4 ms·

If you need that kind of precision, yes. But I don't think they really need that.

by j16sdiz 6mo ago

vasco 6mo ago
They want them to be really silent. There's more details here: https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/tech/nf-a12x25-technical-backgrounds https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/tech/nf-a12x25-technical-...
- LiamPowell 6mo ago
  Last I checked they weren't really any quieter than their competitors at the same airflow and pressure (which is a little subjective because your curve will never match perfectly). They do have a really low number on their specs because they have a really low max RPM, but that's not really relevant when you can just lower the speed of other fans. They're still really good fans, but a lot of this is just marketing. At max power the Noctua NF-A12x25 has 56 CFM and 2.3 mmAq for 31dBA [1]. At 70% the Artic A12 Pro is 56 CFM, 4.3 mmAq, and 31dBA [2]. At 60% the Asus ProArt PF120 is 61 CFM, 2.6 mmAq, and 30 dBA [3]. Note that the ProArt is a bit thicker (25 vs 30 mm) and all these dBA numbers are almost certainly unobstructed airflow. The Noctua is certainly good, but it's literally over 5× the price of the Artic. [1]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/4/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/4/ [2]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/175/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/175/ [3]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/229/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/229/
  - techpression 6mo ago
    Noctua is working at the last five percentages of performance AND lifespan. They want their fans to perform (and sound) identical ten years later with daily use. Most people change fans far earlier than that. It’s kind of refreshing to see really.
    - adrian_b 6mo ago
      Indeed, the main reason why I choose Noctua fans from those that are silent enough and efficient enough is because I trust their reliability. I still have computers from 2017, with Kaby Lake CPUs, which have been used as servers and in which the Noctua fans work as well as in the first day. Prior to that I had some computers with Noctua fans that had been used for more than a decade without fan problems, and which were upgraded or replaced for reasons unrelated to fans. Thus the good experience that I had with the reliability of Noctua fans, coupled with some bad experiences with cheaper fans, which had to be replaced prematurely, make me reluctant to experiment now with other brands, which might have the same performance when new, but I could learn about their reliability only after a few years.
  - sho_hn 6mo ago
    On the other hand, if I recall right the internet is rife with customer reports of the Arctic fans having noose spikes / unpleasant hums or resonances at certain RPMs. Lots of people using config tuning to avoid it. I ended up buying Pure Wings as mentioned. Also much cheaper than Noctua and seemingly not having those issues.
    - kenhwang 6mo ago
      It's funny because I replaced my NF-A14 and NF-F12 because they had hums at certain rpms when used on radiators, and neither the Arctics before them, nor the BeQuiets that replaced them, had that issue.
LiamPowell 6mo ago
It's par for the course in the premium PC parts industry. It's overkill in a way that does not impact performance at all because gamers will pay for that.
- Strom 6mo ago
  > does not impact performance at all Noctua fans are still the top #1 performers in the world. You can argue that it's diminishing returns and you can get a fan with 90% of the performance for 50% of the money, but that doesn't change Noctua's position at the top.
- dgellow 6mo ago
  I do not play often on my PCs. I just like well engineered devices and do have more than enough money to buy a more expensive fan every five years or so. I like the item, it works well, is silent, I’m satisfied ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
sheiyei 6mo ago
If you're okay with some of your fans being noisy and/or inefficient, I'm sure you can work with flimsy tolerances.
sho_hn 6mo ago
It's luxury watch engineering for gamers. You do not need it, but it's kind of charming when anyone competently takes a niche to its extreme, imho. That said, on my last PC build I ended up buying Pure Wings 3, which are quite competitively silent at similar airflow and much cheaper. And white. Because I do like silly pretty PCs, as long as they don't have RGB on. https://eikehein.com/pc/pc2.webp https://eikehein.com/pc/pc2.webp
- Ekaros 6mo ago
  Functional premium product at premium price. Cheaper mid-class does the job most of the way. But I suppose there is slightly better characteristics and probably higher reliability in design. Not a fake luxury like too many products these days. I suppose we should be somewhat positive that some company still aims to deliver best possible products. Not just products with cheapest possible cost and some perceived luxury if even that.
  - sho_hn 6mo ago
    Indeed. Also, if their product ever does enshittify, the shit would truly hit the fan.
accelbred 6mo ago
This level of quality is why they have my business. We had a CI setup with rpi boards that needed fans (uart clock tied to cpu clock so heat meant slowing down and the uart dropped characters). I got tired of seeing random test failures on some board and driving up to the office to replace the fan that had failed. And they were loud and annoying. I ended up frustrated and expensing hundreds of dollars of noctua fans. Dead quiet, did a better job, and not even one ever failed on me.
- gblargg 6mo ago
  A quiet PC is one reason I've always removed the GPU cards from used ones I've gotten. The crappy little fans on GPUs that constantly whir up and down drives me nuts.
  - VorpalWay 6mo ago
    When my GPU fans went bad and I didn't want to buy a new GPU (nothing wrong with my 1070, it still runs the games I care about) I bought some smaller noctua fans and 3D printed an adapter plate (in PETG). The connectors were non-standard, but the signals weren't, so I had to splice together some cables with soldering and heatshrink tubes.
  - moffkalast 6mo ago
    I think Noctua makes GPU heatsinks now too, so you're in luck. MSI was pretty good at making almost dead silent cards once upon a time too.
    - embedding-shape 6mo ago
      > I think Noctua makes GPU heatsinks now too I got really excited for a while, been struggling to find a 3rd party heatsink for a noisy GPU that won't make it even more noisier. But, seems what you're talking about is this? https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/air-cooling/noctua-creates-a-monstrous-cooler-for-nvidias-gh200-grace-hopper-superchip https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/air-cooling/noctu..., which seems to have been just for the GH200 and seems to be more like a "super-cooler", as it's cooling both the CPU and the GPU. Went to Noctua's website and found no GPU coolers at all, so I think it might have been limited to just showing off at Computex 2024 maybe.
kenhwang 6mo ago
I used to really like Noctua fans, for a while they were obviously the best fans by a significant margin. But for all their tight tolerances and exotic materials and a high price to match, they generally don't outperform BeQuiet's more regular materials but use-focused fans that are half the price. Nor are they significantly better than Arctic's general purpose fans at a quarter the price. It'd make more sense to just buy the fan optimized for the specific common purpose (airflow or radiator) than pay double for the Noctua for a more generalized fan, but is not the best at either common use case. Seems like these days their target audience is those who believe their marketing materials about them being the best, instead of believing the benchmark performance data.
- LiamPowell 6mo ago
  2×? Try 5× for the Noctua NF-A12x25 compared the the Arctic P12 Pro that matches or beats it in most metrics. Which isn't to say the Noctua fan is bad, it's just a luxury product for reasons other than performance.
  - kenhwang 6mo ago
    2x more than other premium offerings that often perform noticeably better, which I'd say are usually from BeQuiet, LianLi, and Phanteks. But yes, sometimes up to 5x more than the comparative Arctic in common size categories where it basically trades blows for most metrics that matter. Arctic is seriously unbeatable in value:performance if you just need a basic fan without other QoL or aesthetic features. 120mm is the most competitive category, and it's the most obvious category how Noctua can't keep up with the faster iterating/innovating competition.
  - BoingBoomTschak 6mo ago
    Disclaimer: I read HWCooling like everyone serious about the subject. These reviews aren't everything, the appalling QC that results in resonances or coil whine lottery isn't mentioned. In general, yes, Noctua is overpriced and Arctic is an incredible value, but when you want to optimize your silence/performance ratio, it's still Noctua, BeQuiet or (sometimes) Thermalright.
xboxnolifes 6mo ago
If they didn't go to these length, they wouldn't be the brand that they are. They would just be one of any other random fan manufacturer.
dopa42365 6mo ago
Thermalright etc. have definitely shown that a slab of metal and some generic fans can be rather quiet and easily compete with Noctua at a fraction of the cost.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
amelius 6mo ago
It's like the gold plated headphone jacks they used to sell to audiophiles.
layer8 6mo ago
To be fair, half a millimeter isn’t even that much precision, generally speaking. You wouldn’t be anywhere close to manufacturing a working ball pen at that precision. Or even an acceptable keyboard, if we stay with plastic. With fans blades, the difficulty is probably the precision relative to the fan diameter.
- brookst 6mo ago
  The difficulty is clearance between two moving parts, with blades that deform slightly due to air pressure (at different amounts for different speeds) and with thermal expansion.
  - layer8 6mo ago
    That’s not what the article says, they relate it to reproducibility of the manufacturing process: “Achieving such small tip clearances is essentially at the absolute limit of what injection moulding can consistently reproduce”. Though maybe they misphrased that, as for example Lego pieces have significantly smaller tolerances and are also manufactured using injection molding.
    - brookst 6mo ago
      Clearance vs tolerance is important. Clearance includes all of the things I said.
      - layer8 6mo ago
        Yes, but that’s not what the article is saying.
monster_truck 6mo ago
You must not be familiar with the iPPC 3000's. A single 120mm fan moves more air than the exhaust fan in your bathroom. The 140mm encroaches on kitchen fan territory (158cfm). At static pressures slightly higher than what either of those typically has, 24/7, for years. They're not toys. If you stick your finger into one of these it does not peacefully come to a halt, the tip of your finger gets buzzsawed off and then it stops about halfway through your fingernail. (The i stands for industrial)
lm411 6mo ago
The quality difference between various fans is absolutely huge. I can put in a few Noctua fans and be confident they are going to last 5+ years of running 24x7. Or I can put in 25% cheaper fans and be pretty much guaranteed one or more is going to fail within the first couple years. In my opinion, fans are never a place to cheap out when building a PC - server or desktop, whatever.

If you need that kind of precision, yes. But I don't think they really need that.

by j16sdiz 6mo ago

If you need that kind of precision, yes. But I don't think they really need that.

vasco 6mo ago

They want them to be really silent. There's more details here: https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/tech/nf-a12x25-technical-backgrounds https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/tech/nf-a12x25-technical-...

LiamPowell 6mo ago
Last I checked they weren't really any quieter than their competitors at the same airflow and pressure (which is a little subjective because your curve will never match perfectly). They do have a really low number on their specs because they have a really low max RPM, but that's not really relevant when you can just lower the speed of other fans. They're still really good fans, but a lot of this is just marketing. At max power the Noctua NF-A12x25 has 56 CFM and 2.3 mmAq for 31dBA [1]. At 70% the Artic A12 Pro is 56 CFM, 4.3 mmAq, and 31dBA [2]. At 60% the Asus ProArt PF120 is 61 CFM, 2.6 mmAq, and 30 dBA [3]. Note that the ProArt is a bit thicker (25 vs 30 mm) and all these dBA numbers are almost certainly unobstructed airflow. The Noctua is certainly good, but it's literally over 5× the price of the Artic. [1]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/4/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/4/ [2]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/175/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/175/ [3]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/229/ https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/229/
- techpression 6mo ago
  Noctua is working at the last five percentages of performance AND lifespan. They want their fans to perform (and sound) identical ten years later with daily use. Most people change fans far earlier than that. It’s kind of refreshing to see really.
  - adrian_b 6mo ago
    Indeed, the main reason why I choose Noctua fans from those that are silent enough and efficient enough is because I trust their reliability. I still have computers from 2017, with Kaby Lake CPUs, which have been used as servers and in which the Noctua fans work as well as in the first day. Prior to that I had some computers with Noctua fans that had been used for more than a decade without fan problems, and which were upgraded or replaced for reasons unrelated to fans. Thus the good experience that I had with the reliability of Noctua fans, coupled with some bad experiences with cheaper fans, which had to be replaced prematurely, make me reluctant to experiment now with other brands, which might have the same performance when new, but I could learn about their reliability only after a few years.
- sho_hn 6mo ago
  On the other hand, if I recall right the internet is rife with customer reports of the Arctic fans having noose spikes / unpleasant hums or resonances at certain RPMs. Lots of people using config tuning to avoid it. I ended up buying Pure Wings as mentioned. Also much cheaper than Noctua and seemingly not having those issues.
  - kenhwang 6mo ago
    It's funny because I replaced my NF-A14 and NF-F12 because they had hums at certain rpms when used on radiators, and neither the Arctics before them, nor the BeQuiets that replaced them, had that issue.

LiamPowell 6mo ago

It's par for the course in the premium PC parts industry. It's overkill in a way that does not impact performance at all because gamers will pay for that.

Strom 6mo ago
> does not impact performance at all Noctua fans are still the top #1 performers in the world. You can argue that it's diminishing returns and you can get a fan with 90% of the performance for 50% of the money, but that doesn't change Noctua's position at the top.
dgellow 6mo ago
I do not play often on my PCs. I just like well engineered devices and do have more than enough money to buy a more expensive fan every five years or so. I like the item, it works well, is silent, I’m satisfied ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sheiyei 6mo ago

If you're okay with some of your fans being noisy and/or inefficient, I'm sure you can work with flimsy tolerances.

sho_hn 6mo ago

It's luxury watch engineering for gamers. You do not need it, but it's kind of charming when anyone competently takes a niche to its extreme, imho. That said, on my last PC build I ended up buying Pure Wings 3, which are quite competitively silent at similar airflow and much cheaper. And white. Because I do like silly pretty PCs, as long as they don't have RGB on. https://eikehein.com/pc/pc2.webp https://eikehein.com/pc/pc2.webp

Ekaros 6mo ago
Functional premium product at premium price. Cheaper mid-class does the job most of the way. But I suppose there is slightly better characteristics and probably higher reliability in design. Not a fake luxury like too many products these days. I suppose we should be somewhat positive that some company still aims to deliver best possible products. Not just products with cheapest possible cost and some perceived luxury if even that.
- sho_hn 6mo ago
  Indeed. Also, if their product ever does enshittify, the shit would truly hit the fan.

accelbred 6mo ago

This level of quality is why they have my business. We had a CI setup with rpi boards that needed fans (uart clock tied to cpu clock so heat meant slowing down and the uart dropped characters). I got tired of seeing random test failures on some board and driving up to the office to replace the fan that had failed. And they were loud and annoying. I ended up frustrated and expensing hundreds of dollars of noctua fans. Dead quiet, did a better job, and not even one ever failed on me.

gblargg 6mo ago
A quiet PC is one reason I've always removed the GPU cards from used ones I've gotten. The crappy little fans on GPUs that constantly whir up and down drives me nuts.
- VorpalWay 6mo ago
  When my GPU fans went bad and I didn't want to buy a new GPU (nothing wrong with my 1070, it still runs the games I care about) I bought some smaller noctua fans and 3D printed an adapter plate (in PETG). The connectors were non-standard, but the signals weren't, so I had to splice together some cables with soldering and heatshrink tubes.
- moffkalast 6mo ago
  I think Noctua makes GPU heatsinks now too, so you're in luck. MSI was pretty good at making almost dead silent cards once upon a time too.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    > I think Noctua makes GPU heatsinks now too I got really excited for a while, been struggling to find a 3rd party heatsink for a noisy GPU that won't make it even more noisier. But, seems what you're talking about is this? https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/air-cooling/noctua-creates-a-monstrous-cooler-for-nvidias-gh200-grace-hopper-superchip https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/air-cooling/noctu..., which seems to have been just for the GH200 and seems to be more like a "super-cooler", as it's cooling both the CPU and the GPU. Went to Noctua's website and found no GPU coolers at all, so I think it might have been limited to just showing off at Computex 2024 maybe.

kenhwang 6mo ago

I used to really like Noctua fans, for a while they were obviously the best fans by a significant margin. But for all their tight tolerances and exotic materials and a high price to match, they generally don't outperform BeQuiet's more regular materials but use-focused fans that are half the price. Nor are they significantly better than Arctic's general purpose fans at a quarter the price. It'd make more sense to just buy the fan optimized for the specific common purpose (airflow or radiator) than pay double for the Noctua for a more generalized fan, but is not the best at either common use case. Seems like these days their target audience is those who believe their marketing materials about them being the best, instead of believing the benchmark performance data.

LiamPowell 6mo ago
2×? Try 5× for the Noctua NF-A12x25 compared the the Arctic P12 Pro that matches or beats it in most metrics. Which isn't to say the Noctua fan is bad, it's just a luxury product for reasons other than performance.
- kenhwang 6mo ago
  2x more than other premium offerings that often perform noticeably better, which I'd say are usually from BeQuiet, LianLi, and Phanteks. But yes, sometimes up to 5x more than the comparative Arctic in common size categories where it basically trades blows for most metrics that matter. Arctic is seriously unbeatable in value:performance if you just need a basic fan without other QoL or aesthetic features. 120mm is the most competitive category, and it's the most obvious category how Noctua can't keep up with the faster iterating/innovating competition.
- BoingBoomTschak 6mo ago
  Disclaimer: I read HWCooling like everyone serious about the subject. These reviews aren't everything, the appalling QC that results in resonances or coil whine lottery isn't mentioned. In general, yes, Noctua is overpriced and Arctic is an incredible value, but when you want to optimize your silence/performance ratio, it's still Noctua, BeQuiet or (sometimes) Thermalright.

xboxnolifes 6mo ago

If they didn't go to these length, they wouldn't be the brand that they are. They would just be one of any other random fan manufacturer.

dopa42365 6mo ago

Thermalright etc. have definitely shown that a slab of metal and some generic fans can be rather quiet and easily compete with Noctua at a fraction of the cost.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

amelius 6mo ago

It's like the gold plated headphone jacks they used to sell to audiophiles.

layer8 6mo ago

To be fair, half a millimeter isn’t even that much precision, generally speaking. You wouldn’t be anywhere close to manufacturing a working ball pen at that precision. Or even an acceptable keyboard, if we stay with plastic. With fans blades, the difficulty is probably the precision relative to the fan diameter.

brookst 6mo ago
The difficulty is clearance between two moving parts, with blades that deform slightly due to air pressure (at different amounts for different speeds) and with thermal expansion.
- layer8 6mo ago
  That’s not what the article says, they relate it to reproducibility of the manufacturing process: “Achieving such small tip clearances is essentially at the absolute limit of what injection moulding can consistently reproduce”. Though maybe they misphrased that, as for example Lego pieces have significantly smaller tolerances and are also manufactured using injection molding.
  - brookst 6mo ago
    Clearance vs tolerance is important. Clearance includes all of the things I said.
    - layer8 6mo ago
      Yes, but that’s not what the article is saying.

monster_truck 6mo ago

You must not be familiar with the iPPC 3000's. A single 120mm fan moves more air than the exhaust fan in your bathroom. The 140mm encroaches on kitchen fan territory (158cfm). At static pressures slightly higher than what either of those typically has, 24/7, for years. They're not toys. If you stick your finger into one of these it does not peacefully come to a halt, the tip of your finger gets buzzsawed off and then it stops about halfway through your fingernail. (The i stands for industrial)

lm411 6mo ago

The quality difference between various fans is absolutely huge. I can put in a few Noctua fans and be confident they are going to last 5+ years of running 24x7. Or I can put in 25% cheaper fans and be pretty much guaranteed one or more is going to fail within the first couple years. In my opinion, fans are never a place to cheap out when building a PC - server or desktop, whatever.