Noctua NF-A8 PWM, Premium Quiet Fan, 4-Pin (80mm, Brown)

There’s a saying “you get what you paid for” and that’s the noctua fans. Noctua fans are the most expensive fans I’ve seen when I was building my $5000 pc. It’s crazy how quiet they can become. The noctua fans are considered ugly because it’s brown, but I actually like the beige and brown color. It’s a nice touch to any classic pc.

Worked great, so much quieter than the foxconn heatsink fan i had before.

Its fine for a fan, but too overpriced in my opinion

Can you get past the ugly brown and tan color? Good. Because these fans are whisper quiet and provide a great amount of airflow. I added these to my Rosewill LSV-4412 Hot swap case because the fans included with that case were sub-par. However, these fans brought my case temps down ~5C and they dont add any noticeable noise to my server case. Highly recommend Noctua to anyone who wants professional fans that work great...despite the color

I thought, wow, this is a super quiet fan. Then I realized that it just didnt work at all.

Theyre very much adaptable to different cases. Super quiet. The evidence I needed that you get what you pay for, and Noctua means truly high quality

Feels well made, delivers on how quiet it is. Could probably cost half as much if the extra 3 cables I dont need and fancy packaging were optional.

Obviously these are so much better than the stock Nidec fans in this SuperMicro JBOD. Knocked off a couple stars because I had to modify the hot swap cartridge (Its build for 36mm and these are 25mm, there arent thicker ones available that I could find). I also had to grind off one of the keying pins on the 4 pin plug. It was keyed for a 3 pin slot, but the existing plugs will only take a plug with the tabs all the way at the end. From the last picture you can see that the Noctua doesnt have the top pins that let the cartridge cleanly unplug the fan, so if I pull these I have to remember to hold the cable as well.

It hasnt died or started squeaking, chirping or making any unusual noise. It runs relatively quiet for the expected amount of airflow. It does have onboard RPM sensors. Made a little bit of electrical interference noise running PWM, but works fine in DC. Chocolate Brown and Beige doesnt exactly match the black PCB and interior of my case, but may look right at home in your 80s performance build with a 5.5 Floppy. It does the job.

I used this Noctua NF-A8 PWM, Premium Quiet Fan to replace a functioning, but very loud fan. I had previously purchased a Noctua double fan unit for a CPU that was hitting Temps over 99C and it brought those Temps down to 54C - a very reasonable number. So it was so much easier to find a replacement side panel fan with the same name. With this fan my motherboard stays around 44C/CPU 48C (6 Core AMD Processor). This is important because I have computers that use folding@home software to fight a variety of diseases including COVID 19. The program is demanding so cooling is an absolute must. In the future should I need another fan - Noctua will be the brand!