I agree with that suggestion. Noctua fans have the reputation of being quieter for similar air flow and lasting longer, sometimes at slightly higher cost. They do not make any fans that include lighting elements in their frames, and their frame and blade colour choices are limited, but that's a personal choice issue, not a performance issue. Often they offer virtually identical models in both 3- and 4-pin types (see below.) Their Redux line is basically a revision of some of their older designs and are priced a bit cheaper than others in their lines, but they still perform well and last a long time.
For more info to start, I'll refer you to a post I made May29/19 here
Yesterday I got a little over excited and ordered a new power supply for an upcoming build and new case fans. I ordered 4 PWM Be Quiet silent wing fans. Figured I’d replace my getting noisy antec case fans. However I’m not doing full build yet. If I wanted to add the PWM fans to my current case...
forums.anandtech.com
Further info. Much of this relates to compatibility with other components, so when you are planning your new system is when to take these points into account.
There are two common fan designs dominant now for computer cases and CPU cooling. The older ones come with 3 wires from the motor and hence 3 holes in the female connector on the end. The connector has ridges down one side to fit around a tongue beside the pins of the mobo header, so they can only be plugged in the "right" way. Control of the speed of these 3-pin fans can be done only by varying the voltage supplied to them from the mobo header. The connections to them are:
Pin #1 - Black - Ground
Pin #2 - Red - DC power varying from 5 V to 12 V
Pin #3 - Yellow - fan speed signal (2 pulses per revolution) sent back to the header for counting.
The newer design are called PWM fans or 4-pin fans and use 4 wires and a VERY similar 4-hole connector. Their design tries to maximize compatibility between fan systems, but there are limits. In this system, the Voltage on Pin #3 is always the full 12 VDC (does not vary), and the new Pin #4 supplies a PWM signal. Inside the fan there is a small chip that uses that PWM signal to modify the flow of current from the 12 VDC supply line through the motor windings to alter the speed. On these fans, wire colour codes are different from the 3-pin system.
If you connect each fan type to its matching mobo header, it all works well. If you mis-match you can encounter limitations. A 3-pin fan connected to a header using the PWM Mode for control will receive a constant 12 VDC power supply and not get the PWM signal it cannot use, anyway. So it will run full speed all the time. You get good cooling, but no ability to slow the fan. A 4-pin fan connected to a header using the older Voltage Control Mode (aka DC Mode) of control will not receive any PWM signal from Pin #4 amd hence cannot modify the power flow. However, what it gets for power from Pin #2 is a VARYING DC voltage, so its speed IS controlled this way, just as if it were a 3-pin fan. Technically this is not quite as good a method of controlling this fan design, but it works. With this in mind, it is now common for motherboards to always use 4-pin male output headers for fans, but that does NOT tell you which Mode of control it is using. There are four common ways such a header can be managed, and these often are available as configuration options for each header in BIOS Setup.
1. Header operates only in the older 3-pin Voltage Control Mode (aka DC Mode) which can control the speed of either fan type (because of backwards compatibility feature of the 4-pin fans) , but does not provide the PWM signal on Pin #4.
2. Header operates only in the new PWM Mode and hence cannot control the speed of 3-pin fans.
3. You have the option to set either one of these Modes for the header.
4. The header can do both Modes and claims to detect the actual type of fan connected to it and adjust its Mode automatically. Most that make this claim do just that by testing the fan speed response to trial control signals. But some early mobos simply used option 1 above (only DC Mode) and depended on the adaptability of 4-pin fans to make this appear to work.
IF you have a mix of 3-pin and 4-pin fans in your system, because the two designs require a different mobo header control Mode, you must separate the fans. All 3-pin fans should be in one group (MAY be connected together to one or two headers with Splitters) that are configured to use DC Mode, while all 4-pin fans can be connected to other header(s) using PWM Mode.
Connecting more than one fan to a mobo header is allowed if you follow the rules. MOST mobo fan headers can supply up to 1.0 A max current to all fans connected to them. (There are some with higher limits, and a few with lower limits. Look for this spec in a mobo manual.) A simple SPLITTER can do this job - it just connects all its fans in parallel to the mobo header pins so they all share the same voltage supply and that header current limit. (Almost all Splitters now are of the 4-pin design, but they work with either type of fan.) However, a header can only deal with the pulsed speed signal fed back to it from ONE fan, so the Splitter will only send back one fan's speed and ignore all its others. This has NO impact on ability to control speed. Alternatively, one can use a different device called a HUB which draws all power for its fans directly from a PSU output connector and thus avoids the current limit of a single header. HOWEVER, a HUB can only work with a header that is using the new PWM Mode of control, and it can control the speed of 4-pin fans only, just like a Header using PWM Mode. NOTE that sellers confuse the labels of these two different types of device. To distinguish, note that the Hub must have a cable "arm" that plugs into a PSU power output, whereas the Splitter has no such power connection "arm". Also note that fan specs normally will include a max current use by the fan, so you can use that to plan your multi-fan loads.
LIGHTS in a fan are a newer feature you may NOT be considering (e.g., the Noctuas do not have any), so you may want to ignore this part. The first lighted fans are called LED Fans because they carry LED's of ONE colour in their frame. These are simply connected in parallel with the motor so they receive the same Voltage supply from Pin #2. That also means that the max current consumption for this fan type is higher than for a non-LED fan.
More recently there are now two types of RGB fans dominating. In both of those systems the lighting components in the frame have their own separate power supply / control cables that plug into mobo lighting headers, so they do NOT impact the consumption of power from the fan header.The fan specs should provide separate items for motor current and lighting current. The simpler light systems are called plain RGB lights. They use a 4-wire electrical connection (male mobo headers with 4 pins in a row) and female cable connectors wider than a fan connector. These provide to the lights a common +12 VDC supply and three separate Ground lines (one for each of the three LED colours in the light string). At any one moment ALL of the LED's in the string of ONE colour will be doing exactly the same thing since they all are controlled by one Ground line (and similarly for the other two colours). The more advanced design is called Addressable RGB or ADDR RGB or ARGB. It uses a 3-wire electrical connection, with the mobo male header looking almost the same as the plain RGB one, but missing one pin. This supplies to the light string a common Ground and +5 VDC power supply, and a digital Control Line. Along the string, the LED's are organized into Nodes each containing one each of the three LED colours and a Control chip for that node only. Each Control Chip listens to the Control Line for a data packet with its unique address and adjusts its trio of LED's to do that instruction. This can produce more complex light displays such as rainbows chasing themselves along the strip. Since both the supply Voltage and the method of control of the individual LED's differs between these two systems they can NOT be mixed in the same circuit. You must match the type of lighting device (be it a strip or a fan with lighted frame) to the type of controller output you connect to. The controller MAY be a separate third-party box, OR it may be a header on the mobo controlled though the BIOS and a utility supplied with the mobo. Some mobos have no such headers, some have only one type, and some have a one or two headers of each type. And just to add to the confusion, note that the LIGHTS are often labelled as 3-pin (ADDR RGB, 5 VDC) or 4-pin (plain RGB, 12 VDC) type, VERY similar to the 3-pin or 4-pin FAN MOTOR type labels.
A last bit on another important item in choosing fans. There are two major sub-divisions, often labelled as Pressure Fans or Airflow Fans. The flow rate of air the a fan can deliver depends in part on what resistance to air flow exists in its output area. A finned CPU heatsink or a radiator in a liquid-cooled system has many narrow air flow channels which present more air flow resistance than an open space. A fan used in these applications needs to be designed to force good air flow against this back-pressure, and such fans are called Pressure-optimized designs. Fans used for general case ventilation with little air flow resistance are called Airflow fans becasue they are optimzed for max air flow against very low backpressure. So you need to choose between these two types according to the application. But whichever application position you are dealing with, the real important spec is the air flow you can get, not the fan speed.
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