Noctua NF-P12 Vortex-Control Fan - Installation, Testing and More

Installation:

Installing the fans was a little tricky, I decided to use their rubber pegs to attach the fans to the case. These rubber pegs are a good idea, but very hard to get through the screw holes. I had to pull very hard and stretch the pegs probably an inch to get them to pop in. This is also very hard to do in some tight places where pulling requires pulling in the opposite direction.

Back Fan Installed

Front Fan Installed

Testing:

First, I took a look at the fan speeds, this was awesome fun because Zeus lent me his laser tachometer to play with for the fan speeds, and worked very well. Without any adapters the fan clocked at approximately 1425 rpm. – 25 rpm. above standard specs. With the L.N.A., the fan ran at approximately 1136 rpm. – 36 rpm. over fan specs. And finally the fan ran at 909 rpm. using the U.L.N.A. adapter cord. The fan ran pretty much the same with the power cord adapter as it did without any.

Next we will look at temperatures, I used speed fan for this one. I calculated it by playing a couple rounds of Unreal Tournament 3 to get it working and heated up. Then I checked speed fan and took the resulting temperature. Its temperature was pretty steady in its rising, and only differed by 1 degree for each adapter cord.

It doesn’t differ by much for temperature, but the sound was amazingly quiet. If I was really listening for it, and it had no adapter I could hear it just barely. The L.N.A. was kind of in-between the two, like it should be, I could hear it if I put my ear right up to the fan, but other than that, it was super quiet. The U.L.N.A. was like the silent killer of the bunch, it could not be heard. Even after I put my ear right beside it all I could hear was the air blowing past.

Final Thoughts:

Doing this review definitely gave Noctua a good name in my books - this fan really impressed me, fans were just an insignificant part of my computer before these babies came along, and now I don’t know if I can part with them. Anything will sound noisy compared to these. Although they push the budget a little from a mere $12 to whopping $30 from some stores, excellent cooling and noise reduction make this product highly recommended.

Pros:

• Quiet
• Good Cooling.
  

Cons:

• Expensive
• Pegs hard to install

We'd like to thank Noctua for setting us up with some nice fans that are a whole bunch quieter than the stock fans on the Ultra m998 case.  These fans will make the move from one case to another for years to come.  Please post your feedback regarding these fans at the "Comments" link below.