Something is Wrong here - Alphacool Apex Stealth Metal Fan Reviewed 

The Airjet coolers need to get bigger/better, then we can forget about regular fans I guess.

Yeah, if it would be 38mm thick than maybe, or 5% more air with 5% less noise then again maybe. But with the same form factor, to crush noctua in their own game is something I have to see.

The graph themself are shoddy; they all include: "linear interpolated based on measured values at 500, 1000 and max RPM". so only 3 values ... For the alpha cool there is over 20 data points which placement do not look like anything close to the result of a linear interpolation. So they randomly placed points to make the graph look more "real", tells you everything you need to know ...

Major Hardware has been doing 3D printed fans that his viewer's make, to see if anyone can beat the Noctua A12x25 fan. Very, very few have been able to edge past that fan. For another test to claim 2x better in any comparable regard, has me really questioning their test methods.

@@Spiggle. hoverboards and flying cars will be out before that.

Isn't he first to jump to conclusions? RTX 3000 capacitors, RTX 4000 power connector melting and some more.

The marketing push is called publishing embargo and the product being released just now. Why would he, Jay, Roman, I think Steve too, be publishing around now if not at the same time. As for the motives - who knows.

Igor was involved in the development of these fans with AlphaCool. He's a complete shill at this point.

@@riklaunim both were true and still are so I hope he said they were a problem not wrong ? the capacitor thing better quality is always better especially when you know an actual pcb designer like me and he showed you his training on how to lower quality as much possible so it lasts only the warranty...they are taught to do this and the connector is an nvidia design problem, only people who have never seen one would think otherwise the 12v connector is SMALLER than a single pciex8 and we had 3-4 of them also the problem is rtx4000 are wider than prev gens or amds and that connector adds more width wich no case can handle, they all push on the cable and move it, it's not a human error you cannot do miracle it's going to touch the side panel or glass

It doesn't surprise me at all. Igor's a clown who often pushes obviously incorrect information or jumps to conclusions while seriously lacking in necessary data. He's just really good at dressing up his BS as thorough technical analysis so he can convince a decent number of people he's right.

Igor's testing was straight up making fraudulent claims. He was involved in the development of these fans, so he is not impartial.

@@noxious89123 was this mentioned in his video or somewhere ?

This was not the first time Igor's been posting bogus test results. The problem is consumers thinking testers are to be trusted. Nobody is trustworthy simply by virtue. Always double check every claim no matter who is making the claim. Same goes for much more important topics than tech testing.

Igor also reported higher SP numbers on the 14900k samples than the norm.

His results are exactly what he was paid for.

They bought that thing like what... 5 years ago...

I don't understand why he made such a big deal a year ago when he got the chamber and he has yet to come out with a video that test fans in it. Especially after spending so much money on it.

I think they may have found that there was no hidden lies in fans.

@@davidepannone6021 To do the testing the correct way and to produce comparative data for larger sample sizes, it is pretty time consuming work. I believe they have plans to do such testing but you will propably need to wait for it a bit longer.

They have to develop standardised test methods, and a comparative/control data set to test against. @@davidepannone6021 - its like designing a scientific experiment, and its time consuming.

Cybenetics also has Noctua NF-A12x25 test results and if we compare both fans at 2000 rpm, Noctua's CFM is 30 % higher, and static pressure is 22 % higher than Alphacool's. So Roman's tests are quite well aligned with these.

Thanks for pointing that out! Cybenetics only have the 3k RPM Apex and no 3k RPM Noctuas to compare, but I doubt there's any major differences between the Apex variants. Still not terrible test results despite not being revolutionary like they touted. It's BARELY quieter than Noctua's 3k RPM fans at full speed (comparing Cybenetics test to Noctua website, 40.1 vs 43.5 dBa). But they lose massively in CFM by 38 and static pressure by 3.4 mmAq. Hopefully someone like Gamers Nexus gets there hands on these soon so they can be put through testing on the same equipment. Probably still far from a game changer at this point, but could be a nice option for a stylish case fan.

if the company is advertising stats lower than what an independent reviewer gets, then theres no way the independent reviewer is right

​@@rammagaminguhhh no u absolutely cannot compare a manufacturer's noise rating to an unbiased test. The t30 demolishes that fan in every way including noise at the same rpm and the t30 makes roughly the noise u claimed for the noctua at 3000rpm. That 3000rpm noctua fan has notably worse noise to performance than the nfa12 even. Alas these new fans just continue to make me appreciate the t30 more and more as it just demolishes new premium fan after new premium fan. Tempting me to buy some lmao.

@@tuomashautamaki2258 Oh interesting! Cybernetics is very honest if they show those results. That deserves praise for not deceiving the customer.

GN has their new fan tester setup, so hopefully they will test.

@@shadow7037932 Aris (Hardware Busters, long time PSU reviewer/expert) also has the same fan testing contraption from Taiwan like GN got themselves, he might be curious to check that as well. Indeed unless you get some kind of horribly unbalanced fan no-name reject, fans of similar construction speed and purpose perform... sort of eerily similar to each other, that's what you expect. Oh btw i have a pet peeve about people calling 10dB "half as loud" or "double as loud" because dB scale is actually perceptually linear; but also you have an internalised experience that two of some uncorrelated noise source aren't twice the dB but just 3dB louder, not all too much louder than one of these noise sources. If the sources are speakers playing the same signal then doubling them is 6dB. This makes comparing loudness really weird and the only sensible statement that can be made about one source that is 10dB louder than another is just that it's 10dB louder, not some ratio louder. But yeah 10dB is a massive crazy difference. If you have a fan that's 10dB less loud at a certain performance level, then 10 of those fans taken together are as loud as one louder fan! Just imagine the implied efficiency difference, that you could 10x your air performance without any extra noise. But for speaker (highly correlated sound sources) 10dB ratio is approximately 3 speakers worth, not 10. 10 would be 20dB. dB business melts your brain, and there just isn't necessarily a better measurement, because audio perception is so weird.

Yeah, these results should have raised an immediate flag for any tester. You would have to very actively try to set up a test that gives these results.

Thermal mass is incredibly powerful sound dampener, in fact 4 cents of hot glue can make a 15 or so watt fan have reduced noise and vibrations 80% but these companies are so cheap and can only give tiny rubber pads I guess lol

I've been wondering, so the fan blades unfurling themselves is a real problem. You want the tips close to the frame for efficiency, but you can't have them scrape the frame. I think Noctua's solution is LCP resin plus stiffening fillers. But there aren't any PC fans with blades made from magnesium...

@@SianaGearz LCP resin is indeed the cure. It also resonates less. Why there aren't magnesium? Magnesium would resonate pretty badly compared to polymers. And heavy too

At one point one wonders why other fans exist when a Nidec Gentle Typhoon of yonder years it's still up there with the best and the Arctic Cooling ones keep embarrasing everything in the price/perfomance category.

While the performance might not change much there can still be a big difference in the quality of the components. With Noctua you're paying mostly for the over engineering.

@@KarolusTemplareV Those nidec fans are good case fans, but they're not good on coolers or on radiators. The reason other fans exist is that you can certainly engineer a fan that performs substantially better in a given scenario. Also, Noctua fans are very, very quiet for their performance level, and when they do make noise, it tends to be less annoying than other fans. There are, of course, more performant fans. Hell, the old DeltaV's running at 5000RPM perform way better, and they draw 0.8A from a fan header. SAN-ACE and other server suppliers have similar models in that same vein, all are more performant than noctua's desktop offerings. They're also all incredibly loud and annoying. So it depends on what you're designing for. Is it possible to make a fan more performant while being quiet, and do so in every situation? Of course, it's just a matter of throwing money into R&D, which is what noctua and others are doing. It's not going to be rapid progress, it's going to be slow, iterative steps. That and a fan is only part of a cooling solution, and we've seen significant progress in other areas in the last decade or so, and that's likely to continue for some time. Noctua might make the best desktop fans currently, but, they no longer make the best cooling solutions, at least at the moment, so it'll be interesting to see how all of that develops. Thermalright is doing very good work in that space currently, if you're in the market for an air cooler. Arctic is doing very well in the AIO space, and custom loops are better than they've ever been. It's a good time to be alive.

​@@jttech44 I don't know where you got that Gentle Typhoons are optimized as case fans. Scythe-branded Gentle Typhoons were pretty much the only fan people used on high FPI radiators as they were the only thing out that could push air through them without sounding like a jet turbine. When the reviews of the A12x25s first came out, they were within 10% of the performance/noise at every point. The biggest difference was the better tone of the noise and the lack of the ball bearing clack. If you stand them next to each other, they look almost identical, but you can tell that the blade design started with the GT and was then optimized to the design on the A12x25. The biggest claim to fame for the A12s when they came out was that they were better for a much longer lifetime due to their new materials. When you coupled the fact that all of the Gentle Typhoon supply had dried up around 2016 (I bought my last 16 Nidec GTs in bulk at that time), it was the perfect storm for taking over that market segment. But they were 2-3 times the price of GTs when you bought them in bulk and I've never got a bulk discount for A12x25s. Artec P12s are about 30% less than the Nidec GTs were when bought in bulk and other than the vibration at about 1050RPM, they are the good enough solution for many things. Being at the point of diminishing returns means that it takes a LOT more effort to get the additional performance. Noctua took 4 years to release a black version of the A12. They haven't released an A14. Their limited research budget isn't being spent on the successor of the A12.

I stopped reading at the Gentle typhoons not being good for radiators and heatsinks. Back then they where all out of stock because everyone who knew of them buyed as many as possible for their watercooling. In fact GT have very good air pressure, better than Noctua's NF12. @@jttech44

wouldn't be surprised if it was a gimmick from alphacool to get a shitload of preorders from people who know a little bit about pcs and will look at testing but not too much and won't wait for multiple reviews

@@Crunkmaster whats the point of demolishing their rep for some preorders that can be cancelled anyways tho?

yea, it doesn't make any sense, but i can't imagine why they would only send out one set, before preorders go live, to a reviewer that's been known to be sloppy / shady with their testing over the past few years either

That's one of the things that differentiates the more expensive fans - more expensive ones have higher quality polymers and a smaller gap. Manufacturers need to allow for some creep, lengthening the blades. Due to centrifugal force and thermal cycling, it's almost unavoidable. The better the material, the less of it, and the smaller you can make the gap. Noctua for example advertises a 0.5mm gap for the A12x25, I'm sure they've gotten that as low as they can without compromising the reliability of the fan - keep in mind they need to allow for many years of use when deciding on that gap... To make serious improvements and maintain long term reliability you'd probably have to go away from injection molded plastic. To metal fans, or maybe carbon fiber reinforced plastics, but both of those would push manufacturing cost waaaay high. Edit: the reason the gap is smaller for EDF fans while they're still plastic is in the geometry. They're typically smaller diameter and/or have straighter blades.

@@ska042 And its borderline impossible to offer a warranty on those tolerances when you're dealing with the volumes Noctua is working with. As you stated they'd have to completely revamp the manufacturing if they go with a different material and it will skyrocket the cost for maybe a few C improvement.

I do wonder what aluminium blades would actually cost, if you dropped any "omg metal!" premium. Titanium would be ideal, they'd be absurdly thin & light, but that really would also be absurdly expensive ( not only is it costly to obtain but it's a pig to work with ).

​@@ska042noctua took years to offer black fans, because they had to verify the black plastic didn't have enough creep to close the gap. That's what the industrial fans don't have as close of a gap because it's a different plastic that is more durable, but has more creep.

@@Karibanu There has been aluminum bladed fans in history. None of them were anything groundbreaking really (then again they were made more for the looks instead of performance / tolerances)

Maybe Igor sneezed during his Noctua test?

Igor didn't measure heat transfer only airflow to sound

Specific RPM versus noise level. Will give quite different results.

shhh dont tell anyone about these secrete fans

Go to hw busters, he's tested both. Spoiler alert, the t30 demolishes every fan including this one in noise to performance tests. Oh and in cfm the apex is 2nd or dead last in every single noise increment without fail 😂. Don't get these as case fans to say the least

@@Frozoken ya they rock. got 3

GN didn't work out fan test methodology yet. They have this big tank from Taiwan but they really haven't been testing fans.

After some personal experience with Arctic fans, I'm a huge fan of Noctua. Arctic fans are cheap, and it shows.

@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus 90% the performance of noctua for 1/3 the price. Yeah I'll go with Arctic because I don't the kind of money to just buy the best of everything.

@@253637zero2 I watched the reviews, bought the Arctic product, 2 of 6 fans were broken on arrival, then I bought one of each of the top contenders for comparison, then I bought Noctua. I wish I'd done that in the first place. IMO Noctua is value for money. Especially the 3,000 PRM Industrial fans, they move enormous amounts of air when spooled up. If you find a fan that moves even 2/3 the air of a NF-A14 3,000 rpm industrial for 1/3 the price, I'd like to know what it is. The P-14 moves less than 1/2 of the the air moved by the NF-A14 3,000 rpm industrial 72 vs 158 cfm. Yes, the big Noctua is loud running flat out, but if my CPU is overheating, I don't care, I just want it cooled, and 99% of the time, they are turning slowly and are inaudible.

IMHO comparing fans at the same RPM is a flawed testing method. Each fan is going to flow differently at different RPMs and will have different efficiency and flow curves versus RPM and static pressure.

I'm almost disappointed 😢 you're usually great and on the ball for this stuff but missed it here.. I mean that's also why some fans are good for radiators but not case and vice versa, fan blade area, count, blade thickness and pitch..it may very well need more rpm to perform better yet still have the same or lower noise level..

​@@forbiddenerahow is it flawed, if a fan pushes more air even at low RPMs it's a better fan. Your method for setting it based off db would be worse because you could literally buy a 3 pack of the same fan with one being louder than the other two even at the same RPM

Jayz didn't do any testing. That video is just unboxing and twiddling the fan in the hands.

How you test also matters quite a lot. Put the tower inside a case, measure 1m away and the difference between 1500rpm and 1000rpm in dB is a lot smaller than doing a silly test on a table 15cm away from fans. Would be nice to see full system test perf per euro too. 5 pack of p12 max costs about the same as one of those premium fans. Put 4 case fans and 1 tower, vs one noctua fan for fair comparison :D

@@jepulis6674 But he covers. When I thought he'd mentioned the geometry, he instead went for number of fans, but that's less important (especially at low speeds) and immediately obvious to people, whereas the importance of airflow disturbance on noise is less obvious and less intuitive.

@@jepulis6674you want him to test all the different types of cases? They all have different airflow and static pressure.

I still think about those as the holy grail of low profile coolers. I remember, as you said, they did achieve what they were trying to achieve but only in lab (sandia lab), the mass produced product didnt achieve the tolerances to take advantage of the effect. I wonder if the same thing happened here, like some samples do achieve the numbers but it cant be mass produced at reasonable cost.

Noise-normalized benchmarks can really only be taken seriously if you have an anechoic chamber, or at least an attempt at replicating one.

@@rustler08 depends how close the mic is, but if doing repeat tests over multiple days I agree

@@rustler08 Why? Same conditions, same noise level is same noise level.

Google cybenetics. They tested this fan in $62k chamber that Steve has. The results are more or less as in here.

True, P12 are excellent fans, especially if you water cooling, 3 Noctua are 120$/€, with that money I can buy another 360, 3 P12s and some change. Plus you can avoid the rpm range where they are humming with a curve optimizer. I have a 1000D (painted white) with 4 rads and 30 white Arctic p12

I was in doubt for a minute as well.... then realized this is the only comment section with people searching things up and helping! Thanks for adding the information!

3dB is a doubling in sound pressure level (SPL), but dBA (dB, A-weighted) takes into account average human 'perceived' loudness which does not scale directly to sound pressure level. I think in general 10dBA is about a doubling in perceived loud ess

Any talk of "doubling" in terms of a fixed dB difference is bogus. You simply can't compare noises like that. The only thing that could be reasonably said about a noise that's 10dB louder is that it's 10dB louder. Unhelpful but true. Indeed you need 10 fans to make up a 10dB difference.