Noctua NF-S12-1200, 120mm

I did this review in English, if you don't mind, because my Dutch is not that great and it would have taken me ages to finish this review.

About a month ago I bought the Cooler Master Cosmos 1000, which came with 4 12cm ventilators. These ventilators were supposed to be quiet (17dB) but when I connected them to 12V I could hear ticking noises and just noise in general. When I tried connecting them to 5V, the noise production was ok, but they were just not pulling enough air to cool my computer. My hard drives were warm (41 C) and the processor, when fully loaded, was at 57C. You could see the effect of the slow pulling power when letting the processor come back to idle. It took it more than a minute to come back to its base temperature (37 C).

For this reason I decided to buy some new fans. I looked around on Tweakers and saw that everybody was looking at the Noctua fans. So, after contemplating for a while over the price, I decided to buy them. So, 4 fans and 67 euros later, I was the happy owner.

First thing you notice when you get the fans is their unusual design. I kind of like it. The second this is the rubber noise cancelling plugs. I had no clue how to connect the fans with the noise cancelling plugs and because there was not manual I had to go to the internet and look for it.

When I found out how, I realized it it almost IMPOSSIBLE to do it. You're supposed to pull the plugs through the case first and then through the fans' holes. It is easy to do the first step, but just impossible to do the second. Especially when you are in a tight spot, like where most fans are situated. The "hook" that has to go through the fans holes is just too big. I couldnt even get it through the fan while trying it outside the case. I really tried but after half an hour I gave up and used the normal bolts.

When I finally had them all installed, I tried to connect the fans to 12V, to see how noisy they were. I had quite high expectations, but learned the fans are not THAT quiet when turning on full blast. It was more or less the same noise level of the cooler master fans (both rated at 17dB), but no ticks or high pitch noises. The amount of air it pushed was unbelievable!

Connecting the fans to 5V did the trick, I couldn't hear ANYTHING, also when putting my ear right next to the fans. They pushed much more air than the cooler master fans, and as I learned later, the pulling power was much greater (you can notice that when the case is closed).

So, after I decided to connect all the fans to 5V, I closed my computer and ran a few tests. Hard drive temperature went down to 32C, a difference of 9C! And for those of you who know the cooler master 1000, there is no direct fan on the hard drive, but the under pressure created by the fans is pulling air through the hard drive cages. This shows the difference in pulling power and thus under preassure that can be created.

The CPU went down to 54C, a difference of 3 degrees. What really showed the difference was that the processor went back to ideal (this time 34C) within 10 seconds, a HUGE difference when comparing that to more than a minute it took before.

So, all in all, I would recommend this fan for those of you who wants alot of air movement at minimal noise, or those of you how don't really mind a bit of noise but really need a small hurricane in their computer. Ohh yeah, and you need to have some money too.