You may wish to grab a drink and a snack at this point: it's a long chart for you to read. The chart below sets out all the fans we have reviewed. The older fans are represented by single specimens. The new A-Series fans came in pairs, so they were tested in pairs. The average values are set out below. Remember that any reading below 20 dBA or so cannot be too accurate. If a fan’s reading is that low, it is a quiet fan.
Oh yes, one thing you can’t hear: the PWM fans have no clicking at all. One thing you can’t see: even with the speed-reducing adaptor in place, the PWM fans respond to PWM speed commands.
One other item that proved fascinating we will take up at the bottom of the page, below this long chart.
The little NF-A4x10-5V fans are designed for five Volts. Noctua warns you not to put 12 Volts through them; but the fans came with the same plugs as the 12V fans. So of course these fans got 12 Volts put though them.
Boy, are they little screamers when they have 12 Volts up their tails. You can really feel the output when they have 12V. In fact, I wasn’t going to test the 40mm fan’s output until I felt what it could do at 12V. Then I had to measure the output. The anemometer measured about 16 CFM, but it felt like more. And it didn’t sound as loud as 37 dB, either. Here is where the SPL meter registered something louder on the dBA scale than we can hear.
Ah, well. Noctua says 12V will damage these things, and I don’t doubt that they would not last their 6 years with 12V running through them. But it sure was a fun test run.
Oh yes, one thing you can’t hear: the PWM fans have no clicking at all. One thing you can’t see: even with the speed-reducing adaptor in place, the PWM fans respond to PWM speed commands.
One other item that proved fascinating we will take up at the bottom of the page, below this long chart.
The little NF-A4x10-5V fans are designed for five Volts. Noctua warns you not to put 12 Volts through them; but the fans came with the same plugs as the 12V fans. So of course these fans got 12 Volts put though them.
Boy, are they little screamers when they have 12 Volts up their tails. You can really feel the output when they have 12V. In fact, I wasn’t going to test the 40mm fan’s output until I felt what it could do at 12V. Then I had to measure the output. The anemometer measured about 16 CFM, but it felt like more. And it didn’t sound as loud as 37 dB, either. Here is where the SPL meter registered something louder on the dBA scale than we can hear.
Ah, well. Noctua says 12V will damage these things, and I don’t doubt that they would not last their 6 years with 12V running through them. But it sure was a fun test run.
