I've also bought a few of those 80mm redux, thought the price was alright, but then I got the "newer" version and realized the performance is way better and the number of supplied accesories more than makes up for the price, I needed some Y splitters and good ones would cost more than the difference...
That's what I was thinking. Noctua don't just take the extra $10 and give nothing in return. You get the adapters, rubber mounts, better quality plastics, the improved SSO2 bearing, and also the Chromax versions are the same price. The Redux fans are good but normally I'd be inclined to just put down the extra moolah.
i have some of the grey 120mm Noctuas, theyre real nice.
i got a set of the NF-A12x25's with my Heatsink, & those things are amazingly quiet. at 100% speed, they are barely audible.
i wasnt going to use them, because of the color, but i figured i could make it work, since my motherboard has RGB, i was right too, white lighting makes them look great
Those NF-A12x25's are dead quiet. I've seen reviews where they output the same noise level at 1000rpm as other fans running at 500rpm.