the nautic our concern was the blades and how thin
• Segment 7: 07:30 - 10:00 they were and as you noticed in probably some of the b-roll the rpm was very low on this fan and that's because i had to kind of slow it down any faster than 1070 rpm and the blades themselves started contacting the shroud and then it would just kind of grind to a halt so turned it up as fast as i get it before they started touching and 1070 was as fast as she could go now it still moves air so it still should cool the cpu but how much air is it moving i don't know we're gonna have to take a look [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] bye [Music] uh [Music] now in the smoke test you can tell that the noctua is at a bit of a disadvantage due to its rotational speed but we're still pushing air so it still should perform the noctex finished with an average temperature of 88.1 at a room temperature of 20.5 giving us a delta of 67.6 the obb finished with an average temperature of 78.7 at a room temperature of 20.6 giving us a delta of 58.1
• Segment 8: 10:00 - 12:30 the heptopod finished with an average temperature of 82.9 at a room temperature of 20.6 gives a delta of 62.3 and the cheater finished with an average temperature of 76.6 at a room temperature of 20.6 giving us a delta of 56. placing the cheater in first the obb and second the heptopod in third and the noctic and fourth but more impressively is that overall the cheater has pretty much crushed every single other fan that we've tested on season three and it even edged out the a12x25 but also the obb it got third overall which is something i actually didn't expect so although you didn't nail the design you're going for you made something pretty cool looking and actually something that performs pretty well but once again thanks to all of you guys that watch these videos you know click the like button all everybody that subscribed the channel everybody that has sent me a fan even if you haven't seen it on the on the show yet uh without you guys sending me all these crazy designs this this is obviously not possible so uh remember to click the like button get subscribed share with your friends and we'll see you in the next one [Music] you