In the past, we have written three separate articles on five different Noctua products: The Noctua NF-S12-800, NF-S12-1200, NF-R8 review, the Noctua NF-P12 review, and the Noctua NH-U12P review. Now, let's name one Noctua article that I wrote in the past with at least one product that didn't receive a prestigious APH Networks award. The answers: Nope, nope, and... nope. What made us love their products so much? Noctua, an Austrian company that specializes in quiet computing thermal solutions, certainly won't win any beauty contests for the fans and heatsinks they make, nor do they sell the most extreme out-of-this-world cooling solutions. But, what they do make are practical and realistic products that are thoroughly engineered to achieve the best real world performance, while maintaining an extremely low level of perceived noise. They are quality, refined products to achieve its primary purpose reliably throughout its life. And while they are certainly not the lowest priced, they offer excellent performance-to-value ratio for your hard earned cash. Plus, looks in this regard aren't even a huge issue in my opinion. As a quiet PC enthusiast, I exclusively used Noctua fans in the past, and still do, for these very reasons. Upon the release of their latest NF-S12B FLX and NF-S12B ULN case fans to replace the NF-S12-1200 and NF-S12-800, what kind of improvements has Noctua made to their legendary products? I picked up both of them and conducted our usual array of synthetic tests, as well as slapping them into our test setup for real world performance measurements. As excited as you are, let's find out how it all went! |