Thermaltake TOUGHFAN 12 and TOUGHFAN 12 Turbo Fans

[Valantar]

I've been using P120s in my system for a year or so now, right because of that! However, the reason why I'm talking of noise testing beyond solely sound pressure measures is because of these fans. Out of the 6 I have, 2 have very annoying harmonics whence RPM levels are matched among all 6. It is a varying, uneven noise and it is distracting.

Noctuas have a far less variability among the same models of fans in my experience, as I had 6 NF-F12s before the P120s and my best friend right now has as many Noctua A12s. Neither with the F12s nor with the A12s have we heard such variability; in other words, if you match all to 40% or 60% or alike, they won't have as differing harmonics, which results in a less unpleasing fan noise.

But I got 6 fans for the price of 2 A12s :-D So eh, worth it I'd say.

You could always buy 18 P12s for the same money, pick the best 6, and return the rest

 

[Ubersonic]

You must be young, Noctua themselves stole the design from Gentle Typhoon

This.

Noctua threatening to sue ThermalFake over who has the best fan based on the Gentle Typhoon is as laughable as Apple raging at Microsoft for "copying" the GUI concepts they both copied from Xerox.

It's even more comical as Phanteks have recently released their T30 which like the Toughfan 12 and the Noctua AF25 is another evolution of the Gentle Typhoon design but Noctua didn't care about that.

 

[Yttersta]

This.

Noctua threatening to sue ThermalFake over who has the best fan based on the Gentle Typhoon is as laughable as Apple raging at Microsoft for "copying" the GUI concepts they both copied from Xerox.

It's even more comical as Phanteks have recently released their T30 which like the Toughfan 12 and the Noctua AF25 is another evolution of the Gentle Typhoon design but Noctua didn't care about that.

I'm not sure if I agree with the Gentle Typhoon design steal. There is only so many ways you can go different for a type of airflow in fluid dynamics and get the CFD results you'd want as a designer. They might have simply converged on a similar design. For all we know as users, it's either this convergence or that they got "inspiration" from the Scythe design, i.e. stole the initial design.

All I am saying is that Noctua may indeed have a court case really if they can produce their CFD design process from an initial design to the Scythe look alike, which would demonstrate originality and therefore be valid against TT. Because TT had years to come up with a GT copy, but did only after Noctua first did it. This is very similar to the old who first stole from Xerox Labs, Apple vs. Microsoft court cases :-D And I do agree it sounds funny and that Noctua should better spend their money; not on lawyers but in the next dual tower cooler and the new 14cm fans.

But Noctua then also added on top this physical design, materials science (the plastic the A12s are made of allowing their very low margins between fan blades and the shroud as well as the low amount of flex in the blades, resulting in less variance in the sound pressure in operation), then mechanical engineering (with their very durable motor and low variance in production). These I would consider novel enough contributions to a design for it to become theirs. Not to mention that Thermaltake's design is actually more similar, even in colour, to the original Scythe design. I won't even argue how much cheaper this has resulted the TT design to become obviously which is what fakers of course aim for anyway.