Arctic vs. Noctua - Best 140mm Static Pressure Fan?

[@KrazEWillY]

optimum tech aesthetic

[@bk-sl8ee]

Bingo! Right on point! Exactly what I was thinking!

[@3.5.3]

Honestly impressed by how quiet the motor of the AC P14 is, and its overall effectiveness.

[@vigorgaming8]

and also the price compared to other fans in the same class

[@shadowspect09]

This is the quintessential video length and detail, I come for answers on what I'm looking for and you delivered. Hats to you, subbed.

[@EIGAtech]

Much appreciated!

[@SHENZHENYOFOLONELECTRONICCOLTD]

Great video for everyone to know more about the cooling fans,well done!

[@czaszi]

Great to see such comparison. One thing I am curious about is the performance on lower RPMs.

[@GrumpyGrndad]

One thing worth mentioning is that there is an 14e price diffrence between the two. Where i live the Arctic costs 7.6e, while Noctua is 22e. The new black Noctua is 25e. Take a system like mine that uses 8 of these... That is a big difference. Needless to say i went with Arctic.

[@EIGAtech]

Yes, I should have also went into the pricing in this video. The new black Noctua is the chromax variant for the A12x25, which is a newer generation fan than the 140mm shown here. Are you referring to that one?

[@Leanderrr]

Are you still happy with the arctic in terms of sound and temp?

[@GrumpyGrndad]

@@Leanderrr Yes and no. In terms of price and performance, arctics are top shelf. But there is a catch. Nearly all arctic fans (atleast the cheap 120mm ones) have terrible coil whine at certain rpm's. If my memory serves me right it's around 800-1000 rpm. There are tons of posts about it you can google. The good thing is that you can make a custom fancurve that jumps over those rpm levels as the whine is only heard at those fixed levels. So if you want good fans at low cost yes, arctics are very very good, but they have that issue. I used my arctics for some time with said "fix", until i got annoyed enough with the sudden rpm jump sounds. Currently using Noctuas, and those old arctics are sitting collecting dust on my shelf.

[@Andy-jz1zw]

​@@GrumpyGrndadyou can get artic p12 max now that should correct the whine now from what I've read (GG artic )

[@GrumpyGrndad]

@@Andy-jz1zw Good to know.

[@nathangabrielriegler5553]

Great videos dude. Keep it up!

[@yShorna]

Today I was very disappointed with the NF-A14 and returned them to the store after 2 days of fighting hum. Bi quite 500 Dx. I ordered the Arctic, they say that it also emits a hum at 1000 rpm, but at least this can be controlled. Noktua works quietly and without hum only at 350-450 rpm.

[@TheKertukos]

Thank you for not making a 10 minutes coparison video. Great and usefull material, i've boguht Arctic couple weeks ago and I'm very suprised about it's quality and scope of work, but honestly i've been checking noctua, but imo it's way overpriced: 4 times more expensive than Arctic...

[@OnlyNeedJuan]

Ah so the arctic still has the resonance issue. That's my main gripe rn, I don't need my fans to spin up that fast, but they often pass these resonance points when they do need to spin up and that bothers me immensely haha. Thanks for the review.

[@KamenMinkov]

The irony of Noctua still not having released the new 140 mm fan...

[@gavinbuck8130]

Thank you so much for doing this, I'm using 3 Arctic 120 as intakes on my Be Quiet 500DX and they howl quite loudly at certain RPMs, it's because of the actual materiel Arctic have used, if you tap the blades, that's the note that will resonate as air moves through it. It's true as you say that you can navigate through the RPM to find a sweet spot but it's a shame Arctic don't use a denser plastic like the more resinous Noctua as I think they could achieve silent results, hopefully future models will incorporate better materials, it may cost them more which would be passed on to the consumer, but I think most people are happy to pay a little extra for the best. I'd be interested to know how the static pressure orientated Arctic Bionix P140 fares in radiators against the competition, I haven't seen any reviews of the Bionix in any temp or noise charts for the 140mm.

[@EIGAtech]

Thanks for the insight! I didn't think of the material but it makes sense now that you mention it. As for the Bionix fan, I assumed that it was pretty much the same thing but with a different frame. I might get some at some point and test them against P14.

[@gavinbuck8130]

@@EIGAtech That'd be great if you could, there's so little data or decent reviews for the 140mm Bionix, there's always Amazon reviews but they are always contradictory, they're not bad for a base reference.

[@ashtonkat378]

Top Notch Quality!

[@I_DONT_SUPPORT_TERRORISTS]

A short review but great to hear the real noise levels of both fans. Another in depth review with many different fans I saw also shows how good the Arctic fans perform and how silent they are. Unfortunately they do create a certain resonance like you said but overal these are very good case fans! Noctua fans are not as good as many people say. They are not bad and perform well in radiator or heatsink tests but they are NOT good as case fans. I’ve seen many in depth reviews.

[@I_DONT_SUPPORT_TERRORISTS]

Forgot to mention the resonance only appears at certain RPM so by adjusting fan curves slightly you can overcome this is most situations.

[@rivall8105]

@@I_DONT_SUPPORT_TERRORISTS they're good for itx cases right

[@lucatomellini975]

hi, great video! I would like to ask you two things: Is your nzxt h1 noisy in idle with the p14? Did you have to change the screws to mount the p14 in the nzxt h1? thanks and sorry my english

[@EIGAtech]

Thank you! With the H1 I was using a custom watercooling loop, and that meant that I was not using the standard AIO that ships with the case, and I never tried just swapping the fan, although I assume it should work no problem. It was definitely not noisy at idle, but this depends on your fan curve, etc.

[@lucatomellini975]

@@EIGAtech thanks a lot!

[@mogyuun1747]

Thank you for such a useful video! My NZXT H1 just arrived a couple of days, how good is the Arctic P14 vs the fan that comes with the case? Do you think it's worth to change it? And since it's been 5 months after you recorded this... have you found any other fan better than the ones you compared?

[@EIGAtech]

Hi! Thank you. I would wholeheartedly still recommend the Arctic P14 PWM. I would not recommend the Noctua, at least not until they release the new one, which, if it's anything like their 120mm fans, will beat the P14. For now though, you really can't go wrong!

[@mogyuun1747]

​@@EIGAtech Thanks for the advice!

[@Lb8068]

Thanks for the video! Also hope you got the replacement GPU mount you're entitled to with your NZXT H1 - the original ones are a fire hazard!

[@EIGAtech]

Should be on its way!

[@locolama]

I'm a Noctua fanboy myself but am currently seriously considering to replace my old redux 140's with either the A14's or these P14's until Noctua finally releases the next gen 140mm fans. How well would these P14's work as intakes for something like a Fractal Meshify or Define kind of case?

[@EIGAtech]

I think the P14 would perform really well. I don’t think it’s worth paying for these particular Noctua fans.

[@Mistted]

@@EIGAtech Indeed i bought a Fractal Meshify 2 Compact case w/ a Noctua NH-U14S CPU cooler (which both i got from a black friday sale for really cheap along with a cpu, psu & a gpu), i replaced all the fans with Arctic P14 PWM PST CO fans (3 on front, 1 on the CPU cooler [the only non-Arctic cooler is the Noctua's NF-A15 PWM that came with the CPU cooler], and one on the back exhaust blowing up, just had to get one Arctic P12 that fitted on the back of the case). And HOLY MOLY the results it's pretty much dead silent after i tuned the fans a little bit (and you can daisy chain all those fans too, which is perfect even if you only had one cooler place on your motherboard too, which is damn nice!), i have a RM850x PSU which doesn't even have to spin it's fan at all so it's a perfect silent build with a good case and good parts. Now i can enjoy a cool and silent case + cpu (Ryzen 5600x), the RTX3080 TUF Gaming i got is making most of the noise lmao (on idle it's silent yeah), but i don't hear it meanwhile gaming anyway so who cares. Like those fans are practically a steal at this price and performance! Better than Noctua's fans at half the price, how are people not noticing this yet? Arctic could easily up their prices a lot and it would still be reasonable, but thanks Arctic for providing such good fans with a cheap price ^_^ And you can get buy a 5pack of these fans for even cheaper! Arctic has really upped their game and Noctua is lagging behind with their much more expensive fans. I wanna see what Noctua is gonna do next after seeing Arctic stealing their game with half the price (and in many shops over half the price!). And why this hasn't got more publicity yet? The big channels should do new fan reviews that reveal the truth. Then Noctua fanboys would see red when they realize the prize/performance difference, i would wanna see that reaction!

[@EIGAtech]

@@Mistted Thanks for the comment! To be fair, Noctua's 120mm fans are better than the competition, or at least the gap is wider and the price is somewhat justified. I am really curious what their planned new generation 140mm fan will be like and can't wait to review it.

[@rasimozturk26]

Very good... Now, please repeat the test with Noctua nf-a12x25... Although this is a 12cm fan, you will be surprised by its performance and quietness. Of course the price is around $30. Arctic is 11-12 dollars, five-value pack is 30-35 dollars. I also use Arctic P14 as my radiator fan and I am very satisfied. But I can't say it's the best fan money can buy, I can say it's the best price-performance fan.

[@dragos-lucian]

I'm curious about something. The motor of the Arctic P12 has a very noticeable humming noise at around 1000rpm and it's really irritating. Does the P14 have an rpm point where the motor does the same thing as the smaller brother?

[@EIGAtech]

It does have certain rpm ranges where there's some resonance, but that's the beauty of pwm, you can easily adjust it a couple of % up or down and get rid of it.

[@dragos-lucian]

@@EIGAtech Even so, I had 6x P12 and I had them working on a curve. They would sit on that specific humming rpm but they hit the spot when passing by, so to speak. It drove me nuts. Anyway, if they have that humming noise, then the P14 most probably share the same motor as the smaller brother. Thanks!

[@pabloletelier3811]

Otra diferencia importante a conciderar es precio ya q artic son más baratos

[@kaankrsln]

What program you use while mouse clik change to rpm? i want to change my rpm but i cant figure out what program you use?

[@EIGAtech]

Fan Control by Rem0o on Github is a great one

[@eprpop]

Which is the sweet spot to remove the resonance you mentioned with the Artic fan?

[@Methodical2]

Great questions. All the videos I've seen said this but never demoed anyone of the rpm levels for us to hear. Sounds like they could be repeating what another viewer has already stated. I will continue to search for a video that demos those rpm levels to hear it for myself.

[@CAPBY660]

which keyboard do you have?

[@Rimaxd]

I have a question im planning to buy the Fractal design meshify C Arctics P series has better static pressure and the F series Focuses mostly on Airflow I was wondering that if I went for the F series it would struggle to pull the air through the filter of the meshify C But If It doesnt struggle I dont want to go for the P series and Lose better airflow I do want to believe that there wont be any issue with using the Arctic F series fans but I just want to make sure since I dont see many people talking about it

[@EIGAtech]

I have not personally tested the F series fans so I can't say for sure but I would just go with the P series fans, you really can't go wrong with them and I doubt you will lose airflow, especially considering the air filters where a static pressure fan will no doubt help.

[@Rimaxd]

@@EIGAtech alright thanks for the response will do :)

[@Cons2911]

Was thinking of buying a set of noctua (I love noctua even the color is no biggie). Now I’m checking Arctic as a 5pack is just a tad more expensive that 2pc (I’m assuming noctua is still 20 a pop)

[@EIGAtech]

In my opinion, get the Arctics, and then when Noctua updates the 140 design maybe consider upgrading if performance is not satisfactory.

[@Cons2911]

@@EIGAtech yeah, 5pack already on the cart. Don't want to spend as much as I will be spending more not just this. And based on forums and such, they are really good,so ull take it

[@Lloyd.B.]

My Arctic p14s are a bit annoying in that I have to have the fan speed 10% difference between them to stop weird resonances, so I have fans at 92,82,69% just to stop it. Was wondering if some Noctuas would be better - seems not judging by this video. They are too noisy.

[@EIGAtech]

That behavior is pretty consistent with Arctic fans. Noctua is more consistent in my experience, but not worth it until they release their updated 140 fan (which they keep delaying)

[@Lloyd.B.]

@@EIGAtech I expect Arctic could sort that resonance problem out without ruining the bargain price too much. They need more rubbery plastic or something, they sound like a gong if you flick them at the moment.

[@EIGAtech]

@@Lloyd.B. the new ones with ARGB are improved as far as I heard, not sure in terms of resonance but cooling performance is significantly better on them. I don’t know the specifics of why that is.

[@Lloyd.B.]

@@EIGAtech Thanks, I didn't know about them.

[@ojtothemax]

And here I was looking for a better fan than my Artic P14 PWM, I guess my search has ended and I will keep them :) I am happy with them, but thought maybe there are better ones. Noctua just has a really good image but i guess they are overrated.

[@xBINARYGODx]

The problem with the arctic is, with both fans you are getting what you pay for - I ordered a 5 pack - three were fine enough, one was clearly a loser in terms of making noise and one was just flat out broken. I mean, they are just 5 fans stuck a box that barely fits them and getting them one by one is not much better. While clearly you get can unluckly, you are WAY more likely to get unlucky with AC - I have never had an issue with their fans in that regard - also, who cares how any of these fans above 1200 sound at 100% - they all suck and will only ever sound like that during a hard stress when you dont care about noise you care about top performance. Also, I would like tests like these be redone on 13900K and other hot chips.

[@TheShmrsh]

Scythe !

[@blacksteel2434]

Arctic is the best

[@vitalisabaleuski7704]

Arctic!!!!

[@jazzochannel]

unfair comparison. look at Noctua NF-A12x25 - or at least for 12mm . anyway i got a few arctic fans myself recently. 5 arctics for the price of 1 noctua! they are excellent and silent!

[@MohamedAmirios]

Look at the prices before saying it's unfair :)

[@martinmansson5067]

Noc has better 140 mm Than the one you test. And arctic is top model one. So a compare is not saying a lot.

[@EIGAtech]

Which Noctua 140 is better? Only other one I know of is the industrial version which goes to higher RPM.

[@locolama]

@@EIGAtech probably the industrial line of A14's - more rpm's but also more noise so I don't get the comparison he's trying to make.

[@minayouness]

You were asked which model you are talking about, yet you couldn't answer. Seems like you're just a hater who wants to sound smart.

[@kerlowkey]

well... noise is something that bothers me a lot, like static noises like these things impact me immensly. I have this zooming fucking noise in my room 24/7 cuz of the air ventilator in the next ´storage room' around 35-40db. Itś like torture. But itś an easy choice, the P14. You get a value pack of 5 fans for less than €45. One Noctua NF A14 unit costs €25 already.

[@EIGAtech]

Something also worth mentioning is that the newer P14 A-RGB fan has even better performance than the P14.

[@kerlowkey]

@EIGA yea true i already daw that, it's almost evenly matched with the noctua a12x25? Or the nf a14 i dont know I have watched TOO many video's haha.. but that one is a bit more expensive as well and only has 3-packs (in here Netherlands) so the regular P14 is the way to go for me. Thanks man appreciate your reply Update: I ordered the P12 argb series (6 fans). I hope that these don't have that noise either and perform as good as the p14 argb, I hope. We'll see