Noctua NF-A14 ULN, NF-A14 FLX and NF-A15 PWM Fan Reviews
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
All three of Noctua’s new fans, the NF-A14 ULN, NF-A14 FLX and NF-A15 PWM, are coming to market at about £18-22 depending on, which retailer you choose, and how much their delivery is. Stock in the United Kingdom is a bit wishy-washy at the moment with very few retailers stocking these brand new fans – of course this will change as time goes on. However, we did notice Quiet PC have all three fans in stock for £19.99 each – which is a good price:
At £20 I think Noctua are actually pricing quite aggressively. Given how expensive Noctua fans used to be I was honestly expecting a price of about £25 so the price tag of £20 is a pleasant surprise although it is still not cheap when you can pick up other 140mm fans for almost half the price.
Briefly I will now cover each fan individually.
The Noctua NF-A14 ULN is a very nice fan for the “quiet enthusiast”. As we’ve seen it runs at more or less in total silence, whether you pick 800 or 650 RPMs. Personally I think the difference between 650 and 800 ROM was so minor that you might as well opt for 800 RPM speeds to get that extra airflow.
There isn’t that much more to say that I haven’t already said about Noctua fans in the past. To be concise, the NF-A14 ULN sticks to all the key Noctua principles of having excellent build quality, ultra-low power consumption that no other fan can even come close to, superb acoustic performance, solid cooling performance and the peace of mind of a huge 6 year manufacturer warranty.
This particular model is an excellent choice for a silent 140mm case fan or radiator fan. I would of liked to have seen this fan priced slightly cheaper than the FLX model since it offers “less” cooling performance, but at £20 it still has a reasonable price. I think the Noctua NF-A14 ULN fan is deserving of our innovation award for providing near total silence with all the “goodness” you’ve come to expect from Noctua’s premium fans.
The Noctua NF-A14 FLX is a difficult one to judge because it finds itself stuck between the total silence of the NF-A14 ULN and the “big” performance of the NF-A15 PWM. The acoustic and cooling performance levels offered up by the NF-A14 FLX are a compromise between absolute silence and performance. I personally think the NF-A14 FLX fans are a better choice for the more silent-extreme user who wants a couple of 140mm fans for a radiator because the extra airflow over the ULN model is really noticeable in terms of performance. I don’t think this fan is so well suited for a case fan because it just feels like its cooling performance would go unnoticed and you would only notice the extra noise generated over the ULN model.
Quite frankly I am very excited for NZXT to release their Kraken 140mm and 280mm CPU coolers that will support 140mm fans, this fan would be absolutely ideal for that kind of usage scenario. After a lot of deliberation, I am not actually going to be giving this product an award. The reason is no blemish upon Noctua, it is more the fact we don’t really have an award that does justice to what this fan is offering. All I can say is that this fan is a really top-tier product, and it comes highly recommended from eTeknix for anyone needing a 140mm fan for a water cooling radiator.
The NF-A15 PWM is my favourite Noctua fan to date. Being someone who deals with many CPU coolers on a daily basis I really respect what Noctua have done. They have seen something that very few others in the industry have seen. They have seen that because most CPU coolers are situated in open (not enclosed) spaces there is extra space either side, above and below the CPU cooler. This means that CPU cooler fans do not have to fit into tight spaces or meet rigid specifications – so you can fit a 150mm fan onto a 120mm CPU cooler providing the mounting system supports it. This innovation of course wouldn’t work for a case fan or radiator fan because the NF-A15 PWM would be too wide to fit or block the spacings for neighbouring fans, however on CPU coolers it works because of that extra space.
The end result of all this is more cooling performance than a 120mm fan can offer simply because the bigger a fan is, the more air it can shift. That said, if anyone is looking for the ultimate push-pull CPU heatsink configuration then I cannot recommend these fans highly enough.
I would like to award the NF-A15 PWM fan the eTeknix Extreme Performance Award because as far as fans go, it offers exactly that but still gives you silence, quality, reliability and style.
