Review on Bgears b-Blaster 80mm Black Fan with 2 Ball Bearings: High-Speed, Extreme Airflow by Brian Carrizales

This is more of a report than an overview. I bought four b-Blaster 80mm fans from Bgears in August 2015 and installed four in identical hardware: three external cases with four SATA drives each. Two 80mm fans are mounted vertically on the front of each case to cool the four drives. In one case I used Bgears and a Noctua R8 fan (bought around the same time). On another occasion I used two Bgears. In the third, I used a single Bgears, and the bottom two drives were cooled separately in a different way. All drives work continuously, but are called up at times (home office). Three months ago, two Bgears died in the same building. They don't spin anymore. Literally today (January 2017) Bgears died sharing a hull with Noctua. Noctua still works great. The fourth Bgears, installed independently, still works. Of course, the Bgears fans spin at 3500 rpm and the Noctua fans at 1800 rpm. And Bgears doesn't claim to last as long as Noctua with its 6-year warranty. Also, Bgears did a good job to the point of failure to cool my WD Black 2TB drives. (All hard drives in these cases are WD-Black 2Tb.) So I can't regret my decision to buy Bgears, nor can I criticize Bgears for not being Noctuas - although I have to admit I've been impressed by the failure rate over the years time I'm a bit disappointed. from 18 months. In any case, I thought it would be helpful to post someone's account of their experience with these high-performance drives -- again, keeping in mind I've been running them 24/7.