Noctua NF-F12 Quiet Premium Direct Airflow Cooling Fan Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,365 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to my unboxing in our traditional outdoor unboxing location of
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the NF F12 pwm from Noctua now this is a
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pressure Centric fan and this goes with
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noct tua's long-standing proud tradition of delivering excellent performance at a
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quiet noise level however not every fan is suitable for every purpose so now
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they had before okay before they had the S12 and they had the p12 the S12 was for
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open airflow environments like a case exhaust fan and the p12 was for more
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restrictive environments such as a heat sink or a radiator now the F12 or it's
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yes sorry the F12 doesn't replace either of those fans but it is even better at
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pushing air through more densely populated areas that is to say more
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dense heat sinks and more dense radiators than the previous p12 so the
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p12 is the balanced fan whereas the S12 is the open airflow fan and the F12 is
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going to be the restrictive airflow forcing fan now these are all quiet fans
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so don't get don't let that get out of your mind so it includes a lot of new
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technology including their hept perf impeller which works in tandem with the
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ster guide veins we'll talk about those after as well as the focus flow frame
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okay perfect balance between power and quietness that's what noctu is all about so if it didn't do that I'd be surprised
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to reduce noise you can see here they've actually got a little diagram of the way
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the air air flow gets broken up by their new stepped Inlet design so once again
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more technology built into the fan to reduce noise noise the sso2 bearing is
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an upgrade from the SSO version one so you can actually see here they've drawn
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little diagrams of them both for us however I am not a fan engineer so I'm
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afraid I don't know exactly what they mean by all of this but they say it's
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even better than the time tested SSO bearing which means it's pretty darn
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good because I can tell you guys now the SSO version one bearing is
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awesome folks Focus flow frame so designed for pressure demanding
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applications such as heat sinks and radiators got that 11 Stater veins that
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straighten Channel and focus the air flow so we'll talk about that in just a
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moment actually okay so here's the diagram of the fan
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itself this is actually neat more on these in a moment okay so number five is
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the metal bearing sh shell so in order to guarantee the highest possible degree
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of manufacturing Precision right there it actually has a metal shell for the
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bearing next we've got integrated anti vibration pads so I'll show you those on
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the fan itself custom designed pwm I with SCD so that is their new technology
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to reduce pwm switching noises and make the fan even quieter at low speeds
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varying angular distance and Vortex control notches okay so we're pretty
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familiar with these but with the uniform distribution of the Stater veins the
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relative geometrical constellation of the rotor blades and the Stater guide veins is identical each time the rotor
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moves over the next stator vein so so pretty much what they've done here is
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they've made everything as close to being 100% I can't even say well well
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yeah they've tried to make it as symmetrical in as many different ways as
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possible inner surface micro structures so when the tips of the blades plowing
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through the boundary lay are created by the inner surface micro structures flow
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separation from the suction side of the blades is significantly suppressed ultra
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low power consumption this I think is less of a factor for most users the low
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noise adapters that nocta includes with their fans are very very handy I'll show
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you that when we open it up extensive labling options oh look at that comes with an
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extension NY keen and a six-year manufacturer warranty you can't put a
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six-year manufacture warranty on anything with moving Parts unless you
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are prepared for users to either AR them
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or if unless you are prepared to build a darn good product so hopefully Noctua
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has gone well actually not hopefully so Noctua has gone with the ladder as
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opposed to the former here are some fan screws in case you want to mount your
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fan that way here are some rubber fan mounts uh I would definitely recommend
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mounting your fans that way as it is quieter reduces the vibration that gets
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P to the case although mind you with the hereat these are the integrated grommets
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with these integrated grommets even if you screw it in with a screw the only
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vibration that can be passed would be from this bit of plastic here to the
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screw to the case because right here you're going to be rubber isolated so
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these will make it even better because they go through like that and they envelop the case in the fan itself and
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keep them actually slightly separated all right so here here are the
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this is how Noctua achieves the directed air flow so you can see the fan blades
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pass over the fan like this and what these are here for is to actually keep
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all of the air moving in One Direction in one tunnel away from the fan frame
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itself so that is part of what makes it more effective for heat sinks there is
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less wasted energy because instead of blowing the air around in all these
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directions you are blowing it in exactly the direction of exactly what you want
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to cool so this would be great for other applications such as for a intake fan
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where you want to direct that air flow to your graphics card rather than just sort of dumping air into the case you
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want to take that air directly to the thing you want to cool use one of
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these other included accessories include the extension cable there you go as well
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as oh this is kind of neat it includes a y cable that's outstanding and these are
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all pwm cables which actually aren't that easy to find and aren't that cheap
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so that's that's handy as well so you have a wide variety of different
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mounting options you can even Mount two of them off you know one header and you
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can put one there and one there and I love that they've included a nice short
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cable because if you're using it as a CPU fan the last thing you want is a
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bunch of extra cable cluttering up your cluttering up your case so here's the
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stepped Inlet design right there just want to show you guys some of these
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technologies that we talked about before these are the see these little dimples
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inside here oops can you see them right there all right so that was one of the
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things we talked about before the blade design actually looks very similar to
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the p12 but I'm sure that it's not because knowing kn to oh yeah look at
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that so The Notches are now here and uh
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traditionally we've seen notches on the uh trailing edges of the fans on here
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so I think that's pretty much it I think we've covered most of the technology
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we've covered the look of the fan itself KN to a signature Brown and cream don't
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forget to subscribe to Linus techtips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos sorry guys I forgot the
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low noise adapter which they've now started sleeving this looks fantastic
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compared to the older ones and there we go so you could mount it way at the end
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of like something and then make it low noise in addition to everything that
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you're already doing