Overdrive ENGAGED | Fan Showdown S4E1

Summary

Major Hardware launches Fan Showdown Season 4 by rethinking how fans are judged: instead of focusing on static pressure, this season is all about airflow, measured with a wind-tunnel-style setup using an anemometer. The returning champ is the “cheater” fan, which dominated Season 3 and now moves forward as the benchmark to beat. He also swaps in a brand-new Noctua Chromax A12x25 as the test bench fan to inspect internal design changes, but discovers it has a slightly different hub setup and later accidentally destroys it, forcing a return to the classic brown-and-beige version. Several new contestant fans are introduced, including the Polytex, RUX-412, Slim Fan, and a wildly ambitious gear-driven Pro Fan EX. In testing, the Cheater still leads the pack in airflow, while the gear fan struggles mechanically and gets a DNF, setting up another season of community-driven fan design chaos and creativity.

Highlights

• Season 4 swaps static pressure testing for airflow testing in a wind tunnel setup 🌪️
• The cheater fan advances from Season 3 and immediately stays on top 🥇
• A new Chromax A12x25 is torn apart to inspect its hub and reveal small design differences 🔍
• The Polytex aims for a whirlpool effect with tiny edge blades, but it’s not enough 💧
• The Slim Fan goes for a low-profile design that uses the frame like a shroud trick ✂️
• The gear-based Pro Fan EX looks awesome but fails to spin properly under load ⚙️
• The cheater clocks the highest airflow at 768 feet per minute 🚀
• The episode ends with the usual open invitation for viewers to submit their own fan designs 📩

Key Takeaways

• Season 4 changes the game: airflow matters more than static pressure now 🌬️
• The cheater fan is still the boss and returns as the fan to beat 🏆
• The new Noctua Chromax A12x25 has a slightly different hub design, but then gets accidentally wrecked 😬
• The Polytex tries a vortex-style blade concept, but lacks enough blade area to really push air 💨
• The Slim Fan uses the stock frame as a bigger shroud, which is a clever little hack 🛠️
• The Pro Fan EX is a gear-driven monster of an idea, but friction and drag shut it down 🧰
• The cheater wins airflow again, proving it’s still the reigning menace 😈

Overview

Season 4 starts with a big rule change: fans are no longer being judged mainly on static pressure, but on how much air they can actually move through a wind tunnel. That means fans need to be optimized for airflow, and the whole competition gets a fresh twist that changes what kinds of designs might win. The cheater fan, which crushed Season 3, comes back as the returning champion and the one everyone has to beat.

Major Hardware also takes a deep dive into a Noctua Chromax A12x25 to compare it with the original brown-and-beige version. He finds a few small changes in the hub and later accidentally breaks the Chromax sample, which sends the test bench back to the classic model. Along the way, he introduces several new fan concepts, from the vortex-inspired Polytex to the sleek Slim Fan and the ambitious gear-driven Pro Fan EX.

Testing results show the cheater still dominating airflow, while the other designs land in a mix of decent, quirky, and outright failed outcomes. The gear fan looks amazing but can’t handle the friction and drag needed to run properly, earning a DNF even though it scores high on style. Overall, the episode sets up a new season full of experimentation, engineering oddities, and viewer-submitted fan madness.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Season 4 kickoff and rule changes Season 4 opens with the host introducing a new season of Fan Showdown and outlining major changes. The previous season’s winning fan, the Cheater, advances into this season’s testing bracket.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Introducing the fan lineup and new contender concepts The speaker compares the Chromex fan teardown to the original A12 X25, noting two tiny holes in the hub that do not appear on the original and speculating about their purpose. They then transition into Season 4, Episode 1 of the fan showdown, introducing the first new concept fan: the Polytex, designed by John, who lacks formal fan design experience.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Design origins: airflow-focused fan experiments Introduces the RUX-412 by SCZ Epan, joking that its hub resembles a garlic clove and its blades look like wings with flaps extended, suggesting a humorous food-flight inspiration.
• 07:30 - 10:00: Mechanical complexity and gear-driven fan ideas The airflow test showed that, with the cheater added, most fans performed very well overall, except the Polytechs, which underperformed because they lacked enough blade area to push air effectively and instead threw more air off to the sides.
• 10:00 - 12:30: Airflow testing results and fitment limitations The presenter compares several fans and notes that the black Chromax A12x25 was accidentally damaged while being removed, so they switch back to the brown-and-beige version. They mention the black fan seemed more fragile because the motor tore off the frame, which had never happened with the older model.
• 12:30 - 15:00: Final rankings, a broken chromax fan, and season outlook The host presents the final season standings: the Cheater remains in first place, the Rucks 412 is second, the Slim Fan is third, the Polytechs are fourth, and the Pro Fan sits in last despite having several DNFs but still remaining on the board.

Overdrive ENGAGED | Fan Showdown S4E1 Transcription

• Segment 1: 00:00 - 02:30 today is the day everybody looks forward to a brand new season of the fan showdown today is season four episode one where i explain all the changes i'm gonna make you tell me how you feel about that in the comments down below and we decide how exactly we're gonna set up season four but let me run you through what i got planned and you let me know what you think first first things first though the fan that's moving forward from season three is obviously the cheater uh the cheater just wrecked last season did better than the atoll x25 plays first place overall uh that was cooling and air cooler so this season we'll see how well it does in the case fan type cooling i wanted to do gpu cooling obviously with the asus uh the noctua asus card but i obviously haven't been able to find one to buy so maybe next season but for now we're gonna do case fans and let me explain how we're gonna go case fans you probably know where this is going we've tested fans like this in the past where do i put this right there let me show you we will be using this little wind tunnel that phantech sent me way back when they sent me the t30 it's actually this thing works really well for what it is it's a 3d printed tube assembly that essentially you mount the fan to the front and you mount this anemometer to the back it's got some veins on the inside to make sure the airflow is nice and smooth and you simply just measure the speed through the air speed through the tube and that's what i want to do this season so if you're planning on designing a fan for season four for season four you want to try to make
• Segment 2: 00:00 - 02:30 something that's optimized for airflow where in the past it's been static pressure so fan mounts on the front no restrictions through the tube measure air speed bob's your uncle so that's the biggest change in season four i would say let me know how you feel about that go back together there you go now this last one isn't really a change but it's something i want to check out and i think you guys might find interesting as well but normally every season i'll take a brand new a12 x25 and use it as the test bench just to keep the fan fresh for every season and normally just use the brown and beige classic a12x25 but this season we're going to use the brand new chromex edition and the reason being i want to show you this part is on the old one you could see the metal hub underneath the fan disc on the new one they closed it off and i don't know why they did that the illuminati i assume that that metal hub is still there but if it isn't that's something i would find interesting and i'm sure you'd want to know as well so i think it's time that we take a brand new october fan and you know
• Segment 3: 02:30 - 05:00 no god no god please no no no no they ask you how you are you just have to say that you're fine when you're not really fine but you just can't get into it because they would never understand know [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so for the most part it came apart just the same as the original the only thing i noticed that's different on this chromex one is there's two tiny little holes in the hub here and i don't know what purpose that they have i don't know if you if you have any idea let me know in the comments down below but they don't exist on the original a12 x25 or any brown and beige one that i've taken apart so i don't know why these were added but for the most part the hub seems to be the same the material seems to be the same came apart just the same as every other one so now let's talk about what new fans we have for season four episode one so the first fan that we're gonna look at for season four of the fan showdown is the polytex and the polytext was designed by john john didn't say much when he submitted his fan just that he doesn't have any fan you know design experience like most of us uh but his idea here was that the small blades around the edge of the fan were going to create like a vortex effect he's hoping that these little tiny blades along the edge are going to kind of push the air towards the center
• Segment 4: 02:30 - 05:00 creating like a whirlpool type effect you know like water going down a drain now john didn't know that season 4 would be about airflow but the key thing to airflow is grabbing as much air as possible and accelerating it up the back of the fan and i think this fan might struggle with that reason being just the small
• Segment 5: 05:00 - 07:30 blades are kind of the downside next up we have the rux-412 which was created by scz epan now mr pan didn't say much about this fan when he submitted he just said um here's my fan and i like the fan showdown so thank you for that but if i was going to guess the inspiration of this fan i would say uh garlic on short final reason being is that the hub kind of looks like a garlic clove and the the blades kind of look like wings with the flaps extended so that's where that's where i get that then we have the slim fan this was created by gene now jean said that when he watches other fan showdown videos he notices that the fans that do really well case in point this one are fans that have big shrouds that go with them now rather than create a big shroud to go with this fan he took kind of a different approach he just made his fan very short so that the stock frame of the a12 x25 would kind of act like a larger shroud for it so interesting idea with that one overall though i kind of just like the design of this fan it's small it looks good in the frame the blades are like the perfect ratio of thickness to their size like there's like a thin line to walk if the blades are too thin the print quality kind of sucks and the rigidity goes way down if they're too thick then you just have extra mass you don't need but these ones are almost perfect for the size of the blade these fan these blades might be perfect but this nest one is going to be a bit ambitious this one is the pro fan ex ignore its black tinting we'll get to that in a minute but the pro fan was created by artem and yes this is going to be another gear fan the inspiration be behind this fan
• Segment 6: 05:00 - 07:30 was the last gear fan that we featured on a fan showdown special i used to have it up here but i dropped it and it broke boot essentially that fan was a bunch of planetary gears with little tiny blades in them and as they went around the hub the idea was that those little blades were going to move some air through the fan it made more noise than pretty much anything but the this one however is going to drive a carrier which is going to have planetary gears within it those gears are then going to drive a central hub that has the blades attached to it now artem says that the gear ratio between the input and the output should be about nine to one so if the fan in a perfect world could spin as fast as the 2000 rpm input motor speed that thing would be cooking i'm not sure if that's going to be possible given there's no bearings
• Segment 7: 07:30 - 10:00 i feel like the drivetrain losses are going to be pretty substantial but i guess we're just not going to know toy try but let's first talk about the airflow test when looking at all these fans with the addition of the cheater they all do pretty pretty darn good with the exception being the polytechs which doesn't do as good the polytechs just doesn't have the blade area to kind of push that airflow out the back of the fan you know kind of accelerate it as you need an airflow fan to do most of the air that the polytechs flings around kind of shoots off to the side so now you might have noticed a couple things in the smoke test when we added the cheater because that's number one but another thing being where is the gear fan ah yes the gear fan unfortunately had a few issues when i first put it together after it was freshly printed without the blades on it i could get it to spin but when i added the blades onto the center hub the added drag plus friction just was a little too much i couldn't get it to just spin for more than a few seconds i tried a couple things i initially tried to use white lithium grease like we did last time printed it out coated it up started it tried to get it to break in just couldn't do it without the blades did kind of fine put the blades on and it just stalled out then i figured maybe the white lithium grease was just a bit sticky so i reprinted it because i couldn't get it all cleaned off and i tried some graphite lubricant which did work better and that's why all this stuff is tinted black because it makes a mess it gets everywhere but still i couldn't get it to work it worked essentially i could get the fan to work
• Segment 8: 07:30 - 10:00 if it's facing straight up and to arden's car you know to his defense what he designed it for was the p1 which sits straight down so it could have worked for that one maybe but when i tried to mount it on like the smoke test stand and the wind tunnel whenever the fan was vertical it just stalled out so unfortunately although this fan is cool printing or designing a fan and then printing one that can function with the limited output of the a12x25 without any bearings is pretty tricky i invite anyone to try i really like these fans everybody likes watching them if you can figure it out you're a super genius but for this one because i couldn't run it on the wind tunnel and do the proper noise test and smoke test pretty much just got a dnf for
• Segment 9: 10:00 - 12:30 for this episode but it got an a plus for style and an a plus for making everything completely graphite covered now the other thing you might have noticed is that the chromax a12x25 was mysteriously missing i went back to the classic brown and beige this one slightly black from all the graphite powder that was on it but the chromax one was mysteriously missing reason being i broke it which which is surprising to me now in theory these fans should be pretty much identical obviously different color but for the most part i thought they were pretty much the same and they probably are however i did notice that this one seems a bit more fragile in a nutshell what happens i put a fan on this and then while i was trying to pull it off i just ripped the motor right off the frame which i've never ever done on a brown and beige one i don't think i put any more any more additional force on this black one that i did all the other brown and beige ones i've used so i'm not sure why it just blew out like this i was gonna buy another black one and then i was like why would i buy another black fan just to break it when i have like a ton of these brown and beige ones sitting around so we're going back to brown and beige let's talk about sound the polytechs came in around 51 dba the rux 412 came in around 49.8 dba the slim fan came in around 52.5 dba the cheater came in around 51.5 dba and the a12 x25 chromax i did test it before i murdered it it came in around 46 dba the the cheater still still the best one to listen to it's not the quietest but it does have the the lowest frequency it has a
• Segment 10: 10:00 - 12:30 has a very appealing hum to it that i would not mind listening to it all day long over the wine of most of these fans but let's talk about airflow that's what really matters in season four how fast do all these fans push air around the polytechs came in at 350 feet per minute the rux 412 came in at 675 feet per minute the slim fan came in at 601 feet per minute the cheater managed a massive 768 feet per minute and the a12x25 came
• Segment 11: 12:30 - 15:00 in at 626 feet per minute placing the cheater still in first place the rucks 412 and second the slim fan in third the pro fan obviously is going to be in last and the polytechs in fourth the profane got a bunch of dnfs but still on the board for now so there is that as well it's just so cool so let's talk cheater for a minute this fan is it destroyed last season it's still in first place this season it's going to be very tough to beat i mean just look at its numbers compared to everything else but i think you guys can do it it's up to you to make sure that the cheater doesn't cheat its way through season four like it did season three and remember you know if you want to get involved in the fans showdown all you got to do head down to the my description check out the links one will take you to my thingiverse account where you can find documents that will show you the critical dimensions for the fans also some models to get you going and once you get your design all straightened out all you gotta do is send me at least an stl file to the fan showdown at gmail.com and just like the cheater shows there's there's no rules i mean if you want to even add bearings and other crazy stuff make sure you supply a bill of material with that but if it's not something that's super expensive or hard to get i might just buy and try it out too there's no rules there's no rules there's one rule you