More commentary on the internet outrage engine in the intro+conclusion of the article: www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3012-noctua-fans-from-china-and-taiwan-tested
Gamers Nexus i dont know if its meant to be like this but at 10 minute mark the graph key do not show which line is which variable. Heads up for future editing :)
Yeah, editing issue. Thanks. That chart is also on the website. See here: media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2017/fans/noctua/noctua-quality-pwm-lfpm_all.png
This is all good news, and I will admit I expected the FPM to be lower than that given the focus on sound rather than CFM efficiency. Great work, Thanks, Steve and Crew.
have you tried their a12x15 fans. they had a demo where 1 of them was just as good at cooling a heatsink as (2) nf-f12 fans. i know you probably dont want to get too deep into fans. but since the f12 is already one of the best, this means the a12x15 is amazing. or am i wrong? i ended up buying like 7 of them. but with my case (phanteks evolve is a HOT case) its hard to tell how well they are doing compared to the f12's they replaced. 3 instake front. 1 intake back (gpu rad). 2 exhaust top (h100i).
Whatever gave you the impression that Noctua was focused on noise? They're very much performance oriented. They also don't hyper focus on any single aspect of performance.
the color variation is VERY noticable though. if its already noticable on the video it'll be even more noticable in person. might not be a big deal if you have all your fans from one location(though i think the taiwan made one looks better color wise) but will definitly look akward if you have 2 fans from the different locations in one build.
MrJaime Can we chill out with the China stuff? They have been around for 8000 years in one form or another. Yes, CS can be an issue but if it were as much of an issue as the narrative that all humanity has adopted, we would grind to a halt because of the sheer amount of things we use daily that were manufactured in China. I'm no real fan of China for various reasons, but I have traveled their for business and both buy and sell to and from China and I have never had an issue as a buyer. As a seller I have. Fraud there is huge when it comes to bilking Western importers/exporters out of money. It's essentially just a script all Chinese importers follow.
jort93z Who would care, though? Unless you're a *really* dedicated Noctua fan, and you therefore colour match your entire build around a specific Noctua fan, you won't care. It's not like anything matches with brown and tan.
LOL saying "Taiwan and China" probably gets you on a Chinese government subversion watchlist for supporting Taiwanese independence and undermining the One China policy ......
Some customers probably thinks China automatically = terrible quality. When so many top class PC parts comes from China. It depends on the factory and batch quality really.
90% of the crap we buy is made in china. Iphones are made in china and no-one complains about the quality control there. Yet people see a slight colour mismatch on a fan and they lose their damn minds!!!
I purchased two NF-A14s in October 2015. One is Taiwanese and one is Chinese. One has tear drop scoops, one has triangle scoops. They both have always felt of excellent quality and I never noticed a difference. Their color also appears identical.
"..We did not produce a frequency spectrum plot, we did not noticed significant differences" Haha nice test. So an acoustic comfort aspect was practically ignored and not event tried to be measured. Also aspects of FAN orientation and positive/negative air pressure from one of FAN's side - was also missed. It may affect acoustics comfort and loudness differently in China and Taiwan. So these tests demonstrate that some of measurable performance was matched in China versions but keep in mind that frequency spectrum is not reflected by dB value of loudness at all, while that may affect an acoustic comfort tremendously - which is very important just like as dB level.
You should be head of the company. I never consider buying noctua fans because the color clashes with everything, well unless if I spray paint all my pc parts poop brown and off beige lol.
Ryan Tokarski I had one of Noctua's first coolers many years ago. Even with the hype you had to ignore the fan color. And now I have no interest as performance is so close now between good air coolers. So I wouldn't even consider owning that ugly ass brown and tan thing. All I look for is a known name with real ball bearings. Can't go wrong. Arctic Cooling makes some good ball bearing fans.
Peter Cursio can you really tell dark black and off black fans when rgb lights shine in on an awesome build? Black still looks better and easier to match than poop brown on beige khaki.
Thank you very much - I had faith in Noctua's tight quality control (given how long lived their fans have been for me for years). Too bad the whole thing got blown waaay out of proportion. :-(
The last Noctua HSF kit I purchased had the darker shade, and it was pretty noticeable as somebody who has been using their fans for a while. I'm one of those rare types that liked the Noctua color, and the lighter color of the older fans is the better of the two.
I was a tool and die maker for a molding company here in the US. I would see color variations in parts from the same production run using the same material. There are so many variables in molding (like barometric pressure an ambient temperature based on the weather that day) that it comes down to an art form. Also, the dimples in the stepped intake look like they just didn't want to machine the ends of the ejector pins to match the profile of the intake. This is a clever move because ejector pins usually get wrecked when they crash the mold.
@@lambdaman3228 I've repaired hundreds of crashes. I've repaired a crashed mold only to have it crashed during it's next setup after warning the mold tech not do something like set the hydraulic pressure 8 times over what's needed so I can imagine. The worst is molds that use hand load inserts where the operator would load them in backwards, KERPOW!
I must say I am a big fan (get it? - sorry) of your detail in testing and argumentation about the conclusive results. Really good work! Not just this video.
As a Taiwanese, it's more of an annoyance for me since i wouldnt like my premium products made by my enemies. I try to avoid buying from commies as much as possible. And as a Taiwanese/Austrian brand it goes against my personal ideals and the fact that the noctua website doesn't even have traditional chinese (Taiwan) as an option but simplified chinese (China) just ticks me off.
I love the fact you still among few understand the evil of communism., Too bad America's legals system is in full fledged commie mode depending on which state you live in . Live long and prosper Kevin
That's funny, I thought that the "tear drops" looked more correct on the Chinese version. Remembered them being somewhat triangular and definitely deeper than the Taiwan version in that post.
I work for a car manufacturing company and we had an a problem at one point where a color was not coming out right at a particular plant. It was determined that due to a difference in humidity the previous color used was not getting cleaned off properly before the next color was used. While this color difference in fans is different than the car paint, it maybe some climate difference paint mixture difference that's causing the disparity. Good on Noctua for looking into it. Small difference, but listening to consumers is a big deal.
Bought 14cm Redux one with 1500rpm with screw distance of 12cm as cpu cooler and is is really nice stuff. Hearable on 1500, so for totally silent rig, lowering is required, compared to other Noctua I have -12cm, but that one is air oriented, so more silent in nature with less air pressure. Still top fans. Though my Noiseblockers were silent, Noctua is even better. Great video.
When I first saw your videos I thought you guys were a bit whack, but I actually like the fact that you investigate important stuff and test stuff in a good way instead of most other tech channels on here. Keep it up!
Very nice video well done! I think another interesting test will be to test both of them on a long period of time in the same conditions and see the duration of the products.That will be 100% myth busted or not?!?!
it would be interesting to see similar tests between Noctua and a bunch of other brands of similar fans.... just to see how well the brand stacks up against others and not just itself. maybe it doesnt even make any difference across brands as well?!
I just bought three Noctuas, two are from Taiwan, and one from China. They seemed to have made strides to fix the color difference between the two since this videos launch since, (at least from the ones I have) the color difference is really only noticeable when all the fans are next to each other, and they are in a well lit room. One could easily assume any color differences while in a case is just simply lighting. Specially if they are in different areas of the case.
At 6:54 there's one interesting thing to note. When the fans stop it seems like the one on the left is a "lower quality" magnetic 4-pole motor, whereas the one on the right stops smoothly, indicating that there is a difference in the internal motors used. I wonder if this could be confirmed?
Heard the rumor, but didn't put much thought in it. Would properly have looked into the issue once I needed new fans. So glad I stumbled over your video. For future charts used, I would like to see the Chinese and Taiwanese listed for them self i order (china #1,2,3,4 Taiwan #1,2,3,4) instead of every other. Would just have made it easy to compare the two. Great work, keep at it ^^
Its cools my computer ands its quite, I cant believe people are freaking out about this. Thank you Gamers Nexus for doing this video and silencing this! smh
Great video, I was in the original thread and the unfortunate bit was just mixed messages from Noctua - one response was them saying that the mold was bad and they were replacing it and another saying that everything is fine. Thanks for doing such a great investigation, I now know that I have as good a fan set as can be expected from Noctua even though it came from the China factory.
Thank you GN for (at least trying to) bringing some reason to this topic. I was expecting these results TBH as the Internet tends to blow things out of proportion most of the time. :)
So basically it's a nothing burger. It's basically people finding out their "Nike clothes" of the fan world, are made in sweat shops like everyone other brand.
If Linus was in bed with Noctua, they would have bumrushed this testing and released every bit of evidence supporting the fans being the same via twitter as they tested.
Reading through the comments gave me an idea to maybe start making shot quality fans but with RGB and charging it for high price and I bet it's still gonna sell since that's what people cares about aesthetic.
"OMG my FANS have a 2% color difference now!" does not even apply as a 1st world problem anymore. :D Also yes i realise there was more involved here...... but still....
FYI, Noctua fans and coolers shipping to Canada seem to be primarily from Taiwan; however, some of the coolers from Taiwan are packaged with fans from China (in particular, my UH12S-TR4 SP3 came with a Chinese fan [as can be seen by the color matching issues, and the printing and finish issues on the motor housing], whereas my UH14S-TR4 SP3 came with a Taiwanese fan). This was not an issue for me as I was replacing the single fan from the UH12S-TR4 SP3 with two NH-A12x25s anyway. If you are getting fans from both sources, the finishes are definitely worse on the Chinese ones I've seen, and they'll stick out like a sore thumb in a clear enclosure (YMMV, they perform just fine) if you have other Noctua fans.
I will always choose Taiwan's products over China's. Not a big FAN of China. But well gotta say that cost of production in China is really low, which is very tempting for manufacturers to produce in China.
Why the decibels are 41 at 1/2 meter (20") even if their website states 24,6 dB at max speed? Do they measure the noise from meters away? I'm truly ignorant about the whole noise matter so I'm puzzled
Just to note, at, about 10:20, you seemed to have forgotten to add the color labels on the legend that corresponds to the graph proper. Basically the legend is just a list that has no obvious correlation to the graph.
It wasn't forgotten, just an editing issue. The same chart is in the article: media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2017/fans/noctua/noctua-quality-pwm-lfpm_all.png
I've always found different models of Noctua fans to have different burgundy colours in the fan hub and blade section. So I would not have even had a second look at it if I were the guy who bought a bunch of them. Now might be the time for Noctua to not step up their quality control but rather their consistency control.
For all those that don't want to watch a long-ass video the results are at 11:12. However do watch it because he spent so much time on it. :) Good going steve!
Hello! Thanks for the video. However, as you highlight in the video (13:13), you need a much larger test sample size to draw any reliable conclusion. Small sample size + measurement variations can lead to incorrect conclusion. Especially when you're dealing with what seems to be quite "small" différences. Fred
I used to be a Noctua addict ... would recommend them above all others ... but after purchasing and installing some Corsair ML Pro fans I'm seriously considering changing my recommendation!! Just wish the MLs went a bit lower on min RPM ... 400rpm isn't bad but my Noctua 120 IPPC fans can go right down to zero rpms (auto stop) ...
When im 70 yrs old and drive a beige Camey, I'm sure I'll love Noctua's colour choices. Until then, there is no difference to me about slight changes in poo colour.
Good report. It is fascinating to watch your explanation of the technical aspects of the test process. It also brings up the issue of good and bad product quality and China has tremendous problems with product quality unless the brand has good quality control specs and test procedures. I recommend they read books by Edwards Deming, the US consultant who taught Japan about quality control after WWII. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
Do not believe they are the same quality at all. You can both feel it and hear it. Got 2 for intake on a new build. The China one has a louder hum and not as smooth resonance vibration when at full speed as the Taiwan made model.
It is surprising they let the dye change that much, they should be doing test batches to ensure consistency - dye variation is something every industry has to deal with. Not surprised there is no real difference in design though(hole/fin variation), some of that stuff is placebo effect imo, we can't tell the difference with or without it
Ok I worked in a silicon valley tool shop in my twenty's and I can say Noctuas explanation makes a lot of sense. Injection molding dies are literally hand made and no two dies are exactly alike.
I like that Noctua worries about performance more than aesthetics but the only people they are hurting by keeping that colour is themselves. They would probably have loads more sales if they follow the nf line colour scheme.
they already announced a line of black versions of their normal fans. so you will be able to have the noctua silence in black and at a less astronomical cost! Still expensive af doe.
This is more common than you think. I'll give you two examples. 1. I have a Norelco shaver. I have bought replacement blades a couple of times. Funny thing is that the blades that come from Chyna do not last as long. I have gotten blades stamped from the Netherlands, and they do last longer. Both replacement blades were bought from the same seller on Amazon over the past year or so. 2. Bunn Coffee machine's that are cheaper than the retail cost are made in Chyna. I know this because the Bunn coffee makers my family has purchased have lasted forever. Those were purchased direct form the company, Macy's, JC Penny's, etc. I purchased mine from Amazon, which was 30 cheaper. It broke within a year. I called and they sent me a new one and told me to throw the old one out. I noticed on the coffee maker that the one they had sent was made in the USA, while the one from Amazon..... CHYNA!
Back when I built my Z77 I used a Noctua fan as well as one of there coolers. I don't notice anything wrong with either product to this day. I am very tempted even to take the cooler out of that build and install it into this Z97 build. I guess in my case I have had nothing to complain about regarding Noctua products as long as the outsourced countries do not use lead based products when producing them.
More commentary on the internet outrage engine in the intro+conclusion of the article: www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3012-noctua-fans-from-china-and-taiwan-tested
Gamers Nexus i dont know if its meant to be like this but at 10 minute mark the graph key do not show which line is which variable. Heads up for future editing :)
Yeah, editing issue. Thanks. That chart is also on the website. See here: media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2017/fans/noctua/noctua-quality-pwm-lfpm_all.png
This is all good news, and I will admit I expected the FPM to be lower than that given the focus on sound rather than CFM efficiency. Great work, Thanks, Steve and Crew.
have you tried their a12x15 fans. they had a demo where 1 of them was just as good at cooling a heatsink as (2) nf-f12 fans.
i know you probably dont want to get too deep into fans. but since the f12 is already one of the best, this means the a12x15 is amazing. or am i wrong? i ended up buying like 7 of them. but with my case (phanteks evolve is a HOT case) its hard to tell how well they are doing compared to the f12's they replaced. 3 instake front. 1 intake back (gpu rad). 2 exhaust top (h100i).
Whatever gave you the impression that Noctua was focused on noise? They're very much performance oriented. They also don't hyper focus on any single aspect of performance.
The results blew me away.
Jarrod'sTech Ask yourself to leave.
What a funny guy, you got yourself a new fan.
R T You guys need to _chill_ out
R T is just blowing hot air
Damn guys these puns are just *exhausting*
TL;DR It does not matter if you get your fans from china or taiwan, they perform the same.
the color variation is VERY noticable though. if its already noticable on the video it'll be even more noticable in person. might not be a big deal if you have all your fans from one location(though i think the taiwan made one looks better color wise) but will definitly look akward if you have 2 fans from the different locations in one build.
MrJaime Can we chill out with the China stuff? They have been around for 8000 years in one form or another. Yes, CS can be an issue but if it were as much of an issue as the narrative that all humanity has adopted, we would grind to a halt because of the sheer amount of things we use daily that were manufactured in China.
I'm no real fan of China for various reasons, but I have traveled their for business and both buy and sell to and from China and I have never had an issue as a buyer. As a seller I have. Fraud there is huge when it comes to bilking Western importers/exporters out of money. It's essentially just a script all Chinese importers follow.
Do you put noctua fans in your case and show other people and tell them fans look nice?
jort93z Who would care, though? Unless you're a *really* dedicated Noctua fan, and you therefore colour match your entire build around a specific Noctua fan, you won't care. It's not like anything matches with brown and tan.
LOL saying "Taiwan and China" probably gets you on a Chinese government subversion watchlist for supporting Taiwanese independence and undermining the One China policy ......
Excellent work from GN. I could always count on you guys for hard data and investigative integrity.
Some customers probably thinks China automatically = terrible quality. When so many top class PC parts comes from China. It depends on the factory and batch quality really.
Shippoyasha as long as there is quality oversight, there shouldn't be a problem.
You should probably read the original Reddit thread. There were significant differences.
90% of the crap we buy is made in china. Iphones are made in china and no-one complains about the quality control there. Yet people see a slight colour mismatch on a fan and they lose their damn minds!!!
As long as there's a good quality control,it doesn't really matter where the parts come from.
All noctua fans are made in china. TAIWAN IS IN CHINA
So they changed the color from poop brown to diarrhea brown.
Todd Simone but diarrhea sucks way more :( like, in humans, it really does...
Stryker A. Wolfe hahahahaha
Todd Simone: Hahaha
This made me literally laugh out loud
50 shades of shit..... all to ugly to put in a showcase
When you know your product is so good you can paint it in poo and price them high, and people still buy it like crazy
Love the other noctua fan spinning in the background in the beginning. Subtle, but worth it.
That fan is helping cool the test bench. It's always there.
It actually was there only for this video!
TechnoBabble you read that? you fuckn crack head
@@lovelyxyz lovely.
I purchased two NF-A14s in October 2015. One is Taiwanese and one is Chinese. One has tear drop scoops, one has triangle scoops. They both have always felt of excellent quality and I never noticed a difference. Their color also appears identical.
Thank god this controversy is finally put to bed and I can sleep again...
Joe Ebner
Are you sleeping with the controversy ?
I dont know how you can sleep with your noisy ass china fans in the background. /s
Steve, the legend at 9:57 has no colors.
"..We did not produce a frequency spectrum plot, we did not noticed significant differences"
Haha nice test. So an acoustic comfort aspect was practically ignored and not event tried to be measured.
Also aspects of FAN orientation and positive/negative air pressure from one of FAN's side - was also missed. It may affect acoustics comfort and loudness differently in China and Taiwan.
So these tests demonstrate that some of measurable performance was matched in China versions but keep in mind that frequency spectrum is not reflected by dB value of loudness at all, while that may affect an acoustic comfort tremendously - which is very important just like as dB level.
What is off beige? I know about beige and off white.. but off beige?! My wife didn't teach me that one.
You are overthinking it. Off beige is off beige.
@@angrysocialjusticewarrior exactly. You know it when you see it.
I have the perfect solution for Noctua. Make the fans all black. The factories can not mess up black, and the fans will look better! Lol
You should be head of the company. I never consider buying noctua fans because the color clashes with everything, well unless if I spray paint all my pc parts poop brown and off beige lol.
What if you buy 10 fans and 5 are dark black and the other 5 are slightly darker black?
Ryan Tokarski I had one of Noctua's first coolers many years ago. Even with the hype you had to ignore the fan color. And now I have no interest as performance is so close now between good air coolers. So I wouldn't even consider owning that ugly ass brown and tan thing. All I look for is a known name with real ball bearings. Can't go wrong. Arctic Cooling makes some good ball bearing fans.
Peter Cursio can you really tell dark black and off black fans when rgb lights shine in on an awesome build? Black still looks better and easier to match than poop brown on beige khaki.
oh they could mess up black ... but still would sell better
So based on what we have here, it's not that big of a deal that many made it to be.
For now tho, who knows if they're gonna lower production quality standards
GL HF Rules for life.
It's not a deal at all.
GL HF and water is wet :p
@@ilpatongi According to people in the know quality can likely decrease over time .
Thank you very much - I had faith in Noctua's tight quality control (given how long lived their fans have been for me for years). Too bad the whole thing got blown waaay out of proportion. :-(
I'm a FAN of this channel... Keep doing stuff like this, you're one of the few channels that actually do rigorous tests and it's worth it.
Thank you for being one the the only channels properly testing and questioning anything
The last Noctua HSF kit I purchased had the darker shade, and it was pretty noticeable as somebody who has been using their fans for a while. I'm one of those rare types that liked the Noctua color, and the lighter color of the older fans is the better of the two.
Who's here want to see those noctua fans stack to blow on Steven's hair, in slow motion :) ?
so they're basically the same fan. Props to Noctua and shame on those people that held the pitchforks and created the whole boycott thing.
I was a tool and die maker for a molding company here in the US. I would see color variations in parts from the same production run using the same material. There are so many variables in molding (like barometric pressure an ambient temperature based on the weather that day) that it comes down to an art form. Also, the dimples in the stepped intake look like they just didn't want to machine the ends of the ejector pins to match the profile of the intake. This is a clever move because ejector pins usually get wrecked when they crash the mold.
@@PointingLasersAtAircraft Could you imagine crashing a mold? You'd have to be quite a tool to let something like that happen.
@@lambdaman3228 I've repaired hundreds of crashes. I've repaired a crashed mold only to have it crashed during it's next setup after warning the mold tech not do something like set the hydraulic pressure 8 times over what's needed so I can imagine. The worst is molds that use hand load inserts where the operator would load them in backwards, KERPOW!
@@PointingLasersAtAircraft Sounds like you work with an incompetent bumbling idiot tech.
I must say I am a big fan (get it? - sorry) of your detail in testing and argumentation about the conclusive results. Really good work! Not just this video.
Glad to see you busting silly myths, Great work!
I love Noctua fans, my case is full of them, really interesting video so thank you for spending time to make this video :)
As a Taiwanese, it's more of an annoyance for me since i wouldnt like my premium products made by my enemies. I try to avoid buying from commies as much as possible. And as a Taiwanese/Austrian brand it goes against my personal ideals and the fact that the noctua website doesn't even have traditional chinese (Taiwan) as an option but simplified chinese (China) just ticks me off.
I love the fact you still among few understand the evil of communism., Too bad America's legals system is in full fledged commie mode depending on which state you live in .
Live long and prosper
Kevin
Agreed !
That's funny, I thought that the "tear drops" looked more correct on the Chinese version. Remembered them being somewhat triangular and definitely deeper than the Taiwan version in that post.
I work for a car manufacturing company and we had an a problem at one point where a color was not coming out right at a particular plant. It was determined that due to a difference in humidity the previous color used was not getting cleaned off properly before the next color was used. While this color difference in fans is different than the car paint, it maybe some climate difference paint mixture difference that's causing the disparity. Good on Noctua for looking into it. Small difference, but listening to consumers is a big deal.
Bought 14cm Redux one with 1500rpm with screw distance of 12cm as cpu cooler and is is really nice stuff. Hearable on 1500, so for totally silent rig, lowering is required, compared to other Noctua I have -12cm, but that one is air oriented, so more silent in nature with less air pressure. Still top fans. Though my Noiseblockers were silent, Noctua is even better. Great video.
I just find it ironic, a video discussing about Noctua Fan was brought/sponsored by EVGA AIO... haha
As for me, the light beige colour is aesthetically nicer than the dark beige variety!
Outrageous
When I first saw your videos I thought you guys were a bit whack, but I actually like the fact that you investigate important stuff and test stuff in a good way instead of most other tech channels on here. Keep it up!
Only recently subscribed. It's refreshing to see objective level-headed testing using the scientific method for pc hardware, love this channel.
Excellent video, so nice to see this kind of structured and qualitative testing. (Also nice to see noctua didn't slip up, it seems!)
Very nice video well done! I think another interesting test will be to test both of them on a long period of time in the same conditions and see the duration of the products.That will be 100% myth busted or not?!?!
Videos like this are why you guys are the most respected chan of all the techtubers. Thank you
The LFPM Chart legend has no color code reference.
so basically $10 noctua copycat will be on the market soon?
it would be interesting to see similar tests between Noctua and a bunch of other brands of similar fans.... just to see how well the brand stacks up against others and not just itself.
maybe it doesnt even make any difference across brands as well?!
Simon Adams just what I thought. Needs more up votes ;)
Glad to see you guys made a detailed report on this. Thanks!
I just bought three Noctuas, two are from Taiwan, and one from China.
They seemed to have made strides to fix the color difference between the two since this videos launch since, (at least from the ones I have) the color difference is really only noticeable when all the fans are next to each other, and they are in a well lit room. One could easily assume any color differences while in a case is just simply lighting. Specially if they are in different areas of the case.
At 6:54 there's one interesting thing to note. When the fans stop it seems like the one on the left is a "lower quality" magnetic 4-pole motor, whereas the one on the right stops smoothly, indicating that there is a difference in the internal motors used. I wonder if this could be confirmed?
Heard the rumor, but didn't put much thought in it. Would properly have looked into the issue once I needed new fans.
So glad I stumbled over your video.
For future charts used, I would like to see the Chinese and Taiwanese listed for them self i order (china #1,2,3,4 Taiwan #1,2,3,4) instead of every other. Would just have made it easy to compare the two.
Great work, keep at it ^^
excellent review. I like the way you go about testing and explaining how you went about it. I really do like noctua myself.
Its cools my computer ands its quite, I cant believe people are freaking out about this. Thank you Gamers Nexus for doing this video and silencing this! smh
The most professional tech videos on TH-cam.
Great video, I was in the original thread and the unfortunate bit was just mixed messages from Noctua - one response was them saying that the mold was bad and they were replacing it and another saying that everything is fine. Thanks for doing such a great investigation, I now know that I have as good a fan set as can be expected from Noctua even though it came from the China factory.
But you don't .
Wow... I'm impressed how precise Noctua fans' quality is regardless of where it was made!
Thanks for doing this video guys. Awesome!
Thank you GN for (at least trying to) bringing some reason to this topic.
I was expecting these results TBH as the Internet tends to blow things out of proportion most of the time. :)
This channel is my goto source for analysis, so good. Thanks again.
Thanks for the follow up vid! Was actually curious about this. Glad to know Noctua is still the best of the best.
So basically it's a nothing burger.
It's basically people finding out their "Nike clothes" of the fan world, are made in sweat shops like everyone other brand.
Faster than LTT! Good job.
cause he's busy breaking stuff in Canada
Archie Wei They said they're not testing it because Linus himself said he knew that Steve was investigating the problem already.
my ltt edition 140's are doing just fine
If Linus was in bed with Noctua, they would have bumrushed this testing and released every bit of evidence supporting the fans being the same via twitter as they tested.
FINALLY! I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! THANK YOU!
Reading through the comments gave me an idea to maybe start making shot quality fans but with RGB and charging it for high price and I bet it's still gonna sell since that's what people cares about aesthetic.
"OMG my FANS have a 2% color difference now!" does not even apply as a 1st world problem anymore. :D
Also yes i realise there was more involved here...... but still....
Great testing! awesome videos as usual.
Well done! Thanks for being such a beacon of sanity and reasonableness!
FYI, Noctua fans and coolers shipping to Canada seem to be primarily from Taiwan; however, some of the coolers from Taiwan are packaged with fans from China (in particular, my UH12S-TR4 SP3 came with a Chinese fan [as can be seen by the color matching issues, and the printing and finish issues on the motor housing], whereas my UH14S-TR4 SP3 came with a Taiwanese fan). This was not an issue for me as I was replacing the single fan from the UH12S-TR4 SP3 with two NH-A12x25s anyway. If you are getting fans from both sources, the finishes are definitely worse on the Chinese ones I've seen, and they'll stick out like a sore thumb in a clear enclosure (YMMV, they perform just fine) if you have other Noctua fans.
I will always choose Taiwan's products over China's. Not a big FAN of China.
But well gotta say that cost of production in China is really low, which is very tempting for manufacturers to produce in China.
This video was FANtastic.
Why the decibels are 41 at 1/2 meter (20") even if their website states 24,6 dB at max speed? Do they measure the noise from meters away? I'm truly ignorant about the whole noise matter so I'm puzzled
Just to note, at, about 10:20, you seemed to have forgotten to add the color labels on the legend that corresponds to the graph proper. Basically the legend is just a list that has no obvious correlation to the graph.
It wasn't forgotten, just an editing issue. The same chart is in the article: media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2017/fans/noctua/noctua-quality-pwm-lfpm_all.png
Sorry, my bad.
I've always found different models of Noctua fans to have different burgundy colours in the fan hub and blade section. So I would not have even had a second look at it if I were the guy who bought a bunch of them.
Now might be the time for Noctua to not step up their quality control but rather their consistency control.
When your color scheme is more important than consumer demands but not important enough to have consistent between factories
Some pretty cool tests
Gamers Nexus da real MVP.
For all those that don't want to watch a long-ass video the results are at 11:12.
However do watch it because he spent so much time on it. :)
Good going steve!
Thank you for doing this!
I didn't think that they would perform differently, good to see that Noctua is still being Noctua, reliable as a stone.
Keep up the good work. Interesting video
So basically Noctua does proper QA on their fans, and now we can all rest and enjoy their products.
Just wanted to say it's impressive that this was tested. Not many tech sites would bother.
Hello!
Thanks for the video.
However, as you highlight in the video (13:13), you need a much larger test sample size to draw any reliable conclusion.
Small sample size + measurement variations can lead to incorrect conclusion. Especially when you're dealing with what seems to be quite "small" différences.
Fred
I used to be a Noctua addict ... would recommend them above all others ... but after purchasing and installing some Corsair ML Pro fans I'm seriously considering changing my recommendation!! Just wish the MLs went a bit lower on min RPM ... 400rpm isn't bad but my Noctua 120 IPPC fans can go right down to zero rpms (auto stop) ...
thanks Steve! I have both china and Taiwan made fans into my system and I can't unsee now that they have different color
This video helped me become a fan of the channel
When im 70 yrs old and drive a beige Camey, I'm sure I'll love Noctua's colour choices. Until then, there is no difference to me about slight changes in poo colour.
Good report. It is fascinating to watch your explanation of the technical aspects of the test process. It also brings up the issue of good and bad product quality and China has tremendous problems with product quality unless the brand has good quality control specs and test procedures. I recommend they read books by Edwards Deming, the US consultant who taught Japan about quality control after WWII. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
FINALLY! great video guys
Good tech journalism
Do not believe they are the same quality at all. You can both feel it and hear it. Got 2 for intake on a new build. The China one has a louder hum and not as smooth resonance vibration when at full speed as the Taiwan made model.
Great video as usual, thanks
I'll save my pitchfork for another cause. Great testing methodology, thanks for taking the time and running us through it.
Thank you for the data.
It is surprising they let the dye change that much, they should be doing test batches to ensure consistency - dye variation is something every industry has to deal with. Not surprised there is no real difference in design though(hole/fin variation), some of that stuff is placebo effect imo, we can't tell the difference with or without it
Ii just wanted to say i got my Industrial 140mm ippc3000 noctua fan SO BEAST i love it!
Ok sir
Ok I worked in a silicon valley tool shop in my twenty's and I can say Noctuas explanation makes a lot of sense. Injection molding dies are literally hand made and no two dies are exactly alike.
I've noticed a difference in color of different models on Amazon, thought it was lighting, but the slightly different dye colors makes sense.
I like that Noctua worries about performance more than aesthetics but the only people they are hurting by keeping that colour is themselves. They would probably have loads more sales if they follow the nf line colour scheme.
We need to start a change.org petition to get Noctua to start making their fans in a color that isn't as bad as the current trash.
They have gray and black ones
the grey and black and poop ones aren't interchangeable how uninformed could you be?
Quality > Optics, and if you want a good looking PC, get different fans. It's a very easy decision.
they already announced a line of black versions of their normal fans. so you will be able to have the noctua silence in black and at a less astronomical cost! Still expensive af doe.
I use corsair 120 hd series fans in the corsair 570x because rgb
God Steve I love your guys work
I haven't been getting notifications for this channel. It's aggravating and I have no ideas why it's doing this.
Yeah, wasn't really worried about it to begin with.
That's what you get for working on cards all the time. :-)
Thx gamer's nexus. Approaching the issue with relevant data, not opinions.
I like the thought behind the words you say
This is more common than you think. I'll give you two examples.
1. I have a Norelco shaver. I have bought replacement blades a couple of times. Funny thing is that the blades that come from Chyna do not last as long. I have gotten blades stamped from the Netherlands, and they do last longer. Both replacement blades were bought from the same seller on Amazon over the past year or so.
2. Bunn Coffee machine's that are cheaper than the retail cost are made in Chyna. I know this because the Bunn coffee makers my family has purchased have lasted forever. Those were purchased direct form the company, Macy's, JC Penny's, etc. I purchased mine from Amazon, which was 30 cheaper. It broke within a year. I called and they sent me a new one and told me to throw the old one out. I noticed on the coffee maker that the one they had sent was made in the USA, while the one from Amazon..... CHYNA!
Back when I built my Z77 I used a Noctua fan as well as one of there coolers. I don't notice anything wrong with either product to this day. I am very tempted even to take the cooler out of that build and install it into this Z97 build. I guess in my case I have had nothing to complain about regarding Noctua products as long as the outsourced countries do not use lead based products when producing them.
I’ve moved seven Noctua fans and their cooler from my old system to a new one. No issues whatsoever.