I have a MiniTyphoon from Thermaltake. The fan has sleeve bearings. It died after about 14 months. I can't believe a $60 CPU cooler wouldn't have ball bearings, but it didn't and I'd suspect this one doesn't have them either. The mini also had those stupid accessory fans that do nothing other than get in the way. That said, it keeps my processor at idle around 90F and under load at 115F. The stock AMD cooler was about 100F and 135F respectively.