Review on Noctua NF-A9 PWM: Premium Quiet 4-Pin Fan (92mm, Brown) - Efficient Cooling Solution by Brenda Thompson

from) during normal operation which was quiet and only during intense activity did the fans increase performance. During this process I used 5 different fan models from 3 different companies including this NF-A9. In short, I prefer Noctua's NF-Bx range as my favorite and best value. These NF-Ax series fans are a little better, but not enough to justify the roughly 50% increase in cost unless you need the included anti-vibration mounting hardware. (The 'B' series doesn't come with this, even with the extra extension cords and splitters found in the 'A' series.) A few money-saving tips: Don't buy a Noctua CPU cooler. Buy a Cooler Master CPU cooler (I chose the Hyper T2 as it's the largest and fits in a standard case), remove the Cooler Master fan and buy a Noctua fan. For $27 you get what Noctua charges $60 for. The Cooler Master fan sucks and doesn't drop the fan speed below 30% so it needs to be replaced if you want to run quietly, but the Noctua NF-B9 has the exact same fan size and it's easy to replace once you notice Note that you can remove the rubber pads covering the fan screws. Another lesson: Don't rely on the fan controller on your motherboard to do everything right. First I had to go into the BIOS and change it to PWM mode as it assumed constant current mode for the system fans even though it comes with 4-pin fan headers (constant current mode prevents it from spinning at almost that low speed. ). Then, when I first tested the B-series fan, I found that the minimum it could have in PWM mode was 13% based on the RPM data provided by the motherboard. But then I noticed that the fan was still spinning when I set the PWM to 10%, so I figured the fan wasn't giving good RPM values below 13%. (I later noticed that the A-series revved up to 10%, further supporting this idea). the fan will run. In both cases not! I later hooked up an NF-B9 fan to my GPU and it was able to both spin the fan and read its speed up to 5% PWM (never tried with an A-series fan but I suspect it might be slower too to run). So apparently my motherboard has limitations it won't fall under. As far as I know, the fan can run even below 5%, but that's the best a GPU fan controller can do. (Fortunately, even 13% is slow enough to be silent in almost all scenarios). case) and leave the case's front fan off unless the system is overheating (to save a few bucks and not unnecessarily replace the 12" fan) and the EVGA Gold PSU in "Economy mode ". I have a really quiet computer and a fairly sensitive dB meter can't tell it's on. I have to test in the middle of the night because even cars driving outside can be detected. But at 3am it says 21.1. db with the computer off and 21.1db so my stomach gurgles and the stupid thing goes up to 24db or I click the mouse and it goes over 30db so trust me when I say the db meter is sensitive enough to detect fairly small readings. In fairness and I would like to warn you that there is no noise, the fans run at 13% on the back of the case, 10% on the CPU and 5% on the GPU. But that's just insufficient airflow with good heatsinks. So, during normal operation, the system temperature stays around 40 while the CPU and GPU temperatures stay in the mid 50's. Build Details: Intel Core i3-8100MSI Z370M Mortar motherboard Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti "Windforce OC" GPU fan.)2 of 4GB DDR4 2400 Kingston Fury DIMMsSamsung 960 EVO M.2 SSDEVGA 650 GQ power supply in economy mode