Noctua NF-A14 ULN, Ultra Quiet Silent Fan, 3-Pin (140mm, Brown)

Pros: Build quality is top-notch, all the way down to how these are packaged. Includes all the low noise adapters you need to silence the fan without a fan controller. The best airflow:noise ratio anywhere. It moves a good amount of air while being very quiet. It is NOT a silent or near-silent fan at max RPM, but it is very quiet considering how much air it moves. 6 year warranty. This is the reason you buy these fans, in my mind - no other fan will reliably last you 6 years. I guarantee it.

Cons: Obviously, the beige/brown color scheme. Looks like poop in most windowed builds. Don't know why Noctua insists on never giving other options for colors, because I'm sure people would be throwing money at them if they would just release a black version of these fans. The 3-pin extender cable is a bit short. I had to daisy chain two of them together to get the NF-A14 mounted as rear exhaust on my Storm Trooper to hook up to my fan controller on the front of my case.

Overall Review: The performance and the warranty justify the bad color scheme and the high price, in my opinion. I've been avoiding these fans for years on the basis of those two things, and after trying pretty much every other high end option out there, I can say definitively that no other performance-oriented fan will last 6 years reliably, and it will not have as good an airflow:noise ratio as these. So the question is - do you want an amazing fan that will save you money in the long run and perform great, but look lousy? Or do you want a better looking fan that won't perform quite as well and will need to be replaced in a matter of months-2 years because it dies? It's really up to you. I'm using 3 of these in my windowed storm trooper case - two of them as top exhaust and one as rear exhaust.

Pros: Pretty much silent, even at the highest speed. Moves a decent amount of air for being totally silent. Comes with regular fan screws and rubber (silicone?) mounting pegs if you don't want to use the screws. Also comes with various adapters including low speed/low noise adapters. I don't know why you'd need a low speed/noise adapter considering how quiet this thing is at full speed....

Cons: A big honking fan. I remember when 140mm fans started coming out my friends & I made jokes about them wondering what the heck a fan that big would be good for. Seriously, though, the only drawback is that if you're using one of these then you have a really big hole somewhere in your case. This fan may be silent, but the other parts inside your case may not be and their sound has a big hole to come out of. Not a con of this fan, just a con of all 140mm fans in general if you put them on the side of a case. I guess another drawback is the famed Noctua color scheme that goes with nothing in your case and stands out like a sore thumb. You know that already, though, if you've seen the pics.

Overall Review: Recently upgraded the GPU video card in one of my rigs from on-board Intel to a GTX 970. Due to the increased heat production I figured I'd open up the top hole in my Fractal Design Design Mini and put this guy in to add some increased airflow. Works like a charm!

Pros: Moves a LOT of air at very acceptable noise levels. If you are noise weeny however, there are other Noctua fans that move slighly less air but are also quiter. That said, these comes with a full gamut of accessory wires. Let me elaborate. The fan itself has a short (maybe 5" tops) 4 pin cable. This is awesome because many times you don't need a long fan cable, thus it keeps things tidy in your case. However, sometimes you need a longer cable. No problem. Another ~6" extension cable is included with each fan. Fan too loud and you don't want to control it with a fan controller/motherboard/letting your motherboard control it? No problem. A voltage limiting cable is included, ~2" in length. Lastly, most mobos top out at about 4 chassis fan headers, while your high end cases will have as many as 6-8 fan locations. Noone wants to run extra molex power cables just for fans. Again, Noctua's got you covered. Each fan comes with a Y-splitter cable, so one motherboard fan out can power and control two separate fans - I haven't tried Y-splitting the Y-splitter outputs, but didn't have a need for it. Length of the splitter is about 2" as well. All cables are protected with high quality mesh sleeving. 6 year warranty! on a case fan! Reliability is important. My PC is on 24/7, either gaming, serving as a media center, or mining crypto-currency while I'm away. If you want to be sure your compontents are properly cooled, this is a no brainer. Noctua quality at its finest. I've been using noctua fans exclusively for over 6 years now. Will take some amazing reviews from people and reviewers I have a lot of trust in to get me to switch to any other brand.

Cons: Pricy, but you pay for quality and peace of mind. The components you are cooling are worth much much more and heat kills electronics. Color - some complain. I actually like it. Plus I avoid the gaudy computer cases that light up everything with LEDs with acrylic sides for all the world to see. If I'm playing a game or watching a movie, I want to seeing the lights from my monitor, not out the side of my desktop. If i wanted a night-light, I'd buy a night light. So the fans are invisible to me.

Overall Review: Do not hesitate. Buy these fans.

Pros: These fans do what they claim to do, and do it well. You can’t say this as completely about all tech products you come across. “Stepped inlet design” decreases the boundary layer thickness, resulting in increased suction efficiency for the work being done by the fans. What I mean by this is that the thickness of the air moving slowly at the edges of the inlet rim is reduced, which makes it easier for the blades to cut into the flow. The "inner surface microstructures" essentially give the air being pushed "out of the way" by an oncoming fan blade's tip to have somewhere to push into, and they're shaped like they are so the air keeps going in the right direction. This has less to do with efficiency and more to do with noise reduction. The "flow acceleration channels" near the tips mean the air is going to come out more evenly and quietly because there's going to be less vortices spinning off of the tips. The silicone rubber vibration pads should be a must on every fan, HDD, and optical drive. Basically if it spins, and isn't 100% perfectly balanced (I'm not really sure anything that spins in the real world is), it makes vibrations. These vibrations can be absorbed easily with silicone. It works wonders for noise reduction. The SSO2 bearing and magnet assembly will make it more than likely these fans will outlast your other more important components (CPU, motherboard, RAM, GPU, etc.). This is good, means you won’t have keep buying replacements so often or being concerned about cooling system failures. For these features, this is one of the best fans you can get on the market currently, hands down.

Cons: #1 Con, in a word? Price. These are by no means inexpensive fans. Buying a set of 3 of these and 3 of the 120mm fans was a noteworthy percentage (approx 8%) of my latest desktop build's overall cost to construct. Keep in mind for many cases (in my example, a Corsair Carbide Air 540), will really need multiple ones of these fans ordered. #2 would be the aesthetic, in this case I'm talking about Noctua's iconic color choices. These have a beige and brown color scheme that clashes visually with whatever case they go in. But if you're buying a fan just for looks, then this isn't the right fan. This fan is about performance, not looks. And frankly? The beige & brown is kind of Noctua's iconic design feature, and for that reason I can see why they wouldn't want to change it. But yes, they aren't very pretty. #3 These fans outperform the competition most noticeably at slower speeds, they are much quieter. Many of the complaints about them not being a whole lot quieter are at max RPM speeds which are going to be somewhat noisy no matter how well the blades are designed. This should be common sense, especially for those claiming to be “high tech level” but are really just noobs (I assume you know of some examples of what I’m talking about). That said, with the SSO2 bearings, they're going to be able to be run at higher RPMs for a longer time before they begin to produce additional noise from wear & tear… so… meh.

Overall Review: I have multiple ones of these fans, and I've used their predecessors in the building of PCs for others. I wish they came with a high flow and high static pressure version of this 140mm. I wish they made a 200mm version for those Antec cases many of us love that have a 200mm "big boy" fan on the top side of the case's chassis. I wish they used this technology for larger scale fans for commercial and household appliance use so we could have quieter fans in more areas than just our PC.

Pros: Great 'push' through my NZXT Kraken x60 radiator. All the cables and hardware you could ever need, I couldn't use the silent plastic install, mounting 'screws' so I was able to use them on my other case fans. I used a black sharpie to help the brown mounting 'things' not stick out so much.

Cons: None that I can think of, all of the Noctua fans are engineered with quality and longevity in mind. Well worth the cost for a fan that is guaranteed to run for 7 years! If I had to choose a con, I would say the color...Hardly a con though. they could be puke green with "Dora the explorer" stickers all over it and I would still purchase them again. The look actually grows on you, + they are just plain supreme.

Overall Review: I would recommend these fans to anyone, PWM or not, PWM works great with compatible radiators because of the static pressure and CFMs these put out. A+, I have seen some other people saying the the LNA (Low Noise Adapter) cable is necessary for a comfortable noise level, I think they are great as they are.

Pros: Moves tons of air that Noctua is great for.

Cons: Unlike all of their other NF-A fan models that I own this one sounds like a turbine when it's over 40% power.

Overall Review: I have 2 200mm fans and 2 120mm fans of Noctua's NF-A line up and those are fantastic ultra quiet fans that I can run at 100% power and hardly hear anything other then the amount of wind moving through the case. I have no idea what went wrong with the 140mm version, thought I got a dud, the replacement was the exact same way. Over 40% power and it's way louder than all 4 other fans running at 100%. I'm just going to get another 120mm and call it a day. I really do hope they either fix or drop the quiet fan tag off this product, every other thing about this fan is perfect otherwise, hince the 2 egg rating, it is a premium fan and gets the job done better than other fans for moving air, it's just not quiet as advertised.

Pros: solid fan for it's purpose

Cons: there's some waste because of all the stuff they come with. I wish we didn't have to throw so much away and only purchase the stuff we actually need for our build separately. Also the packaging is of really high quality and I really hate that too. I'm only interested in the quality of the fan since everything else is just waste that gets thrown away.

Pros: Comes with a Y splitter cable, an extension cable, and a cable that reduces the voltage to the fan for quiet operation. Nice sleeved cables. I can't hear a thing at full fan speed with the low voltage cables attached from the two fans on my radiator.

Cons: Expensive.

Overall Review: I got these because Linus told me to.