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- Oct 5, 2017
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That's really not at all what happened. The S12 *does* push more air around. It just has terrible static pressure - and that's absolutely fine for what it is. Remember, you're talking about a fan that came out in 2005.Now it's correct.
And Noctua has clearly been aiming for marketing hype.
What's with experience from NF-F12 and NF-P12.
And SPCR had to revise their original fan testing method, because NF-S12 was basically designed to fool free air impeller anemometer measurements.
While actually having lower airflow if there was slightest impedance/back pressure.
Easy to make quiet per RPM fan, if it really can't actually push that air except to downwind...
At that time, even SPCR weren't testing fans for static pressure versus airflow - that's a practice that came later. As did manufacturers quoting a static pressure figure in their fan's literature - look at their first fan roundup - http://www.silentpcreview.com/article695-page2.html#nexus
Not a single static pressure figure to be seen on any spec sheet. (And not on wayback on the manufacturers sites either)
The Noctua S12 did actually perform as advertised when used on case exhausts or non-restrictive intakes. It lost efficiency when placed on heatsinks or cases with restrictive fan grills. That's something we understand pretty well these days, with companies like Noctua producing the F12 and S12 PWM, where the F12 has more than twice the static pressure, but also produces more noise and less airflow (by Noctua's own spec sheets) and Corsair producing the AF120 and SP120, where the same is also true.
If it were a case of "fooling" measurements, these products wouldn't exist. They serve different needs in different ways. It's just that both manufacturers and consumers now know more than they did in 2006 about two things:
1 - How to achieve great performance
2 - How to minimise the degree of compromise required to achieve that performance.
SPCR are/were great people, but at the time in 2005/6 they did not have the breadth of knowledge we have today - in fact they were largely responsible in many cases for bringing that knowledge to us and changing the marketplace. They didn't always get it right - For example, the original Antec P180, a case SPCR helped design, originally shipped with a useless GPU cooling duct, restrictive front intakes with square stamped holes rather than the more efficient hexagonal ones we use today, and the front grilles were also more restrictive than they were on later revisions. (and even those were much more restrictive than the grilles on modern cases).
It's unfair to characterise Noctua here as attempting to "fool" anyone.
Nope, those fans were made by SilenX. Their big selling point was the smaller hub for more fan blade length/area, and the aerodynamic shape of the hub. They quoted ABSURD noise and CFM figures at the time.Aerocool?
Here's one of their 120mm models - you can see how undersized the hub is, and the little "bladelets" on the hub face - https://content.hwigroup.net/images/products_xl/010430/silenx-ixtrema-pro-120mm-46-cfm.jpg
Unsurprisingly, they did not perform as advertised.