These Are The BEST PC Fans for Air & Water Cooling

What are the best PC fan for water cooling radiators and air coolers? That's one of the most hotly debated topics when searching how to build a PC. So in this fan roundup I'm going to check out some of what claim to be the best PC case fans right now and see if they're also the best fans for water cooling radiators and air cooling.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - The Best PC Fans Intro
0:50 - Noctua F12 iPPC-3000
1:11 - Phanteks T30
2:00 - Noctua NF-A12 & CM SF120M
2:26 - A Callout for Cheap Fans!
3:37 - Corsair ML120 PRO
3:48 - be quiet! Silent Wings 3 HS
4:00 - Nidec Gentle Typhoon
4:38 - Scythe Wonder Snail
4:56 - Arctic P12 PWM PST
5:29 - SO EXPENSIVE!
6:14 - Specs & Cable Lengths
6:37 - SO LOUD!
7:41 - Accessories Might Matter
8:15 - Fan Testing Methodology
8:39 - Charts Explained
9:21 - Raw CFM Performance
11:32 - Restricted CFM Performance
12:56 - Noise Normalized 39dB
14:03 - Temperature Testing (Radiator)
15:51 - Temperature Testing (Air Cooler)
17:14 - The Fail Fan
17:38 - The Best Budget Fan
18:22 - The Best All Round Fan
18:44 - The Best of the BEST Fan

Review unit provided free of charge by the companies mentioned OR purchased by Hardware Canucks. This video is sponsored by Razer. As per Hardware Canucks guidelines, no review direction was received from manufacturer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

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[aaronporter]

It's impressive how good the gentle typhoon is considering how long they have been around

[Cwyrm]

The biggest thing you can do for sound with any fan setup is to use loose rubber screws (or Noctua’s rubber peg mounts) and isolation pads everywhere that a fan would touch the case. The harmonics of your case interacting with the vibrations from the fans is what gives you that droning noise that you’re probably familiar with.

The other most impactful thing you can do to get silent performance out of your fans is to set up your fan curves very carefully. There will always be RPMs where your fans will start to interact with the harmonics of the case poorly, and there will also be RPMs where your fans will run almost totally silent. Find those silent RPMs and set your fan curves to just transition between them in steps instead of smoothly transitioning through speeds. This also improves the life of the fans, as they will almost always be running at a single speed without having to slow down or speed up.

[retro_boy_advance]

I've long been a fan of the Noctua A12s and the Arctic P12s but this review has opened my eyes on the Wonder Snail. Their price is comparable to the P12 in my country so will definitely want to check some out for myself

The one major flaw is using decibels to appraise noise performance. You can have two different fans each producing 40db. And one can sound extremely irritating because of its unique blend of frequencies, while the other sounds smooth and pleasant. Both at 40db. You could even have something at a higher decibel level that sounds significantly more pleasant than something at a lower decibel level.

[ptzzz]

Despite this video coming out months after I got my pc fans, it wouldn't change my choice. I value budget options and got the Arctic P12 5 pack and I like them.
This video might be good to pass on to friends if they ask me for pc fan advice haha.

[QBlue]

I’ve been happy with the T30. Running 3 of them on a pull on a front mount radiator. I removed the rubber dampers to give it a flush mounting surface.

[asdl]

Something seems off with the "bad" performance of the Arctic P12 in the noise normalized tests. Every noise normalized comparison I've seen puts them pretty close to the NF-A12x25. Maybe the 39dBA is a bit high, since the fan runs at almost full speed, a 35dBA comparison would be interesting. Or maybe they produce a frequency which the A filter is more sensitive to compared to other fans. So a raw 39dB test could be also quite interesting, or maybe even a 39dBC filter test.

[kskin]

The sweet spot for Arctic fans is their 140mm P14 fans, they're much quieter and push a ton of air while still giving amazing static pressure results for use with rads (thus explains their Liquid Freezer II AIO line up performing so well), in addition I think the 5 pack for the P14s was around $34.99 USD at Micro Center locations.

[racerex]

Great job Mike, and just as many of us expected, the Gentle Typhoon remains a beast of a fan for the price even 7 years+ after they were designed (if you can find them, and also find the right ones). Nidec cooked up one hell of a design, I wish they'd update it, maybe combine the original core elements with some of the newer technologies, maybe even go thicc boi like Phanteks.

[thestrykernet]

I love roundups like this, and greatly appreciate the effort you all went to making this happen. I picked up a Corsair 5000D Airflow and when I saw the P12 PWM 5 pack for $30 USD there was no question. The Phanteks T30 is on my list for if I need high performance for a radiator, but for case fans it seems silly to not just buy Arctic.

[dptch]

One thing also to note is that even though arctic doesn't come with a splitter or anything, it's already able to be daisy-chained so it doesn't need a splitter. Also, you can get "rubber screws" that are rubber dampers, and it's like 5 bucks for 20 of em.

[javiej]

Great review. The only thing I'm missing is subjective noise "quality". For example Noctua puts a lot of care of this aspect, it creates a bit of turbulence on purpose to avoid harmonics (without sacrificing significant efficiency) and provides anti vibration gadgets to avoid case resonance. In my subjective opinion, more important than decibels is if the noise is "beautiful" or annoying

[sebastiansandvik]

Love these vids Mike! Really great stuff! Personally I love both Arctic P12 and Noctua A12. They are both really good for what their respective markets. My last build had a pack of 3 P12's, and that was amazing for the price. My current build is a Ghost S1 without tophat, and so the only real option was a Noctua NF-A12x15... but after that Arctic released the P12 Slim, so I guess I could have gone for that.

The T30 seems great, but very few SFF-cases can take a 30mm fan.

The Gentle Typhoon and Wonder Snail are great too, but its a shame you can't seem to find them anywhere in Europe.

[DerthRaven]

It's crazy how this video comes out as I was shopping around for new fans! Thank you so much for what you guys do!

[ZeroRiskAppetite]

Thank you for always having decent thumbnails and not doing that annoying shocked face thing everyone else does.

[linusvfj]

Arctic fans win by literal quantity. Technically with 5 of their fans, you can have the same air volume output as a single full blast phanteks, but at a fraction of the noise level. I have been a long time customer of arctic because of their price and performance through quantity.

Also what about the cooler master sickle flow series? They have been around a long time, and I wonder how accurate are their advertised specs to real world.

[SirSethery]

Would be great to have a 140mm T30. The only one of these fans that seems to have a good 140mm equivalent are the Arctic ones.

[HardwareCanucks]

Sorry for the error guys. The P12 PWM PST is simply the model with PWM (800 to 1800) plus a Sharing Technology that allows for daisy-chaining it to another fan. The entire range is pressure-optimized. My mistake! - Mike

[MadRhetorik.]

A fantastic in depth review of fans. They are not covered as much as other pc components and there’s literally metric assloads of them out there. Thanks for providing some much needed direction.

[mauticom]

Great video. But since most cases allow for 120 and 140mm fans I would love to see a comparison between the best of each dimension. That would be awesome.