Testing

So I ran these fans through a pair of tests in order to try to determine if any of the designs made a noticeable difference if performance in either situation. The first test was also the simplest: I connected the fans to power and tried to determine the air flow characteristics.



Unfortunately for me, the fans all performed almost identically in this test, with the exception of the NF-F12. The airflow from the NF-F12 was noticeably more focused than the other fans, but there wasn't a noticeable increase in total airflow. So it's on to the case test...



As you can see in the above images the fans were installed into a simple rack mountable case to see how well they cooled the system. The fan shown installed is the Kingwin DB-125, but all the fans were installed in the same spot so as to use the stock fan as a reference for both noise as cooling. The installation of the Noctua fans was helped by the ability to use screws to mount them, preventing the funny looking screw-less mounts from protruding out the front of the case and keeping me from closing it.

There was a shared issue with the installation of all the fans into this case due to the thickness of the wiring used. This was easily avoided by simply pulling the wires out of the first guide as shown below. The NF-F12 reached the power plug near the CPU without problem from the front with the extension attached.



The results were extremely consistent throughout. In fact, all five of the fans outperformed the stock case fan and lowered the case temperature by a full 2 degrees Celsius at maximum speed, while maintaining an extremely low noise profile. In fact, beside the stock fan, all the tested fans were inaudible, and when the stock fan was off the CPU fan was still noticeably louder than any of them. Unfortunately, this leaves me with a result that is a five way tie.