Each fan has a flat cable with a 4-pin PWM connector to power these fans. PWM range is quite good on these fans. These fans feature double ball bearings from Japanese manufacturer NMB. These bearings provide a much longer service life of these fans having a minimum of 500,000 hours. One possible reason to use these bearings is that these fans have high speed. Maintaining these speeds over a much longer time period would need better bearings but it is also surprising that many other manufacturers are providing similar speed range using Fluid Dynamic Bearings. Anyhow, we don’t know if the motor of these fans has a 6-pole, 3-phase design or not. According to ARCTIC using sinus-magnetizing, the new motor only creates about 5 % of the vibration from the commutation of a regular DC motor without a filter. Die Qualität und Verarbeitung des ARCTIC P12 PWM sind erstklassig. Der Lüfter ist solide gebaut und fühlt sich robust an. Er läuft absolut reibungslos und ohne Vibrationen. Die Montage war kinderleicht und der Lüfter passte perfekt in mein Gehäuse. Zudem ist das mitgelieferte Kabel ausreichend lang, um es problemlos an das Mainboard anzuschließen.

So I must admit that I missed that there are also different revisions of the P12 PWM PST. In this case, ours, tested, will be the rev. 1. – 0.08 A and without the revision specified next to the EAN code. That’s how Artcic usually does it when it’s the first revision… I wish I had learned that a decade ago. I would still have a 3Dfx voodoo 5 55500 if I'd not been gaming in a storm without an actual surge protector! The design of the frame of the P12 is very simple and differs from the others only by the shaped protrusions in the corners where you would expect anti-vibration pads. Arctic doesn’t supply these with this fan, although they would be useful. But again, considering the price, this is something we can’t fault this fan for. In short, a necessary compromise. The P12 has larger blades compared to the BioniX P120, although it doesn’t seem like it unless one sees those fans side by side. So with the same size hub, the gaps between the blades are naturally smaller on the P12, so there is less room for airflow leakage and higher static pressure is achieved. This means that the airflow loss due to obstacle resistance is smaller with the P12 than with the P120. Now coming to the main point of thermal performance of these fans, we pitched these fans against ARCTIC’s P12 PWM fans using Liquid Freezer II 360 cooler. Here is a summary:There are a few changes in the design department of these fans compared to the regular P12 PWM fans. ARCTIC has still retained the famous 5-blade design but this time around there is a ring attached to the tips of these blades making it one complete assembly. This ring is named Fan Wheel by ARCTIC and it serves the purpose of taking the hit from resistance force from the surface but ensuring that static pressure is maintained without losing airflow. Now I know, 600 rpm, okay, and as a sign that I appreciate that we have such demanding readers, I promise you that sooner or later we will create another mode, which will be twice quieter than the quietest mode that we have now. In addition, we will select fans that will have the highest airflow in the 31 dBA mode and there will be room for further noise reduction. Some fans cannot be slowed down even to 31 dBA mode and of the remaining ones, half of them have a speed of 600 rpm or lower. The NF-A12x25 PWM here allows setting some of the highest speeds mainly because it is PWM controlled, and now I’m not afraid to use the word extremely quiet running of the motor and bearings. This is also visible in the spectrograph, where in the frequency band of these components the noise is extremely low. Noctua deserves all the respect in the world here for going into such details as smoother/quieter PWM waveforms with a slanted left-hand side of the pulses. I bought these 2 Arctic P12 fans to replace the ones that came with my Corsair AIO and they blow them out of the water! Then it’s very strange. We use spectrograms instead of sound recordings for sound analysis precisely because we do not want a dispute to arise at the level of subjective perception of individual frequencies. Everyone sees their intensity in spectrograms in the same way and the results of NF-A12x25 PWM clearly show that there is practically no noise that can be perceived by a person when using PWM control. Or if you can hear some sound in the frequency band we are talking about, you should also hear it with Silent Wings 3.

The rotor itself is taller than average for a 15mm profile fan. Support with nylon filters is nevertheless maintained. The height difference between the frame and the rotor is sufficient at the fan intake, even if you use a filter with an unreinforced mesh. But the worse ones, which collapse significantly, can already collide as with all fans. ARCTIC with their P12 PWM fans has been at an advantage when it comes to noise performance and we have seen that P12 MAX fans at roughly 50% of their speed are now doing what regular P12 PWM fans are doing at their full speed (100% PWM cycle). This has provided P12 MAX a thermal headroom of 3°C (as per our testing) coming from going above 50% PWM cycle. This is one way of doing it. We did not see any benefit of going below 43 B(A) as fans are silent at this range. This tells us that the thermal performance of P12 MAX fans is quite good albeit at a high noise output. There are many gen 3 nvme drives that outperform the cheap Gen 4 drives. Like my ignorance in buying an sn750se "gen 4"..... It's slower than the sn750 Gen 3 I was going to replace it with!I do not claim that NF-A12x25 PWM is at 787 rpm (i.e. the speed in our “31 dBA” mode) a noiseless or soundless fan, I am just trying to balance it a bit. At this speed you write about industrial noise or use in noisy technical rooms, which is misleading. I respect that in your idea of quiet operation the NF-A12x25 PWM has an even lower speed. Spend money on the things that matter. 1. PSU 2.mobo 3. The highest end CPU you can afford 4. A GPU that will leap frog the next gen(don't upgrade each release!) and last but not least.... Don't fall for the "PCI Express Gen 4" hype. We can already conclude that operating at about 850 rpm is very inconvenient. The fan hums significantly (at 380 Hz), and the airflow is quite low in this setting, disproportionate to the high noise level. Upwards or downwards, however, the high noise level subsides, although resonant frequencies do occur quite often, at different speeds, but you won’t encounter a worse scenario than the one we pointed out above. The connection is made via a 4-pin PWM connector. Arctic uses a high-quality, hydrodynamic plain bearing. This not only guarantees smooth operation, but also ensures that the volume does not increase over time. The fans at 100% of their speed were doing approximately 53 dB(A) at an ambient of 32 dBA. One of the fans was making 76 dB(A) due to bad bearing. We have to mention this since we are testing these fans. Conclusion

Unlike the P12 PWM fans which use Fluid Dynamic Bearings, the P12 MAX fans are using Double-Ball Bearings. We know that double ball bearings can handle the axial and radial loads in both directions which would mean installing these fans vertically or horizontally would not affect the performance in the long run and will provide durability. ARCTIC has employed bearings from Japanese manufacturer NMB. However, there is a catch. Running these fans at high speed would make more noise compared to fluid dynamic or sleeve bearing. These fans have MTTF of >500,000 hours thanks to these bearings. Due to sinus-magnetizing the new motor only creates about 5 % of the vibration from the commutation of a regular DC motor without a filter. Testing Now coming to the next round of testing, since P12 PWM fans were operated at 43 dB(A), we normalized the P12 MAX fans to operate at 43 dB(A). The ARCTIC P12 MAX fans reached this sound level at roughly 50% PWM duty cycle. When the test was repeated, we found both fans giving the same thermal performance. This shows the thermal headroom that P12 MAX have even when operating at half of their rated speed. The build quality is very decent for such an inexpensive fan, without significant imperfections, which are sometimes seen due to saving on injection moulds. However, don’t expect any extra extras or accessories – the frame is simple, with no anti-vibration pads in the corners.

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There are a lot of droning or downright rumbling fans out there, but none have been as popularized by this sound profile as the Arctic P12. Probably also because this acoustic deficiency is really pronounced here and has pushed the manufacturer to make design changes in newer models that are aimed at suppressing critical tonal peaks. But even so, the base model P12 PWM PST is a remarkable fan and is unbeatable in its price range. Before we take a look at the results, we have pitched the P12 MAX fans against the P12 PWM fans on ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 cooler. Here is a comparison data of these fans: Unfortunately, I cannot agree with this statement even now. The extra details that Noctua has often stand out more with relatively higher speeds. Whether it’s Flow Acceleration Channels, Stepped Inlet Design, a significant narrowing of the gap between the blade tips and the frame or Inner Surface Microstructures. These elements counteract the shortcomings that become stronger with increasing pressure. The fact that the NF-A12x25 gives excellent results at low speeds is largely due to the fact that the operation of the motor and blades does not create any noise, so at this level there are no such pronounced limitations as with other fans, and the NF-A12x25 fits into the same noise level at higher speeds.

The cable is “ordinary” but solid – flat, with the wires holding together nicely. There are two connectors at the end. One to connect the fan to the motherboard or hub/controllers, and the other to daisy-chain another fan. The cable is 40–45 cm in length. We’ve already tested one 120mm fan with a reduced profile (to 15mm) – the Alphacool SL-15 PWM– this one from Arctic (the P12 Slim PWM PST) differs significantly in its design. The rotor has “only” seven blades, which is relatively small for this fan format, but it is not so surprising for Arctic. It uses fewer blades than usual even on larger fans. Anyway, the important thing is that even a smaller number of blades significantly fills the available cross-sectional area.Here is a table showing RPM range and corresponding airflow and speed measurements of the ARCTIC P12 MAX fan: There are two small arrows on one side of the frame. These provide a visual clue to the users in determining the direction of airflow through the fans and the direction in which blades will spin. But I understand the increase in motor power. I would say the original P12 is quite significantly underpowered, with small headroom. The P12 PWM PST fan (hereafter referred to as the P12, but we’re still talking about the PWM PST variant) has a 5-blade axial rotor, which is typical of Arctic’s current “P” series models. Because of the small number of blades and the intention to achieve high static pressure, each blade must be large. If the blades were smaller, a lot of air would escape through them, which would reduce the airflow the more resistance the fan would have to overcome. Thus there is a considerable cross-sectional area covered by the blades, so that the airflow does not decrease excessively even if the fan is operating on restrictive obstacles.