I enjoyed reading this. As others have said, it's both interesting and good marketing communication.
I'm a dev and for the last year I've been working for a company that manufactures pretty complex and advanced machines. I work with proper engineers - electronic, electrical, control, mechanical - and actual scientists. One of the things I've come to appreciate from this is the hidden depts of detail and complexity in so many aspects of the objects that surround us. People work hard on small details that hide in the background but are vital to making things work. And there's often code in everything, all the way down.
And now I can add plastic injection moulding to that. The rabbit hole goes very deep.
Edit to add:
My dad worked forty-plus years as an engineering pattern maker. He made - by hand - the high-tolerance "negatives" that were used to form sand and resin moulds. The moulds were used to cast parts for industrial valves: molten brass and gunmetal was poured into them, in a foundry, and left to cool. I think he would have deeply appreciated what this article was saying about craft and engineering and patience.
When it comes to industrial manufacturing, a think of lot of people are not realizing (by lack of education on the matter in general knowledge or schooling) the difference between levels of manufacturing, the precision required for some things, and how the hard part is having the full chain (making the tool that can make the tool that can make the tool that ...) because you can't jump from nothing to milimeter precision.
Also known as "why did China who already owned world manufacturing insisted and struggled on making ballpoint pen until 2017", "why are car manufacturers not making random cheap cars that have the curbs of beloved sports cars", "why are barely 5-6 countries able to make decent jet engines" and all that.
Manufacturing is hard. It's built upon layers and layers of deep knowledge and abilities. And when don't have it or you lose it, just knowing how to make the last layer is not enough, you need to rebuild the entire stack.
Which in this case becomes "painting something black is easy, making a fan black is easy, making a high quality high precision fan black from the starting point of the same fan in another color is an industrial challenge".
(I did a couple months of industrial engineering in university and while it wasn't for me, I loved what I learned about the field)
This is content marketing executed perfectly :) Reading it, I learned something new and interesting and they had an opportunity to show off one of their differentiators against the competition (low leakage flow due to tighter tolerances) and then at the end they casually mention the new product that has just opened for pre-orders.
I enjoyed reading it. Informative and showing of their processes and giving some intricate details. And yes, the end goal is to sell products which is fine by me. I take this over any generic non-saying marketing-blurb any time.
I'd love more white, personally. I also don't understand the obsession with black. For me, black objects are very difficult to observe in detail, and that irks me.
With Noctua I highly doubt that is the case given their track record for quality overall and all other information available around their design and engineering process. As far as I know based on all the information I have seen all the design and engineering is done in Austria. They also have a track record of only releasing things once they are satisfied something performs within their standards. Something that would be next to impossible when solely relying on external fabs and process engineering.
They also utilize different manufactures afaik (historically Taiwan, but also China these days) meaning they need to have pretty solid in house knowledge and expertise to make sure different factories produces similar results. When they first started utilizing Chinese factories people noticed visual differences and were worried about that. But Noctua at the time claimed that they made sure that performance was still the same. A claim that was put to the test by various review outlets at the time (I want to say gamer nexus did a big piece about it?) and confirmed to be true.
Having said that, if you do utilize external factories you automatically are making use of their process engineering to some degree as well. But, and this is difficult for many people to understand, that isn't a binary thing either. You can entirely rely on the factory to basically do everything for you and just send feedback on iterations but you can also work closely with them and actually get involved in the process itself.
Yeah, everything being black on modern motherboards might look cool with RGB lighting, but makes it harder to work on. I like the older green PCBs with white PCI slots.
I also lament the demise of color coded connectors at the back. I knew to plug my speakers into the green 3.5mm jack. Now everything is black, so I need to look at the manual again to see which of the 5 connectors is the right one.
I remember being a kid when standardized port colors came 'round (what was that, part of the AC'97 spec or something?). I thought that was dumb: I knew that the speakers plugged into the third hole from the top, and that was good enough for me. ;)
Back then: I would have loved black-on-black, labelled-in-black, with black cables and and black highlights on a black background. The accessories would be black, too: Black keyboard, black featureless keycaps, black mouse, with a black mousepad, on a black desk, in a black room with black walls and black windows.
Black.
I couldn't get black back then, of course. Computers were beige. The necessary floppy and optical drives were beige. Cables were beige. Keyboards were beige. Motherboards were some moral equivalent to beige. It might be possible to get one or two components in black at some points, but the rest were going to be beige so therefore the whole thing might as well just be resolutely beige.
That really annoyed me.
But I'm not a kid anymore; I'm old. I just want stuff that works well, and that is expandable enough to do some fun and unusual computing stuff with, and that I can see so that when I'm futzing around with it then my job is easier than it would otherwise be.
I don't want RGB or a tempered glass aquarium that shatters when part of it touches a tile floor the wrong way. I don't care about having multiple choices for the color of the anodizing on the heatsinks for the RAM. I don't want water cooling when a big slow-moving fan and some heat pipes does the job very quietly, with improved simplicity therefore longevity. I'm not trying to win a cooling benchmark; I'm just trying to keep the CPU within its specified thermal range while it does work for long periods at its maximum speed. I don't care what color the fans are as long as I can't hear them.
If I want to play with RGB by making or buying some party lights, then I know how to do that. Party lights for the room (or the whole house!), not the guts of the PC. :)
Otherwise: The computer is on the floor under the desk and the USB hub is on top of the desk, and that's all I need to deal with. It is purposeful and functional. There's no style points here, but I just don't care about that anymore.
(I'll be outside yelling at clouds if anyone needs me for anything.)
This colour combo is more 1970s than 80s. 80s was more gaudy neon and transparent stuff. The 70s loved their murky browns. OK PC boxes of the 80s and 90s were all beige too but they didn't have any brown. It also fit in with manufacturing in those days: In the 70s a lot of wood was still used, whereas in the 80s everything shifted to plastics.
But whether you love or hate (as I do) the brown Noctua colours, the one thing is that they are kinda polarising. They're not a "clean fit" in any build unless you really wanna show that you use Noctua and use them as a centrepiece. Which I guess is the point of their marketing. They want to make it seem their fans are so good people are willing to put up with the colour.
I love Noctua fans and I don't care about their colour. For all I cared they could be pink as long as they are best in class on noise and reliability.
They are going inside the computer where they aren't visible. The point of a computer to me is to be powerful while being as discrete about it as it can be (i.e. quiet and no blinking rgb lights). I don't have a glass side panel, I run an older Fractal case with aluminum sides with sound dampening instead.
I never understood "form over function", but each to their own.
> They are going inside the computer where they aren't visible.
Speak for yourself :) My computer is pretty open, the fans are visible through the front and through the side panel.
I don't run RGB either though but I do like to style it.
And of course the "form over function" is part of that market niche that really pays a lot for something like a fan. Noctua aren't that special, as others have mentioned there are much cheaper brands with the same performance including sound level. You do pay a lot for just the branding.
Every other brans of fans I have used (which to be fair is far from all of them) have only lasted 3 maybe 4 years before they started making more noise than when new. They weren't completely broken, but any increase in noise is unacceptable to me. I live in an old quiet house, there is no noise from forced ventilation but because it doesn't have that. There is no city noise. On a still day in the winter with no wind or birdsong it can be extremely quiet.
I have some Noctua fans still going strong after a decade. Are there other brands that can also do that? Probably, I have some BeQuiet fans now too in a tower CPU cooler (couldn't get hold of a Noctua cooler during the pandemic), it will be interesting to see what happens in another 6 years or so with them.
And no, I don't change my computer every 3 years or so any more, so longevity does matter to me.
Funny how the world works. People once bought cheap children’s play carpets and cut them up as car mats out of poverty. Now people pay €75 to get that same look.
This is a really nice write up. The reason itself — why the delay — is totally within my own speculation, but the sheer quality of the writing dragged me through the whole article. That is something.
I think this shows how Noctua value their customers, including myself. I really love how they are nice to their customers — both their products and services — especially because experience like this is getting more and more scarce. I really appreciate their work.
Noctua is one of few companies that has not broken my trust (yet). They promise me a really good fan, they're ten toes in on the promise and they have yet to fail to deliver.
My fan broke after five? years of near 24/7 use. Customer support was very easy to reach. They sent me a new one after I sent some serial numbers as proof. They asked me then to break off a blade, and a picture of it so I didn't have to sent it back.
I really miss that they don't release white versions. In my all-white case I just can't have Noctua. The brown ones I think are extremely ugly and the black ones stand out too much.
White doesn't really look bad in any case (except perhaps a full black one). The brown is very identifiable but that's only really a point if you desire to flaunt your expensive fans. Because it will stand out too much in almost any build. I honestly don't care about that, and for a fan this price I shouldn't have to put up with hidden advertising.
But I have BeQuiet Silent Wings and they're not bad. Quietness isn't something I'm optimising for anyway as I only use my desktop for gaming and when I do I wear headphones anyway. I do want to optimise more for pressure (as I have air filters) but these fans are no worse than Noctua.
I usually look at the monitor, not the case under the desk. ;)
That said, I don't want RGB bleed, nor do i want a case where I see the insides. The computer is there to be powerful and discreet (both when it comes to noise and looks).
But sure, you could skip the walnut. I think Noctua should also go well with lighter woods. Oak perhaps but probably not all the way to birch.
Hi there! I want to talk to you about ducts. Do your ducts seem old-fashioned, out of date? Central Services' new duct designs are now available in hundreds of different colours, to suit your individual taste. Hurry now, while stocks last, to your nearest Central Services showroom! Designer colours to suit your demanding taste.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have used Noctua fans in computers where they worked for a decade or so, even 24x7, until an upgrade or replacement of the computer was required by other reasons than because of the fans.
I have also had many problems caused by cheaper fans.
So now I always prefer to use rather expensive fans and power supplies, from brands with which I have accumulated many years of experience, for peace of mind.
Perhaps other brands of fans that nowadays give similar results in benchmarks also have similar reliability, but I am not willing to bet on it.
If we're going by anecdotes, my last Noctuas showing signs of failure (I had 6 of them, one was ~200rpm slower than it should be, one took a several seconds longer to start spinning from a stop) about a year after the end of warranty was partially why I retired them. Same with the set of Noctuas before them (apparently my first set was from 2010). I suppose they all technically still spun so they were still usable, just not to original performance; still, hard to be too upset about the product making it through the long warranty period without issue.
But my Arctics that was installed in the same case that ran for the same amount of time are still chugging along strong, and those are about as cheap as fans get. Different load/use case though so it's probably not a fair comparison.
These days, I really think the competition has caught up or passed Noctua.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I recently built a home server and used Noctua fans for the first time. I absolutely love how quiet they are. If I didn't know the room had my server in it and was running, I wouldn't even notice the very quiet sound of the fans.
I am running them at about 800rpm and the CPU is usually between 33~37 degrees.
When I rebuild my main PC, I will surely go with them again.
Explains why LEGO had a leg up for multiple years. You can’t just change the color pigments and hope the parts fit in the same way. Of course these times are over and other brick manufacturers caught up or overtook Lego.
This is answered in the first paragraph of the article. Painting requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics. Paint does not weigh zero, it changes the flexibility of the plastic, and the texture which changes flow.
But the article didn't give any ballpark numbers, so the interesting bit is missing, and we still know basically nothing.
It can very well be like the snake oil which makes you feel better maybe for the three seconds after you bought it. Or those gold plated audio jacks which are 0.0001% improvement in quality.
Well as someone who does buy PC fans, let me tell you that Noctua is clearly superior. It may be just a plastic fan with some bearings, but it doesn't seem to be easily replicable because nobody has managed to do it.
And it’s quieter than many of its counterparts from other vendors. And it actually doesn’t cost that much - more expensive than cheap-o versions for sure, but then again significantly quieter, that’s their whole premise.
The devil is in the details. Noise, static pressure efficiency, reliability, bearing quality, motor quality. Yes, there's a huge brand premium too. For critical uses, using a crap fan is an absolutely stupid decision especially where damage or malfunction is likely.
In zie olden PC days™, there weren't many options for quality fans except maybe whatever random fans Delta made that generally weren't optimized for low noise or low power consumption. Ancient, no name sleeve bearing fans would almost always go out within 1-2 years at 24/7 100% duty cycle.
Branding, you're never in doubt when some YouTuber is building a PC using Noctua fans. There's probably some weird psychology in the colour as well. Why would anyone want a fan in such an ugly colour, unless it's really good. The weird beige and brown is highly recognizable, and even if you already don't know about Noctua you're likely to ask questions about the fan solely based on the colour.
The black fans are really only needed by those who build show piece in those cases with glass panels, but they might equally well need white fans, which Noctua doesn't make. Personally I don't really care about the colour of my fans, you can't see them anyway.
Noctua fans have a distinct look, you could say the same about black, if you want to black them out just get a case that hides them since that would look the same.
I always expected that black was the easiest color, since you just add enough pigment to wipe out any colors from other materials. Are they implying that that brown color is the natural look of the materials they used, so the simplest to engineer?
From what I understood, any color and material involved in high precision manufacturing requires careful design and thorough testing. They likely prioritize the brown color and material due to branding, so changing this to anything else requires redoing large parts of the pipeline.
You have to redo injection moulds anyway as they have a limited life. And you can do a lot with materials too, some materials simply shrink more than others as they cool down.
I'm glad companies like Noctua exist that put so much thought and care into their products. I don't even mind being advertisted to when that's the case.
One of the first things mentioned on that page is:
> To protect our intellectual property, certain features – such as fan impeller geometries – have been slightly modified while remaining visually very close to the actual product.
So you do have to 3d scan them yourself if you're trying to print a copy.
Depending on what printers you have available I'll put in the work to get you a ~0.02mm deviation scan of a blade off a 120mm noctua fan I broke. I expect it to under-perform notably due to the surface texture and the lack of rigidity under load causing contact with the shroud walls at high RPMs, but I wouldn't bet my lunch on it, would be fun to find out.
Somewhat unrelated anecdotal praise of Noctua: due to various life factors, I hadn't built a PC since maybe 2010 or thereabouts - something I did relatively often before then and had quite a bit of experience with. Then a few months ago I finally did it again. Forgetting about the absurdity of the RAM situation, I gotta say my biggest surprise was cooling. I wanted a quiet media center machine. The internet and friends kept recommending Noctua. While researching, I got a bit of a cult vibe, and their prices seemed a bit stiff. But I went for it, with some hesitation.
Goddamn was I wrong! Their CPU coolers are the most well-designed, thoughtfully planned, amazingly performing consumer product I've seen in a while. 10/10, highly recommend! I'll use them for all PC cooling needs going forward.
Where do you draw the line though? They have an amazing reputation for quality fan products, they clearly feel it needs a new injection mould which aren't cheap investments.
I've got a Noctua NHD14 in my current build that I bought in 2011 and it performs perfectly still (including 2 free socket upgrades from Noctua).
I enjoyed reading this. As others have said, it's both interesting and good marketing communication.
I'm a dev and for the last year I've been working for a company that manufactures pretty complex and advanced machines. I work with proper engineers - electronic, electrical, control, mechanical - and actual scientists. One of the things I've come to appreciate from this is the hidden depts of detail and complexity in so many aspects of the objects that surround us. People work hard on small details that hide in the background but are vital to making things work. And there's often code in everything, all the way down.
And now I can add plastic injection moulding to that. The rabbit hole goes very deep.
Edit to add:
My dad worked forty-plus years as an engineering pattern maker. He made - by hand - the high-tolerance "negatives" that were used to form sand and resin moulds. The moulds were used to cast parts for industrial valves: molten brass and gunmetal was poured into them, in a foundry, and left to cool. I think he would have deeply appreciated what this article was saying about craft and engineering and patience.
When it comes to industrial manufacturing, a think of lot of people are not realizing (by lack of education on the matter in general knowledge or schooling) the difference between levels of manufacturing, the precision required for some things, and how the hard part is having the full chain (making the tool that can make the tool that can make the tool that ...) because you can't jump from nothing to milimeter precision.
Also known as "why did China who already owned world manufacturing insisted and struggled on making ballpoint pen until 2017", "why are car manufacturers not making random cheap cars that have the curbs of beloved sports cars", "why are barely 5-6 countries able to make decent jet engines" and all that.
Manufacturing is hard. It's built upon layers and layers of deep knowledge and abilities. And when don't have it or you lose it, just knowing how to make the last layer is not enough, you need to rebuild the entire stack.
Which in this case becomes "painting something black is easy, making a fan black is easy, making a high quality high precision fan black from the starting point of the same fan in another color is an industrial challenge".
(I did a couple months of industrial engineering in university and while it wasn't for me, I loved what I learned about the field)
This is content marketing executed perfectly :) Reading it, I learned something new and interesting and they had an opportunity to show off one of their differentiators against the competition (low leakage flow due to tighter tolerances) and then at the end they casually mention the new product that has just opened for pre-orders.
I enjoyed reading it. Informative and showing of their processes and giving some intricate details. And yes, the end goal is to sell products which is fine by me. I take this over any generic non-saying marketing-blurb any time.
I'd love more white, personally. I also don't understand the obsession with black. For me, black objects are very difficult to observe in detail, and that irks me.
I imagine a white PC fan would look terrible if not cleaned daily or used in a room with very filtered air.
Yeah it's more marketing than anything IMO.
Wondering if it's just the marketing that Noctua did, and the actual mold and process engineering left to some fab in China?
With Noctua I highly doubt that is the case given their track record for quality overall and all other information available around their design and engineering process. As far as I know based on all the information I have seen all the design and engineering is done in Austria. They also have a track record of only releasing things once they are satisfied something performs within their standards. Something that would be next to impossible when solely relying on external fabs and process engineering.
They also utilize different manufactures afaik (historically Taiwan, but also China these days) meaning they need to have pretty solid in house knowledge and expertise to make sure different factories produces similar results. When they first started utilizing Chinese factories people noticed visual differences and were worried about that. But Noctua at the time claimed that they made sure that performance was still the same. A claim that was put to the test by various review outlets at the time (I want to say gamer nexus did a big piece about it?) and confirmed to be true.
Having said that, if you do utilize external factories you automatically are making use of their process engineering to some degree as well. But, and this is difficult for many people to understand, that isn't a binary thing either. You can entirely rely on the factory to basically do everything for you and just send feedback on iterations but you can also work closely with them and actually get involved in the process itself.
I like the brown ones. Everything is black, it's dumb, and I'm happy to have any contrast.
Yeah, everything being black on modern motherboards might look cool with RGB lighting, but makes it harder to work on. I like the older green PCBs with white PCI slots.
I also lament the demise of color coded connectors at the back. I knew to plug my speakers into the green 3.5mm jack. Now everything is black, so I need to look at the manual again to see which of the 5 connectors is the right one.
> everything being black on modern motherboards might look cool with RGB lighting
I always figured white would look better for RGB-lit computers. I don't know why white is so rare.
So they can upsell you a white version for €30-€300 more. (Looking at you Sapphire.)
I remember being a kid when standardized port colors came 'round (what was that, part of the AC'97 spec or something?). I thought that was dumb: I knew that the speakers plugged into the third hole from the top, and that was good enough for me. ;)
Back then: I would have loved black-on-black, labelled-in-black, with black cables and and black highlights on a black background. The accessories would be black, too: Black keyboard, black featureless keycaps, black mouse, with a black mousepad, on a black desk, in a black room with black walls and black windows.
Black.
I couldn't get black back then, of course. Computers were beige. The necessary floppy and optical drives were beige. Cables were beige. Keyboards were beige. Motherboards were some moral equivalent to beige. It might be possible to get one or two components in black at some points, but the rest were going to be beige so therefore the whole thing might as well just be resolutely beige.
That really annoyed me.
But I'm not a kid anymore; I'm old. I just want stuff that works well, and that is expandable enough to do some fun and unusual computing stuff with, and that I can see so that when I'm futzing around with it then my job is easier than it would otherwise be.
I don't want RGB or a tempered glass aquarium that shatters when part of it touches a tile floor the wrong way. I don't care about having multiple choices for the color of the anodizing on the heatsinks for the RAM. I don't want water cooling when a big slow-moving fan and some heat pipes does the job very quietly, with improved simplicity therefore longevity. I'm not trying to win a cooling benchmark; I'm just trying to keep the CPU within its specified thermal range while it does work for long periods at its maximum speed. I don't care what color the fans are as long as I can't hear them.
If I want to play with RGB by making or buying some party lights, then I know how to do that. Party lights for the room (or the whole house!), not the guts of the PC. :)
Otherwise: The computer is on the floor under the desk and the USB hub is on top of the desk, and that's all I need to deal with. It is purposeful and functional. There's no style points here, but I just don't care about that anymore.
(I'll be outside yelling at clouds if anyone needs me for anything.)
Actual CPU progress stopped so it's become a color and light show.
Me too. All my computers have Noctua fans and I don't care in the slightest that they're the same colour as my parents' sofa in the 1980s.
I have a couple of their screwdrivers too. I'm with with brown.
This colour combo is more 1970s than 80s. 80s was more gaudy neon and transparent stuff. The 70s loved their murky browns. OK PC boxes of the 80s and 90s were all beige too but they didn't have any brown. It also fit in with manufacturing in those days: In the 70s a lot of wood was still used, whereas in the 80s everything shifted to plastics.
But whether you love or hate (as I do) the brown Noctua colours, the one thing is that they are kinda polarising. They're not a "clean fit" in any build unless you really wanna show that you use Noctua and use them as a centrepiece. Which I guess is the point of their marketing. They want to make it seem their fans are so good people are willing to put up with the colour.
I love Noctua fans and I don't care about their colour. For all I cared they could be pink as long as they are best in class on noise and reliability.
They are going inside the computer where they aren't visible. The point of a computer to me is to be powerful while being as discrete about it as it can be (i.e. quiet and no blinking rgb lights). I don't have a glass side panel, I run an older Fractal case with aluminum sides with sound dampening instead.
I never understood "form over function", but each to their own.
> They are going inside the computer where they aren't visible.
Speak for yourself :) My computer is pretty open, the fans are visible through the front and through the side panel.
I don't run RGB either though but I do like to style it.
And of course the "form over function" is part of that market niche that really pays a lot for something like a fan. Noctua aren't that special, as others have mentioned there are much cheaper brands with the same performance including sound level. You do pay a lot for just the branding.
Every other brans of fans I have used (which to be fair is far from all of them) have only lasted 3 maybe 4 years before they started making more noise than when new. They weren't completely broken, but any increase in noise is unacceptable to me. I live in an old quiet house, there is no noise from forced ventilation but because it doesn't have that. There is no city noise. On a still day in the winter with no wind or birdsong it can be extremely quiet.
I have some Noctua fans still going strong after a decade. Are there other brands that can also do that? Probably, I have some BeQuiet fans now too in a tower CPU cooler (couldn't get hold of a Noctua cooler during the pandemic), it will be interesting to see what happens in another 6 years or so with them.
And no, I don't change my computer every 3 years or so any more, so longevity does matter to me.
I'm at an age where I feel the same about many things in life. Black, sleek and minimalist is so boring and blends into the background.
Just this morning I purchased these car mats for my black, korean-spec-tinted people carrier electric van:
https://carmats.ie/products/kia-pv5-passenger-2026-van-mats?...
Funny how the world works. People once bought cheap children’s play carpets and cut them up as car mats out of poverty. Now people pay €75 to get that same look.
On sidenote: I'm quite interested in the PV5 and have only seen one in the wild so far. How is it for you? And how is the range in practice.
Preference. Some people like their PCs to look like a rainbow alien LED spaceship, others would go for vanta black if they could get it
Stuart Semple changed his name to Anish Kapoor, because only Anish Kapoor has the rights to use Vantablack for artistic purposes.
I think there might also be export restrictions, but I'm not sure.
I love the petty little fight over the blackest black and pinkest pink or whatever that whole drama is. It's hilarious.
The beige/brown fans give me a woodgrain vibe more than anything. Straight white would probably be more popular with LED folks imo.
yep, white pc component are almost always at a premium :p
Agreed. It's like Tatooine themed from Star Wars
Black is some weird masculine thing where it all has to be “tactical”
This is a really nice write up. The reason itself — why the delay — is totally within my own speculation, but the sheer quality of the writing dragged me through the whole article. That is something.
I think this shows how Noctua value their customers, including myself. I really love how they are nice to their customers — both their products and services — especially because experience like this is getting more and more scarce. I really appreciate their work.
Noctua is one of few companies that has not broken my trust (yet). They promise me a really good fan, they're ten toes in on the promise and they have yet to fail to deliver.
My fan broke after five? years of near 24/7 use. Customer support was very easy to reach. They sent me a new one after I sent some serial numbers as proof. They asked me then to break off a blade, and a picture of it so I didn't have to sent it back.
They have many dedicated fans, both mechanical and biological.
Yeah, their products are expensive but every one of them proved high quality and reliable.
I really miss that they don't release white versions. In my all-white case I just can't have Noctua. The brown ones I think are extremely ugly and the black ones stand out too much.
White doesn't really look bad in any case (except perhaps a full black one). The brown is very identifiable but that's only really a point if you desire to flaunt your expensive fans. Because it will stand out too much in almost any build. I honestly don't care about that, and for a fan this price I shouldn't have to put up with hidden advertising.
But I have BeQuiet Silent Wings and they're not bad. Quietness isn't something I'm optimising for anyway as I only use my desktop for gaming and when I do I wear headphones anyway. I do want to optimise more for pressure (as I have air filters) but these fans are no worse than Noctua.
Just make a brown case (maybe with some walnut accents?) and the brown Noctua fans will be a perfect fit.
Alternative - return to tradition with beige - https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chas...
Then I have to look at that brown thing all day :) Yuck
I like wood but only light wood, not the dark kind. That reminds me way too much of my grandparents' furniture.
I usually look at the monitor, not the case under the desk. ;)
That said, I don't want RGB bleed, nor do i want a case where I see the insides. The computer is there to be powerful and discreet (both when it comes to noise and looks).
But sure, you could skip the walnut. I think Noctua should also go well with lighter woods. Oak perhaps but probably not all the way to birch.
Buy a Fractal North.
https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/north/north/ch...
https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/north/north/ch...
Huh interesting. I think the black one is super ugly with the dark wood but the white one isn't bad.
Still not something I'd buy though.
Anyone else getting the optical illusion of the fans spinning in your peripheral vision while reading the top paragraphs?
Yep! Made me look a few times to make sure they weren't actually spinning.
Yup.
Hi there! I want to talk to you about ducts. Do your ducts seem old-fashioned, out of date? Central Services' new duct designs are now available in hundreds of different colours, to suit your individual taste. Hurry now, while stocks last, to your nearest Central Services showroom! Designer colours to suit your demanding taste.
damn... you should change password...
Haha, maybe we can help him
If you need that kind of precision, yes.
But I don't think they really need that.
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
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.
Indeed.
Also, if their product ever does enshittify, the shit would truly hit the fan.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The benchmarks do not tell everything.
I have used Noctua fans in computers where they worked for a decade or so, even 24x7, until an upgrade or replacement of the computer was required by other reasons than because of the fans.
I have also had many problems caused by cheaper fans.
So now I always prefer to use rather expensive fans and power supplies, from brands with which I have accumulated many years of experience, for peace of mind.
Perhaps other brands of fans that nowadays give similar results in benchmarks also have similar reliability, but I am not willing to bet on it.
If we're going by anecdotes, my last Noctuas showing signs of failure (I had 6 of them, one was ~200rpm slower than it should be, one took a several seconds longer to start spinning from a stop) about a year after the end of warranty was partially why I retired them. Same with the set of Noctuas before them (apparently my first set was from 2010). I suppose they all technically still spun so they were still usable, just not to original performance; still, hard to be too upset about the product making it through the long warranty period without issue.
But my Arctics that was installed in the same case that ran for the same amount of time are still chugging along strong, and those are about as cheap as fans get. Different load/use case though so it's probably not a fair comparison.
These days, I really think the competition has caught up or passed Noctua.
I got a cheap CPU cooler and swapped the fan out for a Noctua. For half the cost of a complete Noctua CPU cooler I got good temperatures and no noise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
If you're okay with some of your fans being noisy and/or inefficient, I'm sure you can work with flimsy tolerances.
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.
It's like the gold plated headphone jacks they used to sell to audiophiles.
They want them to be really silent. There's more details here: https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/tech/nf-a12x25-technical-...
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/
[2]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/175/
[3]: https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/229/
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.
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.
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.
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.
I recently built a home server and used Noctua fans for the first time. I absolutely love how quiet they are. If I didn't know the room had my server in it and was running, I wouldn't even notice the very quiet sound of the fans.
I am running them at about 800rpm and the CPU is usually between 33~37 degrees.
When I rebuild my main PC, I will surely go with them again.
Explains why LEGO had a leg up for multiple years. You can’t just change the color pigments and hope the parts fit in the same way. Of course these times are over and other brick manufacturers caught up or overtook Lego.
Overtook Lego? In what way, quality of the bricks? Because Lego is still the largest toy company in the world by revenue.
This is a delightful post, I'll be sticky with the classic colours letting them proudly display what they are
My layman question is why plastic cant be painted? Case temperatures are not that high and there are no plastic parts rubbbing.
This is answered in the first paragraph of the article. Painting requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics. Paint does not weigh zero, it changes the flexibility of the plastic, and the texture which changes flow.
But the article didn't give any ballpark numbers, so the interesting bit is missing, and we still know basically nothing.
It can very well be like the snake oil which makes you feel better maybe for the three seconds after you bought it. Or those gold plated audio jacks which are 0.0001% improvement in quality.
I don't buy it. It's just a plastic PC fan with some bearings which does not cost that much
Well as someone who does buy PC fans, let me tell you that Noctua is clearly superior. It may be just a plastic fan with some bearings, but it doesn't seem to be easily replicable because nobody has managed to do it.
And it’s quieter than many of its counterparts from other vendors. And it actually doesn’t cost that much - more expensive than cheap-o versions for sure, but then again significantly quieter, that’s their whole premise.
Almost everything you buy "does not cost that much", that's how companyies make money.
The devil is in the details. Noise, static pressure efficiency, reliability, bearing quality, motor quality. Yes, there's a huge brand premium too. For critical uses, using a crap fan is an absolutely stupid decision especially where damage or malfunction is likely.
In zie olden PC days™, there weren't many options for quality fans except maybe whatever random fans Delta made that generally weren't optimized for low noise or low power consumption. Ancient, no name sleeve bearing fans would almost always go out within 1-2 years at 24/7 100% duty cycle.
Why would someone want a beige or brown fan? If it is that complicated why not only make black ones?
Branding, you're never in doubt when some YouTuber is building a PC using Noctua fans. There's probably some weird psychology in the colour as well. Why would anyone want a fan in such an ugly colour, unless it's really good. The weird beige and brown is highly recognizable, and even if you already don't know about Noctua you're likely to ask questions about the fan solely based on the colour.
The black fans are really only needed by those who build show piece in those cases with glass panels, but they might equally well need white fans, which Noctua doesn't make. Personally I don't really care about the colour of my fans, you can't see them anyway.
Noctua fans have a distinct look, you could say the same about black, if you want to black them out just get a case that hides them since that would look the same.
Who's looking at a damn fan? My lord. This is like caring what colour the filters in my air conditioner are.
Idiots will have anything marketed to them.
Calling people idiots for having different taste? You truly are a muppetman.
Why do Ferraris seem to almost always made in red?
Because nobody wants a brown one?
Brown is for Lamboghini
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/retro/lamborghini-has-resto...
Indeed.
https://silodrome.com/lamborghini-1r-tractor/
It's called Resale Red for a reason.
I always expected that black was the easiest color, since you just add enough pigment to wipe out any colors from other materials. Are they implying that that brown color is the natural look of the materials they used, so the simplest to engineer?
From what I understood, any color and material involved in high precision manufacturing requires careful design and thorough testing. They likely prioritize the brown color and material due to branding, so changing this to anything else requires redoing large parts of the pipeline.
Large parts is kinda exaggerated.
You have to redo injection moulds anyway as they have a limited life. And you can do a lot with materials too, some materials simply shrink more than others as they cool down.
I think I have 20 or so Noctua fans from 80 to 200 mm from 1-8 years old, haven't had a bearing or motor failure yet. Cross fingers.
Blue. Make blue fans.
Interesting.
I'm glad companies like Noctua exist that put so much thought and care into their products. I don't even mind being advertisted to when that's the case.
Reading about this, just makes me wish I has good 3d scan of their impellers to see how a simple 3d printer will deal with such mythical precision.
Noctua is awesome in a lot of ways, one of them is offering full CAD models: https://www.noctua.at/en/3d-cad-models
One of the first things mentioned on that page is:
> To protect our intellectual property, certain features – such as fan impeller geometries – have been slightly modified while remaining visually very close to the actual product.
So you do have to 3d scan them yourself if you're trying to print a copy.
Depending on what printers you have available I'll put in the work to get you a ~0.02mm deviation scan of a blade off a 120mm noctua fan I broke. I expect it to under-perform notably due to the surface texture and the lack of rigidity under load causing contact with the shroud walls at high RPMs, but I wouldn't bet my lunch on it, would be fun to find out.
The texture has substantial chance to actually help. Check golf balls.
The materials that you could use in a 3d printer are not rigid enough.
The blades of the fans are fiber-reinforced, in order to have sufficient rigidity, even when very thin.
Only a 3D printer for metals could print something rigid enough, but such a metallic fan would be too heavy for a computer fan.
Obviously better if you print slow enough. But the fans will be weaker and you won’t be able to pump out thousands every day.
Somewhat unrelated anecdotal praise of Noctua: due to various life factors, I hadn't built a PC since maybe 2010 or thereabouts - something I did relatively often before then and had quite a bit of experience with. Then a few months ago I finally did it again. Forgetting about the absurdity of the RAM situation, I gotta say my biggest surprise was cooling. I wanted a quiet media center machine. The internet and friends kept recommending Noctua. While researching, I got a bit of a cult vibe, and their prices seemed a bit stiff. But I went for it, with some hesitation.
Goddamn was I wrong! Their CPU coolers are the most well-designed, thoughtfully planned, amazingly performing consumer product I've seen in a while. 10/10, highly recommend! I'll use them for all PC cooling needs going forward.
I sometimes wonder whether they have an culture that overengineers tbh.
The thoroughness & mindset is certainly appreciated, but you can also overdo it - engineer it beyond what the consumers use case requires.
Where do you draw the line though? They have an amazing reputation for quality fan products, they clearly feel it needs a new injection mould which aren't cheap investments.
I've got a Noctua NHD14 in my current build that I bought in 2011 and it performs perfectly still (including 2 free socket upgrades from Noctua).