Premium PC Cooling Fans - Are they worth it?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
888 words · ~4 min read
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That's how you upgrade a computer,
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right? With the purchase of a qualifying Intel processor, SSD, or Knuck, you
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could instantly win an Intel gaming jersey and be entered in the draw for
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the Ultimate System. Click now to learn more. Linus and I like our premium fans
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and we're both quite public about being fans of Noctua and with pretty good
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reason. Noctua is able to boast extremely high build quality, great
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thermal performance, and very low operating decibel levels. Lately,
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they've even addressed the issue of their kind of puke brown problem by
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introducing their Redux and especially their industrial PPC line of fans, which
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I'm a big fan of, but they're pretty crazy expensive if you think about it.
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In many cases, people are buying these premium fans to replace fans that are
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already installed in their case or that come with a radiator by default. Is it
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really worth it, though? Does a price performance value of swapping your fans
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really make any sense in this case? Or should we be more focused on investing
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in different parts of our computer? We decided to find out. Let's start with
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our test setup. We have an NZXT H440 with its defaults fan setup of three 120
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mm fans in the front and one 140 mm fan
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in the back. Then we have a Corsair H105 with its two default 120 mm fans
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strapped to it up in the top of the case which will be cooling an i7 4930K. When
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we switch to Noctua fans, we'll be replacing all of the 120 mm fans with
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NFF12s and we will replace the 140 mm
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fan in the back with an NFA14. First off, we have our thermal testing. Our
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4930K is running at stock and as per usual, our idle test will be ran with
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minimal processes running in the background. Our load test is ran with
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Prime 95 running small FFT mode just to stress out the CPU a little bit and get
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that heat flowing. In both thermal and audio test cases, the fans are running
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at about 1100 RPM for the stock and the Noctua aftermarket fans. Secondly, we
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have the audio test case. This was done by shutting off everything in range that
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could make noise. That means straight up unplugging pretty much all electronics
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in the area and even going as far as unplugging the fridge that was on the
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floor below just because it was slightly too close. I then set up our Xtech
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digital sound level meter and recorded it with a camera just to make sure
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everything went okay as I wanted to leave the room just in case the sound
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meter would pick up my breathing. So essentially, yeah, there was an
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improvement. Awesome. But maybe not the $24 worth of improvement that you were
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hoping to get. This money could easily be shifted into other parts of your
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computer for a more noticeable performance improvement in most cases. A
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lot of things in the computer modding world aren't exactly worth it in a price
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performance sense. And while I can sit here and bash on performance fans, there
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are other culprits as well. Do-it-yourself water cooling isn't exactly the biggest reward for your
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investment either, especially if you're a fan of buying premium components. And
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this brings me to the conclusion. I've known what the results of this test
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would yield for quite a while, and I'm sure many of you watching knew as well.
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But that doesn't stop people like Lionus and I from water cooling our computers
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and outfitting them with top-of-the-line fans and other stuff like that. But this
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doesn't exactly have the greatest price performance ratios, and that's okay with
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us. If you're on a tight budget and trying to build a gaming rig that will ultimately live under your desk, you
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should probably just focus on your core components in this case. If you're a fan
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of performance components and essentially the computer version of a hot rodder, then it's probably fine for
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you to torch your wallet a little bit and invest in premium stuff like premium
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fans and water cooling. All right, guys. So, what do you think of premium setups?
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Are you into that? Are you just buying like extremely gaming optimized ones
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that are as low cost as you can get while getting the highest performance
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out of it that you can get? Let me know in the comments down below. While you're down there, like, favorite, dislike,
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subscribe, share, all that kind of stuff. And if you want to do that in
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another place as well, jump over to the forum and do it there. And if you don't
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like the ads, become a contributor as normal. If you want a shirt for some
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reason, check the link in the description down below and you can get an awesome looking shirt there. I think
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we have our better than useless shirts on sale there. I know a guy that
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actually works here recently bought one, so that's pretty cool. Thanks for
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watching and I'll see you guys next time.