Well I finally got my ball bearing fans in for the stock replacements.
They work well but they are extremely loud compared to the stock sleeve fan.
They are the same type/brand as the stock fan, just ball bearing, direct replacement.
You probably bought one that is really high RPM...these fans can go up to 15k RPM. You only need about 7-10k RPM to properly cool these. Stock fans run around 9-11k.
Yeah I got the 10k ones, couldn't find lower.
I tried a 15k and those were seriously loud.
On a side note, I have zero explanation as to why -- I threw the Asic I thought that was dead on a different hub after not using it for a few days and its been working for like a week now. I'm now wondering if the 100% HW error and extremely low hashrate rate was being caused by something else, perhaps the port on the hub I was using.
Yea who knows. Thats the issue with cheap hubs that are not designed for high current draw from USB miners. The sticks themselves are build like tanks, so unless you do something seriously stupid the root cause of a problem will most likely be power/hub related.