I was looking through my PC equipment order history on Scan the other day, and I noticed that some of my case fans were ordered in 2010 – whoops. These were still being actively used in my computer, too!

This begs the question: is there a natural point in time when a fan can be deemed to be “too old”? Or should you keep running fans until they physically break down?

Well I answer these questions and more in this video, and I also perform a few tests to determine whether my case fans are still running adequately more than a decade later.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, some people say that you should change your case fans every 5 or 6 years. I didn’t get that memo. I recently realized that my PC build still had case fans in it from 2010. Whoops. Another fan was from 2011, two were from 2012 and another was from 2015 – it came with my 9 year old Corsair Carbide 88R case.

Me talking while showing my five case fans in the background

Now, I had no real issues with my computer‘s cooling performance, which begs the question: is there a point in time when you MUST say “okay this fan is too old, let’s replace it”? If there’s not, then why did I just upgrade all five of these fans to newer Arctic P12s? And finally, why did I rip one fin off each of these fans? Well I actually did THIS because of some highly scientific testing that I performed for this video, but let’s take a look at all of these questions.

Fans Wear Out At Different Rates

Outside of a Corsair Carbide PC case showing the difference between CPU and chassis fans

So as we all know, PC case fans – or chassis fans as some people call them – have a simple function: they cool down the computer. Some case fans will bring new air into the case (acting as an intake fan) and other fans will EXPEL warmer air out of the case – we call these “exhaust fans”.

Now, case fans can be powered in a few different ways – they can be plugged into “old school” 3 pin or Molex adapters that SOMETIMES (but not always) means that the fan runs at 100% speed – which isn’t always ideal because this is noisy of course. BUT this can also wear out the fans faster, which is an important point that I’ll circle back to later. The other way of powering fans is through a 4 pin connector that results in variable fan speeds, and this is known as PWM – Pulse Width Modulation.

Me holding up a 4 pin Sharkoon SE case fan

This video isn’t a primer on fan basics so I won’t cover this point much more, but the key point here is that running your fans at variable speeds will increase their lifespan.

How Often My Own Fans Were Run

That’s actually what I did with these five old case fans. I had them running through an old Phanteks fan controller and it was rare that they ran at 100%. Plus I don’t keep this computer on 24/7 – it’s probably on for an AVERAGE of 4 hours a day, I’d guess. That’s probably partly why these fans are still working fine after 14 years, in some cases

I say that they’re working fine – but how do I know that? I mean, they don’t work well anymore since I BRUTALLY removed their fins:

Me crying while holding my 2010 Sharkoon Silent Eagle fan with a gravestone showing the text 2010 2024

But this was all part of some ultra scientific testing to work out whether case fans generally can still work fine after a decade or more.

The (Attempted) Bag Test

So the first idea I had here was to attempt the “bag test”. This is where you wrap a plastic bag around your case fans and make sure it’s directing new air inwards. As long as there’s a proper seal around the fan, in theory you can keep track of how long the bag takes to fill up – and then use this to work out whether the fan is still in good working order or not.

Filling up a plastic bag with an inward facing fan

The problem here is that it’s actually quite difficult (as you can see) to get a good, proper seal around the fan – especially when using cheap carrier bags. To be honest, you could tell that the fans were in good enough condition just by looking at them – they were spinning fine and weren’t making any weird noises. So I called off my ultra scientific bag test and I moved onto test number 2 – and this WAS actually pretty cool.

Measuring The Exact Fan RPM Rate

You know how case fans have an advertised RPM? This is naturally the number of rotations (or revolutions) that the fan will make every minute. So I got my main Sony camera and I switched it to record in 120fps:

Setting my Sony A6600 to 120fps

I also knew that I wasn’t going to use these old case fans in the future (for reasons that I’ll explain later on) so I removed one fin from each of these – sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m a monster. I then put this footage on my computer and I counted how many times each fan rotated every single second. Yes, I went through frame by frame and counted the number of times that the fan made a full rotation.

Going frame by frame in Premiere Pro to work out the exact number of rotations

I tracked this for a few different seconds (for each fan) which allowed me to work out their RPMs – as you can see:

Fan speeds per second

So the two Sharkoon fans ran at around the same speed, getting approximately 12 to 13 rotations per second – giving an RPM range between 700 and 800 RPM. The Corsair one ran faster at 19 or so rotations meaning a 1200 RPM range, and the old Arctic F12 fans had 23 to 24 rotations per second – giving an RPM range around 1400.

This is interesting BECAUSE the 12 year old Arctic fans advertise a 1350 RPM – so my super scientific approach here was actually kind of accurate. The same was true for my 9 year old Corsair fan that came with my case, because this also span at around the advertised RPM rate of 1200. Now what about the Sharkoon Silent Eagle fans? These are the oldest and they run really slow at 700 RPM, so that proves that old fans will break down, right?

Fan speeds per minute the RPM rate

Well, I don’t personally think so. The average RPM rate was probably just below 800 RPM and I’m struggling to find the original fan specs for these fans. Some sources online say 1200 RPM, but others list 800 RPM – which is broadly what my tests actually show. I’m also conscious that I powered these Sharkoon fans in a hacky way – I use a 4 way splitter, which then goes to a 4-to-3-pin adapter and THEN I connect these to a Molex fan adapter.

How I connected up one of my Sharkoon 4 pin fans

It’s a big fudge and it’s entirely possible that one of these adapters brought the RPM rate down to 800 RPM or so. I can’t be 100% sure. But what I would say is that both Sharkoon Silent Eagles fans actually ran at the exact same speed, and they were made in different years – so it’s unlikely that both are randomly failing in the exact same way. It’s much more likely that these ARE 800 RPM fans (or the adapters are throttling them down to that), which proves that 13 and 14 year old case fans can still work absolutely fine.

How To Maximize Fan Lifespan

So that’s pretty cool to know and I’ll discuss when it IS time to change your fans in a minute. But firstly I wanted to quickly point out that every fan is made slightly different. There are different types of bearing systems – from ball bearings to fluid dynamic bearings, and everything in between. If you bought an ultra budget fan, it might fail faster than some super highly engineered fan, for example.

Now, you CAN take steps to maximize your fan’s lifespan. Firstly, if you’re running your fans at 100% speeds for some reason, you might want to stop doing that. Using a fan hub or a 4 pin PWM fan will probably be better for your fan’s lifespans than maxing it out all the time. Secondly some people actually take their fans apart and keep them lubricated which will ensure that they run as efficiently as possible, and reduce the inevitable wear and tear on the fan bearings:

Why I Changed My Own Fans

To be honest though, many case fans are actually quite cheap to buy. Yes, Noctua ones have a premium for example (with their premium 120 mill fans costing around £30 (or $35) here in the UK). BUT I recently purchased five Arctic P12 fans and a fan hub to replace my old case fans. The fans only cost me around £5 (or $6) each so I wouldn’t personally bother taking them apart and re-lubricating them, to be honest.

Arctic fan TIM fan box and fan hub

As to WHY I changed my case fans, it was nothing to do with these old fans failing or something – as I’ve just shown, they all still spin at their advertised rates, more than a decade on. I simply wanted a common theme for all of my fans – previously I had three different types of fans in my case, and it didn’t look great in my opinion. Since my case is black, these new Arctic fans really blend in without any issues.

Showing three of my new black Arctic fans inside my case

While I was there I also switched out my old Phanteks fan hub with an Arctic one and my system is now super silent – I get full PWM control on all five fans and they often run at around 1100 RPMs which works out really quiet and it keeps my system really cool.

But there certainly wasn’t a NEED to change these five old case fans – they worked perfectly well, until I started brutally ripping the fins off them, I guess. Sorry fans.

When To Change Your Case Fans

Quite dusty case fans

To wrap this up, let’s answer the main question again – is there ever a time when a fan is “too old” and MUST be replaced? Well, no, not really. A budget fan which runs maxed out all the time might fail after a few years, whereas a higher quality fan might still be working more than a decade on. You only NEED to change your fans if they are running MUCH slower or they suddenly become really noisy – this is a sign that the bearing is shot.

Really I think it comes down to: you’ll KNOW when it’s time to change your case fans. The only OTHER reason I can think of is if you have older 3 pin fans or – God forbid – Molex fans, you might want to change them to 4 pin fans so you can get some extra control of their fan speeds. Yes I know that you can SORT OF control the fan speed’s of 3 pin fans via the DC option that exists on some (but not all) motherboards – but in general, PWM fans are so cheap nowadays that I would look to buy these from now on.