alt Hacker NewsI used to really like Noctua fans, for a while they were obviously the best fans by a significant margin.
But for all their tight tolerances and exotic materials and a high price to match, they generally don't outperform BeQuiet's more regular materials but use-focused fans that are half the price. Nor are they significantly better than Arctic's general purpose fans at a quarter the price.
It'd make more sense to just buy the fan optimized for the specific common purpose (airflow or radiator) than pay double for the Noctua for a more generalized fan, but is not the best at either common use case.
Seems like these days their target audience is those who believe their marketing materials about them being the best, instead of believing the benchmark performance data.
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2×? Try 5× for the Noctua NF-A12x25 compared the the Arctic P12 Pro that matches or beats it in most metrics. Which isn't to say the Noctua fan is bad, it's just a luxury product for reasons other than performance.
I got a cheap CPU cooler and swapped the fan out for a Noctua. For half the cost of a complete Noctua CPU cooler I got good temperatures and no noise.
The benchmarks do not tell everything.
I have used Noctua fans in computers where they worked for a decade or so, even 24x7, until an upgrade or replacement of the computer was required by other reasons than because of the fans.
I have also had many problems caused by cheaper fans.
So now I always prefer to use rather expensive fans and power supplies, from brands with which I have accumulated many years of experience, for peace of mind.
Perhaps other brands of fans that nowadays give similar results in benchmarks also have similar reliability, but I am not willing to bet on it.