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- Hacker News
- 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.
by mrcsharp - Not in the gaming scene at all, but my thoughts were, "Why isn't black the first product developed?" Isn't that a standard, and probably has more consumer interest?
- And I don't understand why they can't just mold all the colors in parallel. If brown is in production, why can't they experiment with black at the same time?by archon810
- If you need that kind of precision, yes.
But I don't think they really need that.
by j16sdiz - 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.by LiamPowell
- If you're okay with some of your fans being noisy and/or inefficient, I'm sure you can work with flimsy tolerances.by sheiyei
- They want them to be really silent. There's more details here: https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/tech/nf-a12x25-technical-...by vasco
- 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)
- 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.by xboxnolifes
- 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.
by kenhwang - 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.
by sho_hn - 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.by accelbred
- 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.
by esjeon - It's refreshing to see something without any AI slop for once. The fact that this aspect is so exciting is so sad.by archon810
- 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.
by wolvoleo - Just make a brown case (maybe with some walnut accents?) and the brown Noctua fans will be a perfect fit.by VorpalWay
- Anyone else getting the optical illusion of the fans spinning in your peripheral vision while reading the top paragraphs?by matteason
- Yep! Made me look a few times to make sure they weren't actually spinning.by nsowz
- Yup.by Hamuko
- 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.
- Yeah, their products are expensive but every one of them proved high quality and reliable.by izacus
- They have many dedicated fans, both mechanical and biological.by moffkalast
- 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.by navane
- I like the brown ones. Everything is black, it's dumb, and I'm happy to have any contrast.by SwellJoe
- Black is some weird masculine thing where it all has to be “tactical”
- Agreed. It's like Tatooine themed from Star Warsby sammy2255
- 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?...
by beAbU - Preference. Some people like their PCs to look like a rainbow alien LED spaceship, others would go for vanta black if they could get itby Havoc
- 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.
by petepete - 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.
by RachelF