Noctua NH-P14 FLX 140mm Silent Computer Cooling Fan Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
872 words · ~4 min read
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so today i'll be doing a quick unboxing of a new fan from Noctua this is the nf
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p14flx now what the flx uh suffix
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denotes is that it is a flexible design so that means that the flx fan has three
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different speed settings which are
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1200 900 and 750 RPM and it achieves
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this through a few different adapters that are included with it other key
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features of this 140 millimeter fan are the impeller with vortex control notches
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and we'll show you those in a minute the metal reinforcements which allow the
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blah blah blah ultimate manufacturing precision high durability and vibration
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free running as well as a round frame
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now the round frame of this fan is what makes it so special and we'll get to
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more about that in a minute this has their updated drive bearing um it has
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the sso bearing with the smooth communication drive too ensure super
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running and smoothing by eliminating torque variations and switching noises etc etc basically it's a fan but what
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makes it special is what we are about to get to here in just a moment so let's
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have a look at the accessories that are included with the nfp 14 flx
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and first we have four rubber fan mounting grommets so rather
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than using screws which can transfer vibration directly to the case Noctua
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fans use these little rubber mounting grommets these are quite common
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but they're only really included with higher end fans or you have to buy them
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separately next we have two
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low noise adapters so one is the low noise adapter and one is the ultra low
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noise adapter so all you do is plug these in in line with the fan and they
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will make it run at a slower RPM next we have four metal mounting screws
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you can't always use those rubber grommets and sometimes good old-fashioned mounting screws are what
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works best and then we have
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ah adapters so these are 120 millimeter
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to 140 millimeter adapter but wait Linus
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you said this was a 140 millimeter fan
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well it is because of the round frame
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they're actually able to make this 140 millimeter fan compatible with 120
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millimeter mounts you can see if you had a square frame going around these holes
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you'd have substantially less room for the fan so Noctua's engineers
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ingeniously decided to make it work this way so all you have to do is attach the
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little metal bracket and you can see that that makes it a little bit wider a
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little bit further out so you can just attach it to a 140 millimeter hole or to
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a 120 millimeter hole very cool now the vortex control notches are what we'll
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talk about next here and let's just have a quick look at the fan here so you can
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see that they're offset we've got two notches here at the edge of the blade we
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have two notches here at the middle of the blade and two notches here closer to
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the center of the fan now what that means is that the way these disrupt the
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airflow is supposed to be more even overall because they're offset this way
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versus having all of the blades shaped exactly the same way Noctua has been
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doing this on all of their fans for quite a while now and obviously they're
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very very well regarded fans because people pay very good money for Noctua
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fans now another thing they've got called out here is the metal reinforced
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sso bearing shell and magnet so that's
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uh kind of cool i suppose okay it comes with a sleeved three pin connector and
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the last accessory is probably something i should have mentioned before and it is
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a three pin to molex connector so you
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can power this thing any way you want you can power it at any speed you want
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and you can mount it any way you want thank you for checking out my unboxing
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and product overview of the Noctua nfp14flx
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okay that wasn't really the end i've re-boxed the fan already but what i noticed when i was re-boxing it is this
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little tab right here in huge bold face type so that i couldn't possibly miss it
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says open and we can actually open up
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this uh this merchandising thing on the back of the fan so we can find out
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exactly how the vortex control lodges work because my explanation was just
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terrible okay so standard trailing edges can produce rotating pressure fields and
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vertices that cause audible noise at distinct frequencies this un this
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undesired tonal noise is much more annoying than noise that spread over a
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broad frequency range so that is what the vortex control notches do they make
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it split into several smaller vortices and the noise is spread over a wider
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range of frequencies and is therefore much less perceptible so there you go
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thank you for checking out my unboxing and my little add-on about the nf p14
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flx