Introduction
There are alot of fans out there. They all have one purpose, to provide cooling for components. Noctua specializes in the cooling of components and fan designing. Today i am going to review a new product by Noctua, NF-P12. What makes this particular fan different from every other fans is the design of the new technology called Vortex-Control Notches. Further in the review i will explain what Vortex Control Notches are.
About the Product
The following information is taken from Noctua website.
The NF-P12 has been specifically developed for applications such as CPU coolers that demand superior pressure and airflow performance. Thanks to psychoacoustic optimizations like the Vortex-Control Notches, the new SCD drive system and Noctua's premium-grade SSO-Bearing, the NF-P12 achieves exceptional quietness and long-term stability.
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Pressure-optimized Nine-Blade Design
Specifically developed for high-impedance applications such as CPU coolers, water-cooling radiators or cases with tight fan grills, the NF-P12 provides superior pressure and airflow performance. 
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Vortex-Control Notches
Psychoacoustic optimizations like the staggered Vortex-Control Notches make the NF-P12 surprisingly quiet.
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Smooth Commutation Drive
The NF-P12's new drive system reduces torque variations and thereby ensures improved running smoothness.
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Self-stabilizing oil-pressure bearing
Noctua's well proven SSO-Bearing technology guarantees supremely quiet operation and exceptional long-term stability.
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In the design and development of axial fans, the three aerodynamic key parameters of airflow, pressure and noise play a major role. Usually, the goal is to achieve the amount of airflow and static pressure required by a specific application at the lowest possible noise emission. The design should hence provide the optimal balance of airflow, pressure and noise for a given application.
However, even in the field of PC cooling, each application has different requirements: Whereas CPU coolers with tight fin-spacing require high static pressure, it's mostly the airflow to noise ratio that counts when it comes to case fans. Moreover, fans used on CPU coolers tend to be run at higher speeds than case fans.
Common fans are usually designed to be all-round solutions with compromises in certain areas in order to achieve solid results in all typical applications.
Noctua, on the other hand, is following a two-fold approach with its NF-S12 and NF-P12 fan series in order to achieve optimal results at various applications: While the NF-S12 was optimized so as to provide a class-leading airflow to noise ratio in the lower speed ranges and therefore makes for an excellent case fan, the NF-P12 was designed to produce high airflow and an outstanding amount of static pressure at 900-1300 rpm, which makes it perfect for use on CPU coolers and other high-impedance applications. The following illustration shows how this approach differs from common all-round solutions:
In order to see this matter in a more nuanced light, it's necessary to take into account that the airflow, pressure and noise characteristics of different rotor-designs scale differently depending on the rotational speed. Therefore, it's required to examine these parameters and their relation in their dependency on rpm:
If we examine the three parameters depending on RPM, we can see the following:
- The NF-S12 produces less noise than the NF-P12, especially at lower speeds. At 1100 rpm and over, the difference starts to become less significant though.
- Whereas the NF-P12 provides more airflow than the NF-S12 at above 1100 rpm, it's the other way round at 1000 rpm and less.
- The NF-P12 produces significantly more static pressure at all speeds.
From this, we can draw the following conclusions:
While the NF-S12 delivers less static pressure, it provides a better Airflow/Noise ratio at lower speeds. Therefore, it's perfectly suited for case ventilation as well as all applications which don't demand high static pressure and where maximum quietness is the first priority. At higher speeds such as those which can be required for CPU cooling however, the NF-P12's airflow/noise ratio is the same (or even better at 1300 rpm and over). As a result, the NF-P12 should be the first choice at above 1200 rpm as well as for all applications which demand high static pressure.
As you can see from the stats above the NF-P12 has a low dba level across the board and provides maximum airflow.
Now that we got the stats out of the way lets take a closer look at the actual unit itself.
Closer look
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Front shot |
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Side shot |
The packaging of the NF-P12 is a standard packaging by Noctua. Noctua takes a close care of what their products look like and this is a perfect example of it.
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Back of NF-P12 |
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Data Sheet |
On the back of the NF-P12 there are specifications of the fan and explanation of the new technology. In the insert of the case there are in dept explanations of how this particular model is different from the rest.
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Vortex Control Blades |
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Tight packaging |
As always the Noctua products are in the solid plastic container and everything is nice and neat.
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Multiple speed connectors |
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The NF-P12 comes with a LNA and ULNA extensions. These extensions have a small resistor inside of them and this allows the control of the how fast the fan is spinning. With use LNA and ULNA extensions rpm drops to 1300 and 800 at 10 and 7 dBA. If you do not wish to use LNA or ULNA you can connect the fan directly to your motherboard or the molex. This way you are achieving 1800 RPM with 17 dBA of noise.
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NF-P12 |
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Ultra testing rig |
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Installation |
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Installed |
For the testing NF-P12 i have build a custom rig and have loaded it with pretty "hot" hard drives. Since Noctua provided us with 1 fan, i will test the performance of cooling on a number of hard drives.
The testing rig consists of: Asus P4C800-E with Intel 3.0 chip and 1 gig OCZ ram, Ge Force 7800 OC BFG , i have also used 5 hard drives. 2 500 gig Western Digital hard drives, 1 250 gig Western Digital hard drive and 2 36 gig Western Digital Raptor drives in raid 0. That will heat things up.:)
Testing
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Before connecting NF-P12 |
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After connecting NF-P12 |
The temperature readings were taken on the base of 10 lowest temperature readings. First reading above on the left was taken when the system was up for 2 hours and the NF-P12 was not connected (64.8F/18C). And the reading on the right was taken after approximately 10 minutes of a NF-P12 run time (62.7F/17C). As you can see there is a clearly difference of temperatures when NF-P12 was introduced.
Conclusion
Well what can i say, another product well designed and build. Legendary quality from Noctua keeps up to its expectations. Just to recap on what's making NF-P12 so different from other fans is the 9 blade innovative design of the blades. Noctua engineers their fans for performance and with the new design of Vortex Control Notches Noctua actually creates better airflow with low noise levels. As always the rubber noise reduction mounting helps to reduce the vibrations from the fan to the case. In my testing of NF-P12 i found a substantial change in the temperatures of the hard drives. I would definitely recommend this fan to any case modder:) It gives me a great pleasure to award NF-P12 10/10! Great product! Keep it up guys!
Some pros we found:
9 Blade design
Vortex Control Notches
Rubber mountings for vibrations control
Multiple connectors for fan speed and noise control
6 Year Warranty.
Some Cons we found:
None that found
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