The Chromax NF-A12x25 and NH-U12A - Noctua's finest in black! 

In CAD, the brown version is 32$ and the chromax version 42$.

@@halometroid probably cheaper to carefully spray paint the the original NF-A12 fans black or any other colour (may void warranty) than spend more for the actual black chromax on Amazon unless your local favourite computer store can get it cheaper than Amazon Canada.

Y en Jul 2023 igual igual, la diferencias entre versión cafe y black no es mucha $2 US, el que si vale un poco más es el U12A versión cafe

@@linndoriaAmazon Canada, es caro! cotice mi pc y saqué cuentas, al final compré en Amazon USA

You guys rock, thanks for your support. Thanks to your vote of confidence I was motivated to keep upping the XP as much as I could! Will keep working hard at it!😀🍻

Cheers!

Cheers Andrei. Sending good vibes! 🤙

Aw man! They must have run low out on initial stock.

In passing, it doesn’t do too much (I haven’t bothered) but that’s an interesting idea to test clinically. Will look into it.

@@MachinesMore great! Keep it up man

Guarav, that should be great. If you run the cooler as a rear intake (you have a powerful GPU) that will yield the best combo thermals- as you might see heavier combo use in something like MSFS. For gaming usage you typically don’t need to worry about the all-core power draw of the chip, more or less things will be around the same whether it’s a 5600x or a 5950X. The NR200 can handle it. 😀👊

@@MachinesMore thanks for responding and thanks for pointing out that the reason running rear intake for cpu cooler will have a dust penalty in your videos. I am building a custom magnetic mesh for the rear to work around that issue.

nah, it's the big brain play. People bought the regular versions, and some of those will probably buy the chromax version just to switch it out.

Yes- technically it’s all within the quoted 10% tolerance but both fans from each SKU I tested responded the same way.

yes!

@@MachinesMore thank you

You got it! IMO- and everyone’s ears respond differently to frequencies - I agree. The Noctuas have a lower frequency sound pattern, the T30s are slightly higher pitched. It’s a tale of two extremes I think. At 800, the T30s perform better and at that level the noise isn’t an issue at all. At 2000 RPM the T30s and Noctuas are neck and neck, noise is a consideration and I think at that level the Noctua is less offensive, though if that is a regular occurrence then in most cases I’d say you need more rads or a bigger cooler in general.

i recently had to make the same decision as you for replacing 7 fans in my case. and i chose the noctua over the phanteks. from my calculations, the noctua came up as being more efficient in terms of "cfm per dba" namely at lower dba/rpm levels. sure, the t30 are more powerful when comparing RPMs, but when comparing dba, they also produce more noise to get similar cfm to the noctua. it ultimately depends upon whether you'll be running these fans at low RPMs for silence (say 0-1500RPM) or running higher RPMs (say 1500-2000RPM). at the higher end of the spectrum, the phanteks are definitely far more powerful (to give you some idea, the dba-to-cfm efficiency of the phanteks at 1500RPM is only matched by the noctua at 2000RPM). the reason why i chose the noctua is because 99.99% of time i run my gaming pc in silent mode (i mostly use it for work), so my fans run around 600-800RPM. and for lowest noise levels and most efficient cfm per dba, the noctua is the best choice, imo finally, you should try to listen to audio samples. the problem with dba measured noise levels is that it doesn't take into account the frequency of the sound. from what i have heard with my headphones and speakers, the phanteks noise profile has more higher frequency tones than the noctua. noctua produce lower frequency tones. just be aware according to psychoacoustics, human ears will be more sensitive to higher frequencies (in the midrange) than lower frequencies due to evolution (think of human speech and babies crying etc.) so again whilst it is all personal, in general, people find higher frequencies more irritating than lower frequencies repeating again, listen to the audio samples yourself, and see what noise profile you prefer. best of luck!

@@inverse_of_zero Thanks for your input. I currently also tend towards the Noctua, because, just like you, I want my PC to be as silent as possible and mostly will run the fans below 1500 RPM. I'm currently just worrying a little about the sound pitch of the chromax version. In the review M&M said they are equally loud on the same RPM but from the noise samples I feel like the chormax have a higher or at least more prominent pitch.

@@dasKeks28 my noctuas arrived the other day. At 5am in the silent morning I did some testing. Below 600rpm I couldn't even hear them with my ear next to the motor they are insanely quiet. My advice is to listen to different RU-vidr recordings, look around, because everyone uses a different mic. Oh and use 🎧 the bigger the better, to discern the sound. Ultimately you have to hear them IRL maybe keep the box you can return them if you test them and you don't like them.

@@inverse_of_zero Yeah, I plan to just order one of both and do a individual comparison. However especially the T30 are currently hard to get in Germany. I'll keep my eyes open.

The mechanism that secures the blades is definitely different with the Chromax, underneath the center hub the Chromax is more hollow like you note- but I want to say the wobble may be a QC issue since I didn’t notice that- did all the ones you had exhibit it? Thanks for sharing.

@@MachinesMore Only purchased one fan as I build only in small SFX cases.

TG is iffy with the U12A, even though the cooler works quite well in that setup- it is very much board dependent and on occasion I have had to use the screw to hold the panel in place. For example, Gigabyte boards have worked fine without, Asus and MSI boards need it… it’s on the brink so the tiny bit of tolerance changes things severely.

@@MachinesMore thanks for the response! I'll let you know how it goes but here's hoping, worst case the mesh will do just fine. You'd recommend intake on the CPU cooler if I'm running a 3070FE right?

It’s a little more for sure but even the 10700K was 229W PL2, and you could get stock boost clocks from a quality air cooler- it’s just a matter of fan speeds. With 10nm and the bigger ihs I’m optimistically cautious that thermal management will be as good or better with 12th gen.

Yes. Running it myself

@@maximm.6969 Thanks.

Definitely can, with pretty much all boards I’ve tried.

@@MachinesMore awesome 👌. Love your noctua and SFF content.

Yes but now and again it pops open. It touches the noctua and puts a very small downward force on it.

I'm guessing you know by now but yes they do :)

@@Lt.Shineysides89 in fact, noctuas chromax black line came out before the a12x25

I don't disagree that the T30 is a great fan and in some ways better than the NF-A12x25, but I think it's also worth taking into account that the T30 is a bit thicker. Might not matter for most folks, but I think there's a few of us in the SFF community who simply can't fit the T30 in our use case.

@@jwkuo I agree as a midi case user it doesn't matter how thick the fan is .Phanteks are almost quiet as nf-a12and they move really much more air. I saw there was a difference of 5 degree on a radiator. They also had better visible for most people until now. Those chromax looks really better than Phanteks greyish black

Better from an absolute performance standpoint, sure. However, a lot of users, esp. in SFF, can’t fit the bigger fan. Case in point, the T30s won’t work well as a bottom or top case fan in the NR200 because of the added thickness. So to me it would depend on the application, and in most situations the normal thickness of the A12x25 would be more deployable.

@@MachinesMore Yeah that's true. If you can fit these fans in a midi case it is a good choice and they aren't overpriced at least in my country they are at the same price. I hope noctua will also do a 30mm thick fan. Than it will be fair to compare them

@@MachinesMore hey there! I was planning to switch out the stock Sickleflows at the bottom of my NR200 to the T30s. Running a 3080FE in 25-28c ambients. The Sickleflows make the case vibrate at anything above 50%. Would it worth it to switch to the T30s? Undoubtedly the thickness doesn't matter in my case (pun intended lol) and price isn't an issue.

Good choice. However, I think VRM heatsink for the Asus Strix Z690i is too tall for NH-U12A I would like to know too

@@airrwalker Yes I was told the same on SFF's Discord server couple nights back and funny thing is no one gave me any ideals to switch to another cpu cooler that would've fited.

Would you consider switching the Asus motherboard to Gigabyte Z690 itx motherboard? The NH-U12A could fit by removing the M.2 heatsink ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Sc_KyYjMLjM.html Not sure the same can be done with the Asus Strix Z690i