A premium fan at a premium price

Some cheaper fans like the one included with the Icon Case are not very well suited to PWM-regulation. And if they run at full rpm, they are more or less noisy, mainly because they are rather small and run at high rpms.

Better fans are more expensive, and this is the one drawback of the fan I’m going to review here, the price is around 15€ here in Europe. That is 1.5 times more expensive than the Icon Case that comes with a fan!

It’s the Noctua NF-A4x10 5V Version (yes, there is also a 12V version). The fan comes in a big package (for a 40mm fan) with a lot of cables and adapters:

All of these cables and adapters are useless if you want to use this fan with a Raspberry Pi, you have to cut the power cable of the fan and solder it to the connectors. Noctua should think about that and sell the fan only, without accessories (the 5V version is more or less useless for conventional PCs - the fans there run at 12V, so you only need adapters for the 12V version in a PC).

However, lets install it into the Icon Case, it fits perfectly:

(yeah, the cables are too long, but some adhesive tape helps to fix everything :) )

You have to change the Python scripts to control the fan:

• the fan_speed variable’s lowest value is 60! The fan will not run at lower values, and at values lower than 70 the rotation speed is way too slow!
• change the PWM_FREQ value to 50, the fan runs better then

Now to the premium qualities of this fan: It is very silent, at 80% you can barely hear the fan (only if you get very close to the case), and at 100% it is not even remotely annoying. The cooling efficiency is at least as good as the cheaper fan of the Icon Case.

Conclusion: Noctua holds their promises and sells a fan of excellent quality. The one drawback is the very high price tag (for a 40mm fan). They should cut the costs by selling the fan only, without unneccessary cables and adapters.

Is it worth it? Its the same for all high-priced gadgets: You buy it, if you want it, not because you need it. Well, there are rare use-cases where you would need this fan. For instance of you want almost silent cooling because you have extremely sensitive ears. But then again, a case with passive (= silent) cooling might be your best bet (if you do not plan to overclock your Raspi - and even then you might use big, passive cooling solutions).

Thanks for reading!

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