Introduction

If I got a dollar each time someone asked me if or when I would review the Thermaltake (Tt) TOUGHFAN 12 fans, I could probably have retired by now. Soon after Tt announced these fans, there were near-rabid discussions online about whether these were inspired by a certain other Noctua fan, or a project Thermaltake had been working on for a while. After all, Phanteks had a similar take with the T30-120 that worked out well enough, so where do the TOUGHFAN 12 fans stack up in comparison? Time to answer that questions today, and thanks to Thermaltake for providing TechPowerUp review samples!


Thermaltake had originally gotten in touch about reviews a while back, and shipped samples while I was still working on my review backlog. A series of unfortunate incidents then delayed this review more than I would have liked, so I do appreciate everyone patiently waiting for it. What I do have here is not just the TOUGHFAN 12, but also the TOUGHFAN 12 Turbo, both of which will be covered in this article. Both are effectively the same fan but with different motors tuned to a different maximum RPM, and testing both together also shows whether the two perform identically or at least similarly enough within error margins, including at the same fan speeds. Let's take a closer look at both fans now, beginning with the product specification in the tables below.

Specifications