Tuesday, October 12th 2021
Noctua Presents Chromax Line NF-A12x25 Fan, NH-U12A Cooler and Heatsink Covers
Noctua today presented the much anticipated black versions of its award-winning NF-A12x25 120 mm fan and NH-U12A CPU cooler as well as the matching NA-HC7 and NA-HC8 heatsink covers. Staying true to the successful formula of the original models, the new NF-A12x25 PWM chromax.black.swap and NH-U12A chromax.black combine the same signature quiet cooling performance with a sleek stealth look. The black NH-U12A already supports Intel's upcoming LGA1700 platform.
"We are aware of how eagerly our customers have been waiting for these products and we would have loved to get them out earlier, but first we had to spend some extra time in order to make sure that we can exactly match the performance of the brown fans, and then things were further delayed by various supply chain issues due to the global pandemic", explains Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "With products that have been fine-tuned to the most minute details, seemingly simple things like creating a different colour version can end being surprisingly tricky, but now with all of that out of the way, we're excited to finally be able to offer these long-awaited products to our customers."Having received more than 100 awards and recommendations from international hardware websites and magazines, Noctua's flagship model NF-A12x25 has established itself as a true deluxe choice when it comes to premium-quality quiet 120 mm fans. The new chromax.black.swap edition combines the NF-A12x25's signature quiet cooling performance with an attractive black design and a bundle of swappable red, white, blue, green, grey, yellow and black anti-vibration pads that allow for the fan to be colour-customised to match individual build colour schemes. For further customisation, a wide range of accessories such as coloured cables and anti-vibration mounts are available separately.
The NH-U12A has proven in countless tests that it can match or even outperform many 140 mm sized coolers while offering 120 mm class case, RAM and PCIe compatibility. Thanks to the same proven asymmetrical single-tower heatsink design and state-of-the-art NF-A12x25 PWM fans, the new chromax.black variant stays true to the NH-U12A's successful formula of fusing best-in-class cooling performance with superb quietness of operation and outstanding compatibility. The NH-U12A chromax.black includes the latest SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting system that not only supports AMD AM4 and Intel LGA1200, but also Intel's upcoming 12th generation Core CPUs (code name Alder Lake-S, socket LGA1700).
In addition to the new fan and heatsink, Noctua also launched the new NA-HC7 and NA-HC8 heatsink covers for the NH-U12A and NH-U12A chromax.black. While the chromax.black and chromax.white variants of the NA-HC8 are ideal for all-black or black-and-white builds, the NA-HC7 chromax.black.swap with its swappable colour inlays in black, blue, green, red, yellow and white allows the cooler to be colour-coordinated with various build colour schemes.
Suggested retail prices
The manufacturer's suggested retail prices are as follows:
All the new products are available as of today via Noctua's official Amazon stores.
"We are aware of how eagerly our customers have been waiting for these products and we would have loved to get them out earlier, but first we had to spend some extra time in order to make sure that we can exactly match the performance of the brown fans, and then things were further delayed by various supply chain issues due to the global pandemic", explains Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "With products that have been fine-tuned to the most minute details, seemingly simple things like creating a different colour version can end being surprisingly tricky, but now with all of that out of the way, we're excited to finally be able to offer these long-awaited products to our customers."Having received more than 100 awards and recommendations from international hardware websites and magazines, Noctua's flagship model NF-A12x25 has established itself as a true deluxe choice when it comes to premium-quality quiet 120 mm fans. The new chromax.black.swap edition combines the NF-A12x25's signature quiet cooling performance with an attractive black design and a bundle of swappable red, white, blue, green, grey, yellow and black anti-vibration pads that allow for the fan to be colour-customised to match individual build colour schemes. For further customisation, a wide range of accessories such as coloured cables and anti-vibration mounts are available separately.
The NH-U12A has proven in countless tests that it can match or even outperform many 140 mm sized coolers while offering 120 mm class case, RAM and PCIe compatibility. Thanks to the same proven asymmetrical single-tower heatsink design and state-of-the-art NF-A12x25 PWM fans, the new chromax.black variant stays true to the NH-U12A's successful formula of fusing best-in-class cooling performance with superb quietness of operation and outstanding compatibility. The NH-U12A chromax.black includes the latest SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting system that not only supports AMD AM4 and Intel LGA1200, but also Intel's upcoming 12th generation Core CPUs (code name Alder Lake-S, socket LGA1700).
In addition to the new fan and heatsink, Noctua also launched the new NA-HC7 and NA-HC8 heatsink covers for the NH-U12A and NH-U12A chromax.black. While the chromax.black and chromax.white variants of the NA-HC8 are ideal for all-black or black-and-white builds, the NA-HC7 chromax.black.swap with its swappable colour inlays in black, blue, green, red, yellow and white allows the cooler to be colour-coordinated with various build colour schemes.
Suggested retail prices
The manufacturer's suggested retail prices are as follows:
- NH-U12A chromax.black: EUR/USD 119.90
- NF-A12x25 PWM chromax.black.swap: EUR/USD 32.90
- NA-HC7 chromax.black.swap: EUR/USD 19.90
- NA-HC8 chromax.black: EUR/USD 19.90
- NA-HC8 chromax.white: EUR/USD 19.90
All the new products are available as of today via Noctua's official Amazon stores.
44 Comments on Noctua Presents Chromax Line NF-A12x25 Fan, NH-U12A Cooler and Heatsink Covers
I don’t give a rats ass about rpm speeds, only performance to noise ratio, and neither should anyone else for that matter.
The T30 and A12x25 are both very good fans, it just irks me when people post things like ”T30 has better airflow”, because it seems not to be universally true. Just run the noctuas at ~200 rpm more than the phanteks and you have an equal performance and still less noise at 500-1250rpm. Both are quiet enough and powerful enough for most people.
I looked at this from all angles literally. Its not that the Phanteks are 5mm wider, its that the depth of the T30 blade is almost 9mm more. The Noctua fan is less blade depth and the Noctua fan case has a slope-out from the end of the blade depth that is significant, vs the Phanteks blade goes as close as possible on the front and on the back in relation to blade depth. Hence its more than just a 5mm difference on the fan case, which is what most people focus on.
I seriously made lots of considerations before I experimented with 2x of the 3 unit T30 packages. Then after reading everything on it, decided to test them myself.
Results - same RPM fan curve, same level of quiet/noise, I get 2C better cooling. I have an open case design (its dense in there), and the Noctuas did not perform as well as the Phanteks at the same RPM / Fan curves.
I hope that helps.
Also, sensing difference in noise levels is very difficult, except in a A/B blind tests. So you simply stating that they ”seem” to produce the same amount of noise has little meaning to me, and neither should to you or anyone else.
T30 and A12x25 are very close to eachother when it comes to performance to noise and are both good candidates for most people.
The noctua is slightly better at low noise and phanteks at high noise operation. At least based on the measurements by TPU.
In the case of GN, I appreciate that they do noise normalized tests, but 35dB is too loud for me. What happens at a lower noise threshold suddenly becomes significant for users who care (not that you have to, but I do!).
6 year warranty and 150,000 MTBF which matches Noctua's warranty and MTBF but unlike the SUNON bearings, there are far fewer Noctua fans used in servers, datacenters, and non-PC appliances.
I'd put faith in both to massively outlast their warranty period but if I had to pick a winner I'd take SUNON's maglev bearings over Noctua's tried-and-tested fluid dynamic bearings. Noctua's SSO2 bearing has a proven track record, but they're prone to rapid death when they do eventually start to dry out. Maglevs just seem to last forever (I've yet to ever encounter a dead one).
Sanyo powers the cooling fan in my 2004 electric oven, and Sunon powers the hefty 235mm primary air-source heat exchanger fan running 24/7 in my apartment for the last 11 years.
People forget that consumer PC fans are unbelievably cheap and nasty things compared to enterprise grade hardware. By server/enterprise standards, these Phanteks T30 fans are an absolute bargain. €50-130 per fan is what a quality unit will cost for rackmount hardware.
I haven't tried one of the new T30s but they look top notch, however $10 more per fan over a XPG Vento Pro is a tough sell for me.
As for the T30 fans, I don't have any yet but I'm likely to buy them next time because the $10 premium is worth it for the daisy-chaining of cables alone. Not sure. I suspect not because sleeve/rifle/fdb bearings don't scale up to larger diameter fans as well. If you look at industrial fans sold by a hardware store (rather than a PC components store) you'll see that most of the fans are ball bearing:
Whilst there are still some sleeve fans in that selection of ~1500 fans on sale, when you filter the selection by connector type, almost all of those sleeve fans are 60/80/92/120/140mm x 25mm and have TX3 or 4-pin PWM connectors, meaning that the sleeve fans are almost universally PC fans.
uk.rs-online.com/web/c/hvac-fans-thermal-management/air-conditioning-fans/axial-fans/ if you want do your own hunting....