Noctua NF-F12 PWM chromax.Black.swap, Premium Quiet Fan, 4-Pin

I’ve always heard that noctua was great and I finally bought a few for my tower cooler and case because I was tired of the noise from my old no name fans. These are incredible! I immediately noticed how much quieter the system is now and performance is just as good if not better than my old stock fans. The colored vibration absorbers are a nice pop of color for a clean build and the cable extensions are a bonus if you don’t have a close by header. These fans fit into my fan header on my motherboard no problem, very easy swap.

I bought a Thermaltake AIO triple radiator and after about a year I started hearing some noises from the fans. I knew Noctua fans are supposed to be excellent fans but I can't deal with the brown. I was pleased to find these black ones.I noticed the RPM was listed at 1500 and my Thermaltake fans were 2000 I think. These fans are definitely quieter most likely due to the lower RPM. I tried a test and cranked my CPU fans to 80% and I could barely hear them. I turned them up to 100% and they were more noticeably louder but still quieter than the Thermaltakes at 50%. They did get up to 1500 RPM at 100% so that rating is accurate.I ended up setting them at a minimum of 50% and maxing out at 100% with high temps but it never gets that hot. I didn't really notice any difference with CPU temps while playing a game for a few minutes. There is not much airflow coming out of these fans when you place your hand in front of them. I was worried they might not move enough air but everything I have read says they are a better design at moving air at a lower RPM. Who knows?It is irritating they only give you 4 of each color for the anti vibration pads. I put the black ones on top and red ones on bottom. I don't see that the top ones serve any purpose because the top of the fans are not touching anything being mounted on top of my radiator in a pull configuration. I can't think of too many setups where your fan would be contacting another surface on both sides so maybe that's why they only give you 4?They seem to be high quality and the packaging was nice. I was not happy about the placement of the 4 pin connector coming out of the fan to plug the extension cable into. It is very short and I wanted to pass it through the opening around my radiator. I ended up having to leave the connector above the opening. Not a big deal but some people might find it less than ideal for their setup. The extension cables were long enough with length to spare and I am in a full size case.

What is there to really say? They’re Noctua fans and they’re fantastic. Sure they’re the slightly older version of the 120mm fans and not the newest NF-a12’s but the black version of them has been delayed several times and who knows when they’ll actually be released. The Arctic P12s are cheaper and offer similar or slightly better performance but in my opinion they have some quality issues that Noctua just don’t have. Occasionally if you buy a 5 pack one will make a weird noise and need to be RMA’d but they are dirt cheap so it’s not a big deal. Back to the Noctuas... I have 9 of them in my Lian Li O11 case and they generally run around 800 rpm and are dead silent at that speed. They cool my OC RAM (cl16 3800, 1900 fclk 3900x), PBO OC CPU, and OC 3080 just fine (3080 never reaches above 65°C and memory junction temps never reach above 84°C).My only complaints about these fans are the number of anti-vibration pads given with each fan. They should offer fewer colors and instead include 8 of each color instead of just 4. Sure, there are enough included to make sure that every mounting point has a pad of the same color but come on, this is an aesthetic thing. Anyway, no complaints and totally happy with my upgraded fan situation. May eventually buy two more and use them on my 3080 if I decide to deshroud. Oh, and I’m using a few on a radiator and they are fantastic for that. The rest are fighting against very restrictive dust filters (it’s a problem with the O11, the mesh is too fine) and they do great with that static pressure situation as well. They are a little loud above 1000 rpm though, so be aware of that if you plan to have fewer case fans than the 9 I run.

I purchased this fan for CPU heat-sink cooling, as I wanted something very dependable for this critical application. These Noctua fans will generally last for years and years, running quietly and dependably, and no LEDs to worry about. You can't go wrong with Noctua quality.