Arctic P12 Max and 3 other fans Noise Test, 10 PWM ratios 

Thanks for watching!

Literally, that's cool! If you have no problem due to bearing noise, P12 Max is your best choice.

I just bought 4 of these as casefans. I put them down to 1200 RPM Ill admit i should had gone for 140mm but after 3 years of owning my PC i always bought my case fans was 120mm lmaoo. So when i bought the Arctic i was confused why they were smaller. My older fans was running at 1000RPM (dynamic x2 gp-14) all the time so when i got the Arctic ill admit the noise was abit overwhelming But putting it down to 1200 rpm made it better. I generally should just return these and get a 140mm but after feeling how good the airflow is on these fans i cant get myself to do it. I wish they had 140m version of these.. Ouf. 2300 RPM on the Arctic tho are pretty loud donest it bother you? But you do have 4800mhz you have more things to worry about 🤣🤣

@@92BelluS Hey haha 4 is a lot, honestly when my CPU is getting that hot and the fan spins up so high RPM usually my graphics card is louder so I don't hear the P12MAX. I still really like it though, even if not 140 (my case fans are 140s) :)

I say the same. I put the P12 Max in the deepcool AK400 and in addition to lowering the noise, it lowered the temperature a lot, in idle the cooler is turned off

Bearing noise as in that whining noise right? Is it too loud, or audible but not that loud bc I plan to feature them soon. (in a build)

Thanks for the comment! 2 Ball bearing of TL-B12 EXTREM is manufactured by NMB, which is one of the biggest company in bearing production. So, I think TL-B12 EXTREM will have much more long lifetime compared to the original TL-B12(Rifle bearing).

Interesting! I have experience of disassembling some fans to check out bearing, so I'll try your suggestion soon.

@@ThermalLeft It´s just standard DBB fan, so peel of the sticker, remove the holding ring and you can take it apart. It´s absolutely awesome, that out of all these and even with the bearing noise, Arctic is the quietest.

@@Morpheus-pt3wq I tried lubricating with a spray lubricant(of course, not WD-40), but almost no enhancement. Maybe I need to try again with a lubricant grease..

@@ThermalLeft just got 3 of these and tried to do it with one. It actually got worse 🤦‍♂. Out of those 3, only one is silent and each one is a bit different, but the 2 noisier ones are also vibrating a lot. At full rpm, they move around on the table. Big variability in quality. I was also able to reproduce typical Arctic P12 growling. It´s more subtle, but it is still there. To think i wanted to use them on a GPU deshroud... NEVER. I´m gonna avoid Arctic for the rest of my life, unless they make something with no significant downsides. Cheap fan = zero QC.

@@Morpheus-pt3wq Oops, this matter is just QC issue and it seems that this cannot be resolved by lubricating..

I think P12 Max still has bearing noise as same as before. It seems that Arctic doesn't recognize this issue as defect. So there is small chance to get P12 Max with reasonable driving noise from bearing, as same as before.

@@ThermalLeft Looks like I'll just wait for Lian Li P28 to be available locally or Scythe Grand Tornado.

What do you mean wow? they are listening whistling like an insect

케이스 단독 장착, 소음계 거리 ~180mm, 배경 소음 ~33dBA, 실내 기온 25~26도 기준, 아래와 같이 측정되었습니다. 100% - ~3404RPM, ≤54.6dBA 70% - ~2731RPM, ≤48.2dBA 50% - ~2144RPM, ≤41.4dBA

Of course I recorded that one and compared with other fans before. Check the link below: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lA_WxvTbTeA.htmlsi=FtQc2c91IesAeihA SW Pro 4 is quite silent like NF-A12X25 at low~mid RPM range. No bearing/motor noise, low vibration from frame and a few resonance. But when RPM goes high, the buzzy noise from blades starts to appear.

@@ThermalLeft Thanks. I set the switch behind them to the middle position that caps rpm to 2500Hz. That helped a lot. Others don't have that option though it can be done through software like BIOS or Fan Control which I recommend to everyone.

After I posted this video, I bought 2 more P12 Max and they makes more silent bearing noise than that sample.. Maybe the sample had QC issue. By the way, spacing the clearance(5~10mm) between bottom intake fans and mounting structure may help to reduce noise! If a front part of your bottom fans is sticking close to chassis, they will make very annoying sound.

@@ThermalLeft Wouldn't that cause rattling with the fans? Btw I have a p12 pwm pst too and I used them as bottom intake but they didn't have that kind of sound.

@@ThermalLeft Also I think it's the material of the fan itself since when I hold it by hand, you can only hear air but when I place it on a chair or when I lean it to the side of my case for testing, the "hum" appears immediately.

@@mangatom192 If you fix the fans properly, fans will not rattle even when they are spaced. I used Noctua NA-IS1-14 to make clearance from a chassis to P14 ARGB and no rattling :) Before spacing, P14 ARGBs made terrible periodic sound even at low rotation speed. But I'm not sure that we are talking about the same thing. If you can, please share me the sound sample link which is similar with the noise from your bottom fans. There are many kinds of uncomfortable fan noise that can be occured by various causes!

@@ThermalLeft I don't have access to my pc right now but it sounds the same as the noctua industrial ppc fan you sampled in the vid. Mind you these sound only appears at relatively high rpm and mostly silent at low pwm.

Sorry, I have no experience of swapping a fan of power supply. If possible, it is the best choice that you proceed to RMA service to replace a fan.

Just at low % of power. It is not worth running Arctic less than 25% they are completely silent in my case.

Very true indeed. I thought P12 Max has the highest sound level.

​@@Ttblondeynah, that thermalright is the most annoying thing in this video.

@@ltcuddles685 and it started sounding annoying really early on as well. I heard the quality has gone downhill recently so if his fan is new that's probably the reason

Oh, it seems P12 Max is not available now in Amazon Japan. Buying it from Amazon.com will be your last option..

I dont know why people dont buy these fans but we have a lot of arctic p12 max on shelves being ignored. They keep buying RGB.

I'm currently making the noise sample video with the specific decibel values. 7 fans will be recorded!

The Noctua fan(NF-F12 iPPC) has really old design so that it is not the best now. :)

맥스는 볼베어링소리가 이제 관건인거네요....

혹시 퀘존 그분이 맞으실까요

@@user-jo8wz3iv8q 반갑습니다. ㅎㅎ 동 닉네임으로 활동하고 있어요.

That's right. There were some reviews about that bearing noise. I wonder whether the recent batches have clicking noise or not.

@@ThermalLeft I see they even day on their page that if you dont like the sound, you should go for the regular P12. I guess that sound is part of the dual design.

@@loomawoe Now I'm focusing on the airflow test about 'Metal Fan'(the video about the test is also planned), but eventually I'll get the P12 Max with rifle bearing and compare it with older one in the future.

I'm not sure about what 'How' means. It is just the characteristic of each manufacturer's fan.

@@ThermalLeft I mean Nidec is from 5-10 years ago and still quite nice.

@@polelix1023 Oh, I understood. You need to know how old and huge company Nidec Servo(now they changed their company name recently into Nidek Advanced Motor) is. Nidec Servo was founded at 1949 as the name 'Kiryu Eikosha.' Nidec Servo is one of the largest manufacturers in the fan and motor industry. Also they have the exclusive market share of HDD FDB bearings. But Thermalright is not that big company as Nidec Servo despite the fact that they can make excellent heatsinks. There is a significant difference in R&D capabilities for fans between the those two manufacturers. It was like that in the past too! In terms of fan development, Thermalright is a latecomer, and their TL-B12 also imitates Nidec Servo's Gentle Typhoon.

@@ThermalLeft if i had to guess, TL-B12 is Gentle Typhoon knockoff - made from cheaper materials and parts. There is no specified MTBF either (Gentle Typhoon should have 100k hours at 35°C and 60k hours at 60°C - its spec sheet is quite detailed)

@@Morpheus-pt3wq Your reasoning is correct, D1225C uses better material and bearing than TL-B12 series. TL-B12 uses rifle bearing(named as so-called 'S-FDB') and PBT plastic, and its lifetime is 20k hours. By the way, TL-B12 EXTREM uses MinebeaMitsumi 2 ball bearing, and its lifetime is 100k hours. TL-B12 EXTREM's bearing seems not that bad, but I think Nidec's 2 ball bearing is better in terms of driving noise and vibration.

I recently revised the noise sample video and fans are compared with normalized noise levels. Please check them out. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lA_WxvTbTeA.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TQVesOASKDo.html Also, even normalizing by a equal rotational speed will not show a proper comparison. For example, when a fan A and B are operated at ~1000RPM, they can have quite different noise level, airflow and static pressure.

@@ThermalLeft ah perfect. Silent Wings 4 Pro & A12x25 are the best 100%. Thanks

@@hirschkuh1982 Thanks for your comment, I will enhance my works continuously!

I have felt that I need to change the current microphone someday. It is actually not the best for this type of recording. Thank you for the feedback.

Yeah, even P12 Max's bearing noise is bad among the fans that have 2 ball bearings. It is not a level of noise that ordinary users can tolerate.

Same. Got them today, sending back tomorrow.

크게 휜 9개 블레이드를 최초로 채택한 제품이죠. 2008년에 출시되어 거의 16년 가까이 되어가지만 여전히 최근에 출시된 제품들에 크게 뒤지지 않는 것이 놀라울 따름입니다.

This video is slightly outdated now and of course, I know the problem of using PWM duty cycle. Although this video was made to compare bearing noise of each fan, I admit that the methodology was not the best. I revised the method of operating fans during record in these videos. Please check out! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TQVesOASKDo.htmlsi=v7TbGVbltC7YvojB ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lA_WxvTbTeA.htmlsi=NQupVBesxQEbiABZ

If you are not familiar with English, feel free to comment in your own language!

Nope, that P12 Max is not defective. But it is true that there is a large variation in bearing noise between its individuals.

@@ThermalLeft pretty sure I am hearing scratching noises at lower RPMs. None of my 5 fans currently in use do that. At higher RPM your's sounds normal.

If the problem had occured at normal P12 which has a rifle bearing, I doubt that your P12 was a defective batch. Maybe you need to contact on Arctic and consult with them.

I'd like to believe so, but there are many reviews complaining about significant bearing noise, and even the white version of the P12 Max, coincidentally, no longer uses the ball bearings.

Some people believe that only 1m noise test is valid. But that is not always true. 1m noise test can't reflect two important types of noise that can occur from a fan. One is resonant noise, the other one is bearing/motor noise. To check these noise effectively, the noise recording with close distance is essential. Furthermore, I'm not interested in a noise measurement with industrial standards(anechoic chamber, 1m distance, fan hanging in the air and etc). It actually does not offer useful information to real-world users.

@@ThermalLeft most people who have their pc on their desk have it about 1m away as well or not?

@@athmaid Of course, but the problem is, in non-anechoic chamber, recorded noise at 1m distance is not useful because microphones can't get specifc motor noises that human ear can hear. Interesting fact: Did you know Nidec Advanced Motor measures max noise of their fans at 25cm distance?