Arctic's new fan-cooled fans might be for servers but I want a gaming rig full of them for the ultimate cooling kudos

A rendered image of a server rack, showing three Arctic S12038 cooling fans in a row

(Image credit: Arctic Cooling)

Cooling fans in servers don't have an easy life. They're jammed into a tiny space and typically run full-pelt all day long. Should one fail, it's not a quick task to replace them either, so anything that can be done to keep them running longer is a must. Cooling experts Arctic reckons it has the ultimate solution there: fan cooling your cooling fans.

Yes, you read that right: a cooling fan that has a cooling fan to cool the cooling fan. The main cooling fan, not the extra cooling fan. That apparently doesn't need a cooling fan but I do wonder at what point in the future we'll see cooling fans' cooling fans sporting an additional cooling fan. Okay, I'll stop now.

Arctic's new S8038 and S12038 series of server cooling fans (via Tom's Hardware) all sport an additional itsy-bitsy fan in the central hub. Its purpose is to lower the operating temperature of the bearings, helping to prolong their lifespan. Where a typical gaming PC's air wafters will spool up and down, only occasionally running at full RPM, those in a server will usually be called upon to blast as much air as possible at all times.

Not that they're particularly expensive: Arctic is selling the S12038-8K for €19 (a fraction over $20). I'm very tempted to buy one just to mess about with but the inner child in me keeps looking at my main PC's case and giggling at the thought of it being loaded to the hilt with them. It's a Fractal Design North XL which can fit up to seven 120 mm fans so with a full complement of S12038s, I'd technically have 14 fans in my PC.

Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in the early 1980s. After leaving university, he became a physics and IT teacher and started writing about tech in the late 1990s. That resulted in him working with MadOnion to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its PC gaming section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com covering everything and anything to do with tech and PCs. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open-world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?