Possible to fit a different fan to the Noctua NHU-12S CPU heatsink?

[rn2]

I bought one of these months a go...

https://ibb.co/h5B7eq

I contacted Noctua for a replacement fan for it because the fan that came with it started to make the whole computer case hum! after a few months. The replacement fan isn't any better and the similarities are that the fans wobble slightly. I have returned quite a few other Noctua case fans in the past. I am not impressed by them at all if I am honest and these ones are not even seated properly when they spin.

Anyway, do you think it would be possible to fit a different make of fan to the heat sink. I am thinking of getting a cheap arctic fan they seem to be the most quiet fans I have had in my machine other than the BE Quiet Silent Wings 3 which I don't want to spend £20 on.

 

[rn2]

Never mind. The Arctics arrived really early and I managed to use the Noctua fan metal cips on the 120mm Arctic fan, so much better than the Noctua fan.

On a side note I bought a budget Be Quiet Pure base 600 case and the bequiet fans supplied with it were horrible for motor noise so I replaced them with the arctics too. I recommend Arctic fans over other fans apart from the Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 which are expensive, but I have a 140mm one strapped to my GPU which is silent.

 

[doyll]

As you have found out already, NH-U12S fan clips work on most 120mm fans. Arctic has new Arctic P series fans that look quite impressive if the performance results in HardwareLUXX review is accurate. I need to get some and test them myself to support these results.


https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.p...-serie-verspricht-hohen-statischen-druck.html

I just looked and OcUK has not stocked them yet. Hopefully they will soon.

be quiet! Silent Wings 3 are very good fans, but their other fans are marginal at best. I agree the ones that come in their cases are definitely not good.

 

[Grandmaster Fap!]

I just looked and OcUK has not stocked them yet. Hopefully they will soon.

@doyll
Somewhere else has them for a bout £7 a fan, they seem really similar to the Bionix apart from being slightly slower? Is there much difference?

 

[doyll]

@doyll
Somewhere else has them for a bout £7 a fan, they seem really similar to the Bionix apart from being slightly slower? Is there much difference?

Only good review I've seen .. review I assume is good because it's results for other good fans I've tested are similar is HardwareLUXX, but their dB(A) of Silent Wings 3 seems rather high. Considering the test equipment they are using we figure a +/ 2 dB(A) and +/-4 m3/h (1cfm = 1.7m3/h) results look about right.


I've color coded some popular fans to give an idea of performance. They also did grill and filter flow and noise testing but I've found Cryorig H5 / 140mm radiator to give similar restrictions to case grill and filters on intake fans with no case exhaust fans. No exhaust fans makes case quieter too.

 

[Gti]

I was considering an Alpenfohn Brocken 3 and a bequiet! 900 tower for my next build and they both use 140mm Silentwing 3 fans. That chart isn't filling me with confidence for a quiet build.

 

[rn2]

I was considering an Alpenfohn Brocken 3 and a bequiet! 900 tower for my next build and they both use 140mm Silentwing 3 fans. That chart isn't filling me with confidence for a quiet build.

I have the Be Quiet Silent WIngs 3 140mm fan (specifically the BL067) model strapped to my GPU and it is the most silent fan I have ever had in my computer case.

 

[rn2]

I kind of take back what I said about recommending the Arctic fans, I would at this point say "give them a go". They are very cheap but with the ones I just installed yesterday I have noticed that the ARCTIC F14 Silent Ultra Quiet 140 mm fan is already making slight audible ticking but only noticed with the computer case side off at under a foot away. The ARCTIC F12 PWM PST 120 mm fan is already starting to make a slight creaking noise and isn't properly seated (a very slight wobble like the noctua fans I had before). I didn't know that Arctic released a P series, I don't want to pay £20 each for two fans at this moment in time which I guess does not help ha.

It doesn't help that my old case had an intake fan that would constantly make a loud air pushing noise that probably masked all of these sounds.

 

[doyll]

I was considering an Alpenfohn Brocken 3 and a bequiet! 900 tower for my next build and they both use 140mm Silentwing 3 fans. That chart isn't filling me with confidence for a quiet build.

Chart is deceiving because while Silent Wings 3 have higher sound pressure level than the others, they are also moving significantly more air. If the testing was done at same airflow level they would be as low dB(A) (SPL) as others. We also need to remember that dB reading is a pressure level reading and is not really showing us how the fans sounds to our ears. dB(A) was developed to take into account the non-linear sensitivity of human hearing. In practice, in each 1/1 or 1/3 frequency band a "weighting" is added to the measured SPL; most of these weightings are negative, so that the net result is a decreasing of the overall SPL trying to give us a reading that is more like what we hear, but it is still a pressure reading. The sound from Silent Wings 3 is more pleasant on our ears so even if it's SPL is a little higher than others it sounds better to our ears which means we don't notice the sound as much as ther sound from other fans.