Arctic Cooling F12 Pro Fan Review

Arctic Cooling have sent us their Arctic F12 Pro case fan for review. Click on the link to see how it performs.

Product on Review: Arctic F12 Pro
Manufacturer: Arctic Cooling
Street Price: Around £4

Arctic cooling are a relatively young company having only been round for about 9 years. However they made a big impact when they first started trading with some excellent quiet cooling procucts. Indeed is used their early Copper Silent series on the Duron and Athlon XP systems I set up when I first started getting into PC system building. The one important factor I always remembered was that they were incredibly affordable whilst providing decent ‘quiet’ performance.

Since those early coolers the company expanded to include affordable performance coolers, affordable aftermarket GPU coolers, thermal pastes and case fans. In fact they have now expanded confidently into the power supply, case, audio and peripheral markets with much more to come I’m sure!

Here’s more on who Arctic Cooling are:

ARCTIC COOLING is a privately owned company founded in 2001 with headquarters in Switzerland, offices in Hong Kong and the USA and production facilities in Asia. The ARCTIC COOLING team consists of international highly educated people with business, technical and communicational skills. The attitude to work is based o¬n Swiss principles of innovative spirit and high standards of workmanship for which it is recognized internationally. This striving for excellence is integrated in all processes as a matter of course. ARCTIC COOLING´s core competencies are multifarious including systematic noise reduction,copper and aluminium heatsink development, customization of thermal solutions, as well as designing quiet fans. More recently quiet and cool PC Cases and Power Supplies have been developed.

120mm case fans are the bread and butter of today’s PC market. Pretty much everyone needs them for either case cooling or simply to mount on their large CPU heatsinks.

Today we have been given Arctic Cooling’s F12 Pro case fan for testing. It’s a design that fully encompasses the ethos of the company.

Here’s what Arctic Cooling have to say about the Arctic F Pro Series of fans:

The ARCTIC F8, F9 and F12 Pro are exceptionally quiet and cost effective. Thanks to the patented fan holder and vibration absorption design, these fans are whisper quiet during operation. They are ideal for any cases including HTPC systems.

Specifications

The Arctic F12 Pro is incredibly well priced and yet contains a few very impressive points of innovation.

That 6 year warranty only adds to the positives!

Let’s take a look at the product itself…

Packaging and contents

As per usual the Arctic F12 Pro comes in typical Arctic Cooling packaging.

A cool and clear exterior greets the user – the front shows the F12 fan itself and also mentions the 6 year warranty.

Box front.

Around the back we are given three points of interest that the fan offers. More about these features later.

Box rear.

The sparseness of the front and back is explained when you consider that the sides of the packaging also contain information. The left side lists the main features of the fan and also outlines the specific components of the ‘Fluid Dynamic Bearing’.

Left side.

The right side lists the specifications and capabilities of the fan.

Right side.

Upon opening we are greeted by the fan itself. It’s an attractive black and white design that should complement most cases – it also has a decent length of braided cable attached.

The F12 Pro.

Also contained within the box are four fan screws and a circular Arctic Cooling case sticker.

Screws and case sticker.

The F12 Pro up close

Moving back to the fan we can see that it has a fairly non standard look. The frame that the fan sits in is an Arctic Cooling design. It keeps the fan blades away from the normal circular cowling that the majority of case fans have.

The F12 Pro’s fan frame.

Taking a look at the side profile of the fan you can see clearly how the fan sits away from the ring portion you attach to the PC case. The only part that sits outside of the fan blades is a narrow ring that is part of the patented fan holder frame.

Side profile view really shows the innovative fan frame.

Around the back the F12 Pro looks much like any other fan. This is the side that mounts to the PC case.

The rear of the F12 Pro.

One other important feature linked to the frame design is the patented vibration absorption system. This is a rubberised attachment that allows the frame to move just enough to minimise the vibrations that cause unwanted noise. It’s a very simple design that I first encountered when using the Freezer 64 Pro – let’s hope it works just as well as that did!

Absorption system should work well.

As I mentioned earlier the F12 Pro’s cable is braided. This is both attractive and tidy and should offer some protection to possible cable snags within the case.

The F12 Pro’s cable braiding.

At the end of that cable is the fan’s 3-pin connector. This fan model is the non-PWM and non-TC (temperature controlled) variety. It therefore either runs at full speed or relies on some level of motherboard or separate fan control to run slower.

The 3-pin plug.

Let’s see how it does in testing…

Testing

I’ll be comparing the Arctic F12 Pro to a selection of the other fans we’ve tested.

I used the sound pressure level meter below to test the dB rating of the fans at 12V, 7V and 5V.

The sound meter used for testing.

Due to the sound level meter only registering a dB rating of 50dB+ I will have to adjust the sampling distance to allow the fan to register on the meter.

I decided to test the fan at each rated voltage at a distance of 2.5cm. Since this can introduce some proximity based noise issues I positioned the meter off centre and as far away from turbulence as I could manage.

When the data is complete I will use a ‘damping of sound level with distance’ calculator to work out the dB rating for a greater listening distance. This will give a clearer understanding of the actual volume of the fans we have here.

For testing I used a hotwired ITX PSU which is a fanless silent model. This will provide power for the fan’s without producing any noise interference itself.

Results

Running @ 12V and recorded @ 2.5cm
68 dB

After conversion the results @ 2m are as follows
30 dB

12V testing.

It’s in the upper portion of the table here – doesn’t seem intrusive to me but the numbers don’t lie.

Running @ 7V and recorded @ 2.5cm
59dB

After conversion the results @ 2m are as follows
21 dB

7V testing.

Still up high in the 7V chart. Once again my impression is that the fan is quite quiet but even after repeated testing the SPL meter consistently returns the same result.

Running @ 5V and recorded @ 2.5cm
51dB

After conversion the results @ 2m are as follows
13 dB

5V testing.

As I said in the last review there aren’t many ultra low voltage results here but the Arctic F12 Pro is actually one of the quietest of the bunch at 5V.

Summary of fan performance

As with all my previous reviews the first thing to consider is that the dB rating doesn’t tell the whole story. Tone, resonance and other factors can be more important than pure sound levels.

Motor wine and rhythmic speed related clicking may not show up on the sound meter but when present I can confirm that they are very apparent and can be annoyingly intrusive. On the flip side you could have a fan that made no discernible whining or clicking but was ‘showing’ as rating high on decibels!

The Arctic F12 Pro.

Unlike the recently tested Föhn 120 Wing Boost the Arctic F12 Pro returned a consistently louder dB score. However, just like my warning in the previous paragraph states it’s more the type of noise than the actual volume that seems most important. In this respect the Arctic F12 Pro was much better.

The fan returned a very smooth presentation with no clicking or buzzing evident at any voltage. Another very positive observation was the presence of a decent amount of static pressure. Much more than the Föhn 120 Wing Boost and a similar amount to the best I’ve tested in the past.

I assume the higher dB ratings tally somewhat with the static pressure I noted – it just seemed much quieter due to the complete lack of resonance or vibration related noise.

Conclusion

Arctic Cooling should be immensely proud of the Arctic F12 Pro. It’s a supremely affordable and incredibly quiet design. Its static pressure performance is more than commendable and when placed alongside the other positives I’ve already mentioned it’s utterly astonishing.

The excellent Arctic F12 Pro.

My only incredibly small issue is the fact that the fan orientation can only be in one direction. This fan will only exhaust once installed. You would have to mount it externally if you wanted it to push air into a case which really is unfortunate. If Arctic Cooling could produce a model that worked as an intake then they’d have a truly great product.

Pros

+ Good looking
+ Incredibly competitive price
+ Very quiet
+ Vibration and resonance damping very effective
+ Patented fan cage works well
+ No buzzing or clicking from fan’s motor
+ Excellent static pressure at all voltages

Cons

– Only one true installation orientation

In conclusion the Arctic F12 Pro is a wonderfully capable fan. Besides the ‘exhaust only’ issue I simply don’t have a bad word. Exceptionally quiet performance at a truly great price point… the Arctic F12 Pro gets our Gold award!