I bought this for an NZXT Source 210 case. I am using it in one of the top fan mounts. I primarily bought this fan because the advanced bearing allows mounting in any orientation with no problems. I was also interested in quiet operation and longevity. You can buy quiet fans with fluid bearings for cheaper or about the same price but honestly, superior cooling with good engineering and reliability is worth the price to me. I keep my computers until they wear out (generally) so expensive fans are not a waste of money for me.
I love the cabling options. I have come to not be so fond of PWM fans and other methods of controlling fan speed. PWM doesn't always work right and it can be hard to get exactly the speed you want. With this Noctua, the low noise adapter was perfect. I cannot hear this fan over the other five fans in my case and it has brought every temperature reading I have down a few degrees.
Anyway, I connected this to a molex from my PSU with the low noise adapter. It's a good thing it came with this adapter because I don't have an open fan port on my motherboard anyway. I would have had to buy a splitter anyway.
In conclusion, as is it's reputation as a Noctua product, everything about this fan says quality. It feels like it's built to last. It's surprisingly heavy for a fan. The sleeving on the cables is high quality. I know I do not have to worry about this thing failing anytime soon.
Brian · 2015-04-16 · via amazon
★★★★★Good fan, but still hums louder than I'd hoped.
Many good things can be said about this fan. Since you can read those elsewhere, I will focus on my specific scenario.
I bought this fan to replace a Cougar CF-V14HB 140 mm fan. That fan was purchased to replace the stock intake fan in my Lian Li case. The stock fan was an LED fan, so I never even considered using it.
Anyway, everything I say here should be regarded with the caveat that the Cougar had less than 100 hours of use on it, and the Noctua is pretty much fresh out of the box. It's possible that the Cougar might have quieted down after a longer break-in period, since most of its noise seemed to be coming from the motor or bearing.
I did a side-by-side comparison, and it was difficult for me to say which fan was louder (from distances between 0.1 to 0.5 meters). I will say that the Cougar seemed to have more motor or bearing noise, whereas the Noctua seemed to be emitting more noise from its fan blades. Also, the Cougar seemed slightly out-of-balance, when you hold it in your hand (with the power on). Both fans were run at full 12V (i.e. without any attenuator) and have similar airflow specs.
While the amount of (upstream) noise was similar, I feel the character of the noise from the Noctua fan is more pleasant. It's a soft, whooshy hum, whereas the Cougar seemed to have a bit more whine and buzz to it. That sounds a bit harsh on the Cougar, which really isn't bad (especially when I got it at roughly half the price). But it was noticeable enough that I decided to take a chance and see if the Noctua fan was better. In hindsight, I'm not sorry I tried, but I don't think the improvement was worth the full price of the Noctua fan. But if I were starting over from square one, I'd buy the Noctua without a second thought.
Finally, I just want to say that this fan is a little louder than I'd hoped. Since I don't know if my expectations were reasonable, I'm not going to deduct a star. Just be warned that this fan is definitely not silent, at full speed. And I bought it to run at full speed, since I also upgraded the exhaust fan and want to maintain the ratio to preserve a positive pressure configuration.
Not My Real Name · 2013-06-11 · via amazon
★★★★★Recently converted to the faithful
Yes, these fans are fugly, my advice is to get over it and look at the performance. Noctua is a high performing fan and its whisper quiet, my rig's temps dropped by a full 11C after switching to 3 top mounted Noctua 120mm and a bottom 140mm compared to my previous fans' performance (and which were obnoxiously loud). If I crank the rpms higher I can get another 1-3C temp drop and they're still significantly quieter than my previous "performance" fans. Initially noise reduction is why I gave the Noctua a closer look, but after reading several critical reviews of their performance I decided to make the spend and see if it was worth it. Placement of fan and deciding on how you want to set your air pressure/flow is of course a important part of it all, but I was quite literally surprised at how well these performed while being so very quiet in the process.
The fan came with silicon mounting pins which I decided not to use as I am more comfortable with simple machine screws, but the built in corner mounts do a great job of absorbing vibration all by themselves. It also came with 4 male/female wires to connect it to a fan controller or mobo pin, with 3 short and 1 long, I wound up using the long and 1 short to connect the fan to my mobo and it was of sufficient length to go behind the mobo plate. The wires are high quality and lock together snugly enough to where there's no worry of a loose connection, in short, these fans are worth every penny.
