This fan moves a lot of air. Hooked it up loose to a 3 pin mobo connection just for a little quick test and Speedfan reported 3771 RPMs and it was kickin some CFMs to blow your hair back. Not exactly quiet but not what I would call loud. Any fan running at that speed and moving that much air isn't going to be silent but I wouldn't say it was loud either. Pretty much what I would expect for decently made somewhat high speed fan. It does seem more geared towards airflow than static pressure so I don't know how well it would do with moving air through a filter or heatsink. But for a general case fan I don't know what more you could ask for. And the LEDs are nice and bright. When I get it in it's permanent spot it will be on a proper PWM terminal and should rarely if ever need to run at 100%, but nice to know it can really move some air if it has to. It will also be drawing air through a front case intake with a thin dust filter so we shall see if static pressure becomes an issue then. Also I am a big fan of dual ball bearings. I find it's sometimes a crap shoot with longevity between bearing types though from an purely intelectual standpoint I prefer mag-lev then dual ball and consider anything else disposable junk. But when sleeve or hydraulic bearing fans fail they generally go quietly and if you don't have an eye on your temps some component could fry itself. Ball bearing fans on the other hand will generally start chattering a bit to let you know there's a problem days or weeks before they get so bad they fail. So you're alerted to the situation, have time to order a new fan, and can keep using the PC in the mean time with no overheating. Anyway great fan, great price. Will post an update if anything unexpected comes up after it's running in it's permanent spot.