Noctua NF-F12 PWM Fan Review Update

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Published on Tuesday, 20 March 2012 01:00

Written by Stephen Duffin -smduff-

With our original review of the Noctua NF-F12 PWM fans complete, we came away not surprised but very impressed with what Noctua had done. We were curious to find out for ourselves how big of a difference there would be between Noctua's NF-F12 PWM fans and Cooler Masters Sickle Flows on a water cooled rig. Noctua was more than gracious, and sent us another three of their NF-F12 PWM controlled fans for our little experiment.

What we assembled was a AMD 1055T on a ASUS Crosshair V Formula 990FX Board, EK 360 Coolstream Radiator, as well as a EK HF Supreme CPU block, all being fed from a set of D5s in an EK Dual Pump top.

The testing is quite simple, we test the system with the CM SickleFlows in place and run two of the fans from a Lamptron FC5 fan controller and one from the CPU fan header on the board. Then we will repeat the same setup with the NF-F12's from Noctua. By doing this, we can monitor the single fan connected to the CPU fan header with the ASUS AI Suite II Fan Xpert software and see what happens.

The SickleFlows are not PWM controlled, so we will use a user defined profile in the ASUS Suite to set ramp up speeds to keep the temperatures in check. We then OC the system to 4GHz a 43% increase over the stock 2.8GHz and crank the juice up to 1.475V to keep stable, as well as generate some heat. We will also set the ambient temperature at 18°C for both runs.

First up, we ran the CM SickleFlows and achieved some pretty decent results. Our system at idle ran at a balmy 24°C and at 100% load we reached a Max Temp of 42°C which is pretty impressive and should be tough to beat.

Noctua NF-F12 PWM Fan Cooling Test

Now it's time to repeat the test but this time using Noctua's NF-F12 PWM controlled fans. We will also record a video so we can see the PWM function of the fans in use. We thought that we would also mention that the CM Sickle Flows run at 2000 rpm at a 100%, while the Noctua NF-F12 PWM fans only run at 1500 rpm.

Noctua NF-F12 PWM Fan Cooling Test

What we saw was that the Noctua NF-F12s kept our system 1°C cooler at idle temps and were on par with the SickleFlows when the system was loaded. As we already mentioned in the original review, there was no discernible difference in noise levels between the two fans. What we need to reinforce is the cost of the fans over the long run, simply because the Noctua's are rated for three times the life span of Cooler Masters SickleFlow fans.

So let's break it down, if one year is equal to 50,000 hours, which is the SickleFlows life expectancy, at a cost of $12.50 per fan on a triple Radiator would cost $37.50. Now Noctua's NF-F12 costs $25 per fan on a triple Radiator would cost $75 bucks but at 150,000 hours, so it will last 3 years. Over the three years of the NF-F12 you replaced the SickleFlow fans three times at a cost of $112.50, compared to the $75 which is an extra cost of 66% to you over the three year term.

Then you still need to take into consideration the cost of running the fans in your system. The CM SickleFlow's rated for 4.2w@ .35a and Noctua's NF-F12 rated for .6w@.05a is a 15% difference in power consumption per fan being run, now add that up over the course of a year or the 50,000 hrs. expected from the SickleFlow fans. So if it costs you $10 dollars to run a single NF-F12 it would cost you $11.50 for the SickleFlow, which admittedly isn't a lot of money but what if you had 10 fans in your system then that would be an extra $15 dollars a year you're just tossing out the window along with the other 66% of the cost to buy the SickleFlows three times. As you can see it can add up over the life span of the NF-F12s.

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