you should do a 140mm version of this test

I grabbed an Arctic P12 PWM fan and some P14 PWMs recently and very happy with them

I'm glad you include the fan sound recordings. A decibel reading is a summation of the sound pressure reaching the microphone, which is made up of a spectrum of frequencies. Some of those frequencies will be more annoying to humans than others. Therefore, fans that measure the same total dB level can sound completely different. If people are interested in a deeper dive, I would recommend doing an RTA reading on-screen during the recording to show the spectrum.

One nice thing to mention about the Arctic P12 PWM PST fans, is that they only draw 0.08 Amps each, so you can link a lot of them from a single PWM header on your motherboard, and Arctic foresaw this possibility and made little link connectors on each fan, so no PWM splitters are needed. You can essentially buy a 5 piece value pack and connect them all to the same header and cool your entire case if you want to.

Glad to see you liked the P12, I will pass the message to the engineers. I do not know if Nick sent you the P14, but I think you'll like it too.

So glad the market for quiet and performance oriented fans are coming back!

Love how you stick to the facts, some channels can definitely overlook or miss things, but you point out even the most nuanced stuff, or reasoning behind designs. Thank you for your time, effort, and knowledge.

Thank you SO MUCH for the high quality fan recordings starting at 4:53! What a huge difference, wow - I did not expect the venerable Gentle Typhoon to have such a grating sound, plus the Arctic's hum 6:17 at 1000 RPM is such an important finding - that would drive me crazy! Would it make sense to also include the matching frequency spectrum of these recordings? It would be nice to see the measured spectrum to point out what's audible - then we could easily compare charts as well to point out frequency peaks (e.g. the Arctic's hum sounds like a ~400Hz tone)

Finally a real arctic p12 review!

Swear this man is psychic, every time I need to go research something a magic OT appears

Super glad you revisited this one, its always a good thing to see people following up. more content like this would be incredibly appreciated by all of us. Keep up the great work!

Thanks for covering this subject with a practical testing methodology. Went with P12 PWN fans and i am super impressed.

gentle typhoon is a legendary fan, I heard of it 10 years ago.

2:30 Pretty sure NIDEC is the OEM and Scythe was just branding it.

Im glad I discovered this channel, its a nice adition for my 2021. Keep the good work!

Thanks for the noise vs speed plot, I have watched several similar vids and this quick summary was somehow missing from everyone else's.

Nice to see that using P12 to populate all 9 slots in my PC-O11 Dynamic was a good move. It cost me about 8 USD per fan against around 20-25 USD per fan for Noctuas (this is a while ago and I cant remeber correctly what the Noctua cost. Also this is in Norway so prices are probably a bit different from elsewhere). It makes a huge difference when it's 9 fans... 🙃

Ma boy gentle typhoon delivering this level of performance ten years ago

A very thorough fan testing and also noise sample. Kudos to the hard work.

Thanks so much for doing this. Also, great job on the production, your videos have been getting better and better and are definitely top notch in every way, great work, thanks so much.

Thought I was going mad myself, but yea, there is a low hum at certain rpm with my arctic fans as well... bit of faffery in bios fan curve and they are awesome and quiet ^^

Gentle Typhoons are originally server-grade fans adapted for the watercooling scene. Nidec has long produced a range of them for the enterprise sector, but it was Scythe that began marketing them to the consumer PC water-cooling market, and they were quite revolutionary given the larger fan motor and quieter operation at certain ranges, as well as extreme cooling performance at the expense of noise (the 5400RPM AP-31s). Scythe eventually stopped marketing the GTs, and Darkside (IIRC, a DazMode brand) picked up the slack, also getting Nidec to jump on the PWM train with PWM versions of their GTs. However, Nidec has long refused to really modernize the design, since again, they produce fans mainly for the commercial/enterprise sector. The only major change was shifting from grey blades to black blades, and adopting PWM for modern cooling. Nidec themselves also don't directly sell to consumers; as users would usually have to buy through sites like Newark, Grainger, etc, and sometimes in bulk orders. EK would later try to replicate the performance and value of the GTs with their Vardars; hence the design similarity. However, the quality and feel just isn't the same compared to the classic GTs. Noctua's NF-A12x25 pretty much did what Nidec wouldn't; and that's modernizing their tried-and-true GT fan design to be quieter, PWM-capable, and operate in a wider RPM range.

I'm impressed you looked into these additional fans. I've always leaned to the Nidecs or BeQuiets for WC builds and Noctuas for air (they really are the crown holder here), but I was shook by the performance of the $10 Artic fans.

Thank you for including the Arctic P-12. I bought them for my case, partially because they come in all white. And, I was very impressed with how quiet they are. Amazing performance for the price.

Thanks for always unbiased and objective tests , loving it. I use P 14 since two years now , cleaning them within 2 or 3 months since then. Whilst I agree on every aspect you mentioned about P 12 I would like to share something I noticed , that hum you shown is real , bit weird , tho is temporary (two or three days ) but even weirder is that it returns and lasts a bit longer every time I clean the fans. it's not a really negative side , really honest and satisfying fans in the end. What I really dislike of these Arctic fans is ... they're made of crystal. Really don't let them drop on the floor , the material is too stiff , I ordered several 5 fans boxes for me and friends and every time one fan had a missing corner. For the rest great bang for the buck .

Thanks for that test! Most don't look at motor noise / point out a resonance of the P12s - which is a deal breaker for me.

Thanks for testing the noise and performance sweet spots. Good review and comparison 👍

Excellent test. So glad you actually gave us something to listen to and not just the numeric tests. The average loudness in dB masks a variety of different acoustic frequency profiles. This is so obvious when listening.

Choose wisely: single NF-A12x25 vs 6 Arctic P12. In my country single p12 costs ~$6.66 with 23% VAT. No need to wait for A12x25 chromax edition btw.

You really cant beat p12 pwm 5 packs for $30.99 at amazon...price of 1 Nuctua A12.

Thanks for the performance numbers mate! Love your content.

YES!! I love your testing videos. I'm actually scared to see if anything will beat the Noctua

I'm consistently impressed with how good those Arctic fans are. I still use Noctuas almost exclusively in my personal builds, simply because I can afford the price premium, but damn those Arctics are great for the budget builds I sell. The price to performance is legit hard to understand. lol

Just want to say those visuals are absolutely spectacular!

thank you man for this video, im building a ITX pc for music / mixing and this was on point. That Arctic's humming in mid range at 1000 RPM was very interesting and kind of disqualifies him from the run

I really like this channel. He is well spoken, to the point, and not annoying. Easy sub.

Can you do a low profile fan round up. Love your content, keep it going!

I know this is an older video, but you should plot your noise levels on a log scale since a jump from 50 to 60 dBa represents a 10x increase in noise. Love the videos!

These videos are amazing and extremely helpful. This video alone gained you a subscriber!

Great comparison review!! I was hoping to see these fans being tested on various thickness/fin density of radiators to further justify the performance they deliver.

Finally a modern test of the Legendary Gentle Typhoons! These were the champion radiator fan back when water cooling became popular in the LAN party hay day’s. They were incredibly hard to come by because of their popularity and small production runs. When they came in stock I nabbed 12 of them and I still use them all to this day!

Yes! Thank you for the vid mate, this is literally what I've been looking for :)

Thanks for the great comparison. I would love to see the same test done for the 140mm fans, as well as ultra-thin fans in both 120mm & 140mm.

Just found your channel trying checking out reviews of fans and this was a nice video. I have just bought 10 p12 fans. The other option would have been the phanteks t30 fans, but getting 10 fans compared for the price of two was an easy choice for me.

Ali, looks like the Arctics at 1000rpm are resonating, potentially with the case or rad fins, would be interesting to see if you get the same effect running them detached and standing solo... Might be worth a look.

Thanks for discussing motor noises (like the Arctic P12 resonating at 1000rpm) because I find they're a dealbreaker for silent builds. I found that the Noctua NF-A14 resonates at around 680rpm (which they advised me was how it "normally sounds"). For 140mm fans I've moved to Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 and have had zero audible issues with them.

The best fan comparison video that i ever saw! Great job

Thanks for pointing out the slight whine from the Arctic fan at certain PWM - can't unhear it now! Joking aside, I have 3 Arctic 120mm fans in my case and I'm very happy with them. The cost difference is made worse when you want to buy multiples. I don't know how but I managed to score my Arctic fans at £5 each. So instead of spending £75 on case fans for my build I spent £15. Proof positive that cheap can be cheerful! Thanks for the video, your videos have been really helpful as I've got into ITX building.

Arctic has a bright future in the computer market.

Here's some context on the value of the P12's: for $60, you can add three of them to an Arctic Liquid Freezer ii 360 to make it push/pull, use six more to push/pull a 360 GPU radiator, and have an extra left over for a rear exhaust fan... or you can get two Noctuas.

I was changing my pc case from old office one to a brand new Deepcool Matrexx 55. Chose Arctic P12 PST x6 (but I think it would be better if I chose 5x P14s and 1x P12) and I love it! Very quiet and efficient. Although, the noise at low rpm on in the morning, when room temperature is low, they work noticeably louder.

Got 4 120mm arctic pwm fans in my custom itx watercooling : very silent and efficient fans! And the daisy chan connector is very clever and usefull. And you get a full pack of 5 for the price of only one piece of several other brand.

Thanks for these tests. I have the same issue with the P12 shown at 6:00. I didn't know it was caused by a specific RPM and spent a lot of time trouble shooting it and taking out parts of my PC to see if was caused by resonance but nothing I tried fixed it. It sounds really annoying too, like if someone is vacuuming the room next to you, and sometimes it goes away and then comes back even louder. Definitely a deal breaker for me. I suppose it's what you get if you buy cheap fans. Probably going for Noctua from now on.

I currently have three Arctic P12 fans on my PC and they're super nice and quiet. However, I was just thinking of exchanging them for Noctua fans thinking they would be worth it and would be quieter, but not anymore after watching this video since the Arctic fans perform practically the same and by costing way less, how cool!

i've got 9 Arctic F12's and 3 Arctic P12's in my case and it is surprisingly quite. I personally haven't experienced the motor noise you did, I do however hear the air being forced out of the top of my case from my Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360mm in a push/pull config. It's not an unpleasant sound at all though so I am very happy with my fan choice!

Already have noctua redux's in my case but I've been eyeing the P12's for an NVR I'm planning on building with the parts I've upgraded from. They sell them in a five pack and they're even cheaper, but a local store has them for $6 each as well so they're pretty appealing!

I've been running the grey gentle typhoon in my build since they were released, they had the best sound to performance for a radiator and still sound great after being used for so many years. Thanks for the testing against the modern Noctua, they are so much more expensive and not that much quieter!

Where I live, the 5 pack Arctic P12 PST are barely $23 bucks while the Noctua NH A12X25 are over $30 dollars a piece.

Great thank you for the update test of the P12 ! Awesome job. Could you do something similar with 140mm fans? There is less choices it should be not that complicated 😅. The P14 or P140 bioniX seems great again.

Great review! I am also using Artic P120's in my present i9 10850 build. Your efforts are much appreciated. Thanks

7:44 you deserve a nobel prize for doing this Really well made video Mad respect

Really great roundup! It's been a while since we've seen a head to head with the best fans on the market, so it's really nice to have a refresh to reference. The only gap I see here is you didn't do any 'what is the best performance I can get without noise normalizing between the three top fans?' How much louder is the GT at 2150RPM than the Noctua at 2000RPM? How much additional performance does that additional 150RPM and corresponding noise increase get you? Also, you can get the PWM 2150RPM GT's to run at a little under 900RPM by setting a PWM value of 0(leverage a motherboard with a full fan stop feature, or use a fan controller that allows a 0 pwm signal).

I got a couple noctua nf-a12x25s in my system and yes, they're fantastic fans with performance matching the reputation. Plus the included accessory cables (extension, splitter, low-noise adapter) actually did come in handy. Still, based on the information presented in this video if I had it to do over again I'd buy the arctics and pocket the savings.

Can confirm. The Artic ones motor on my Liquid freezer hum annoyingly around a specific RPM. Good work done there, thumbs up.

I don't know what blew me away more.. Your content or Noctua fan ;)

I have never had a Noctua go dead or starting to sound bad, although I was an early adopter , I had plenty of other cheaper silent fans starting to sound bad relatively soon, so for me that is also a factor.

Thank you very much for the detailed review and the audio samples. I can also confirm the most recent comments from other viewers that the Arctic P series have quality issues. One week ago I bought a value pack with Arctic P14 PWM PST and I installed three of them in my case. The humming ist present at different rpm and drove me mad. It comes from the bearings and not from vibrations. So, you can't fix it. Arctic is marketing the P Series motors producing only 5% vibrations. That is why the fans lack the rubber pads. I can assure you that they cause more than 5%. Today, I contacted my retailer and I will send the Arctic fans back. Three years ago I bought for my build an Arctic Freezer 33 Plus cpu cooler that came with two fans of an older F series version. It was garbage in every aspect and the fans produced atrocius noise. After that I replaced it with a Noctua NH-U12S. I wanted to give Arctic a second chance but now I am done with their products.

That's actually an amazing performance for the P12. I already have a stock of Noctua fans that I use, but if I had know about the P12, I definitely would have them around.

The humming sound is probably caused by the resonance with the case at a specific frequency. It looks like the fans are not equipped with anti vibration pads, they might help with this problem.

As much as I love my Arctic P12s, he is NOT kidding about the whining tone you get. The top Amazon review is almost creepily accurate -- OT says 1000RPM but the Amazon reviewer says 1170 is the culprit range and that is *exactly* where you hear the noise. You might think the sound in the video isn't that bad but trust me, you can hear it across a quiet room. It's not the kind of sound that's tolerable even if it's just spinning past that range. Just a few seconds is noticeable and really grating.

now this is the fan review ive been waiting for.

glad to see you address the humming in the p12's. I have 15 p12's, one of them wouldnt go past 195rpm and was defective!

Feels good when the Fans you literally picked up 30 minutes before get confirmed to be pretty good.

What a wonderful video! Thank you man! I'm just concerned regarding that this Artic P12 is a pressure optimized, so when cooling the case, this one is better on the radiator or on the CPU Dissipator, and not as a case fan. Flow Fans are better to case cooling, pressure fans are better to radiators and dissipators. But no one will kill you if you don't use like this.

Thanks for doing this! I've been using Arctic for a few years now, unable to bring myself to pay the hefty premium for Noctua fans. Looks like they're still the right choice for most situations.

The Noctua is just phenomenal!

There we go, Arctic is the PP King

For my build I was going for Noctuas, but once I saw the P12s were available on a 5-pack; it was decided. I'm building a dual top-bottom 360 loop, with the bottom one on push-pull. 10 fans were either $300+ or $60+. Great comparison!

Thanks you exactly pinpointed the noise I'm hearing from my arctic freezer 360s. I'm going to put nf 12s on instead.

Remember, its on NZXT’s AIO, for pure air cooling the tables can turn. And i think most of us use air cooling for there systems. So air cooling tests would be awesome. Never the less, brilliant testing as always.

I was going to like the Arctic P12 but when you showed that motor noise I must reconsider. My current Pure Wings 2 120mm fans do just that kind of whine when it ramps up and down and it drove me so crazy that I spent ages optimizing the fan and temperature curve so that it doesn't happen in my favourite games. Not sure if that was when I bought them or if they are just getting old. In comparison, that Silverstone AirBlaster 120R sounds very pleasant. Perceived noise is a huge factor, not just dB readings, and actually, for future comparisons, I would suggest making a smooth (and slow enough) ramp up and down 0%-100% for each fan, I wonder if there's a program for that. Deep review channels like this and Gamers Nexus are generally good for the market, but no testing methodology can cover all the sides, which can lead to manufacturers focus on wrong things, and for example, overlook actually unpleasant hums and whines in favor of better numbers in charts.

Those artics get recommended a lot in the home server space. Cheap and quiet. My personal setup uses around 15 of them split between 3 4u racks.

Well this is great info to have, because I've had a 5 pack of these of back order from newegg for like 3 weeks now. I got the 140mm versions for use on a 560mm rad.

I literally just bought an Arctic P12, I'm glad it's going to be good!

If you need more performance, Gentle Typhoon got a 3000 pwn version. And I also suggest you test out these fans They are lesser known from the west but quite famous in the chinese community. Thermalright TL-C12 PRO Delta AK12B

I'm glad I recommended this fans to a friend of mine, he said his system is running silent and cool at the same time

Amazimg video and filming quality. Loved every shot

The weird sound the G.Typhoon ones produce would drive me insane.

I love the P12 for their performance, price and noise. However, the 1000 RPM hum is actually really noticeable. From the video the Noctua really has by far the most pleasing sound. If they bring out black or white ones, I'm probably going to switch.

The P12 humming sounds like it may have been a resonance issue with the case made worse by the fact they lack any rubber pads to damp vibration transfer. I didn't have this issue when I built a system for a friend and tuned a custom fan curve for them but it was a different case than you were using. The issue I did have was a fan that was defective out of the box, the blade was partially broken at the hub and at higher speed the blade would spread and rub the frame. Arctic warranty was a breeze to deal with, I just called them up, gave them some info, and they sent a new one right out.

New viewer. Good informative video and content. Just what I needed to help make up my mind about which fans to buy.

"Silverstone Air Blaster" Isn't it called the Air Blazer?

Homie, you slept on Noiseblocker PL-PS or eLoops again, both are in Noctua and GT territory. Still good to see you add in extra fans.

My corsiar fans started going out and bought a bunch of the artic 140, that howling sound doesn't sound like its from the fan exactly but how the air is entering the case from the fan. Meaning there is some sort of airgap between the fan and case perhaps that causes that sound at that speed. sometimes you have to adjust the fan gap between case and fan itself to get best performance of sound and cooling

Although arduous, it would be super cool if you ran a gambit of all of your tested cooling methods/fans in the itx cases that you’ve reviewed. This could prove extremely useful for a huge amount of pc builders.

Arctics , here we go now

That's what I was worrying about. That Arctic's noise at 1000 rpm would drive me nuts

Great review. Though one thing you might want to touch on when looking at fans is build quality. Just looking at the Noctua and Nidec you can tell the motor and bearings are far more substantial compared to your average case fans. Harder to quantify but a fan like the Noctua or Nidec and should last way longer than something as simple as the Arctic.

the king of SFFPC brings us more asked for content even as his channel grows.

Those Artic P12s look like a great bang for the buck! Love my noctua fans and have no plan on getting rid of them but hard to argue with the value there. Love competition