With a name like be quiet!, you’d expect their products to focus on low-noise operation above all else. And that’s exactly what you get with the Silent Wings 3 PWM fans, in both 120 mm and 140 mm guises.

By far the weakest fans in this test remain the Alseye X12, apart from that the last places are occupied by the NZXT F120 RGB and the Alphacool Aurora Rise. Case fan at maximum power Overall, we think that the Arctic P12 and P14 are some of the best PC case fans to come out in recent years. Both prove that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get quiet, high-performance fans for your rig. There are two types of PC case fans: static pressure fans and airflow fans. Static pressure fans excel at pulling or pushing air through restrictions such as dust filters, radiators, and drive cages. On the other hand, airflow fans work best at moving air as fast as possible, at the cost of reduced performance through the restrictions mentioned above.The Cooler Master Mobius 120P ARGB are thus also the strongest RGB fans in this test run, are followed by the RGB version of the DeepCool FC120 and the ENDORFY Fluctus 120 PWM ARGB. I’m a big fan of cooling hardware that strikes a good balance between noise and performance, which is why the Arctic and mainline Noctua products top our list. But what if you don’t care about low noise operation and just need a ton of airflow and static pressure? Say hello to Noctua’s Industrial PPC fans. The three DeepCool fans are therefore also the budget recommendation for very quiet systems. The FK120, FC120 and CF120 do not give much in this comparison: They offer decent performance even at low speeds. At the lower performance end remain the Alseye Xtreme X12, which not only provide the lowest performance, but are also many times louder than the next two fans at the lower performance end. The be quiet! Shadow Wings 2 and the Fractal Design Aspect 12 do not offer high peak performance, but they remain quiet enough on uncontrolled full power that they do not attract negative attention. Observation over all results

In the budget range, I had particularly counted on the Arctic fans, with the P12 and P12 Max also delivering upper-class performance at a very low price. The Arctic F12s unfortunately don’t quite make the cut of their 140mm sisters and lose out significantly to the P12 models. The easiest way to tell between the two fan types is by looking at the fan connectors: PWM fans use four-pin connectors, while DC fans use three-pin ones. Fans and fan headers are interchangeable, meaning you can connect a three-pin DC fan to a four-pin PWM connector (or vice versa). The fans from the brands Noctua, Corsair and the majority of the models from be quiet! do not stand out much in this 120 mm case fan test. Overall, these brands fill the midfield, which is not a bad performance by any means, but just not an outstanding victory that might have been attributed to them without the comparison. At least it is noticeable that the Corsair QL120 does better than the 140 mm models from the corresponding parallel test. ConclusionSpeaking of moving air, the stat you want to keep your eyes out for is “CFM,” which stands for “cubic feet per minute.” The higher the number, the more air the fan can move, the better. That said, fans with the highest CFM also tend to be loudest. So, on paper, you should be able to run the P14 PWM at 1500 RPM (or less) and achieve cooling performance on par with the P12 PWM. If the 120 and 140 mm fans have a similar price, you might as well go with larger fans if they’ll fit in your case. I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of the Cooler Master Mobius before the case fan review of the 120mm fans, and I was definitely surprised by them. The same goes for the MSI Silent Gale P12s, which at first glance seem similar in design to the Noctua NF-A12x25s, but perform better as case fans. Due to the lower maximum speed, they fall a bit short in the final test, but they offer excellent performance in a normal volume setting. Value is all well and good, but what if you have the money to spare and want a truly premium case fan? If that sounds like you, you’ll want to make a beeline for Noctua’s NF-A12x25 PWM and NF-A14 PWM case fans. They’re modern classics of the case fan world for good reasons. Most gaming PC cases will support 120 and 140 mm fans, letting you choose between the two. While both will be fine, 140 mm fans tend to be the better choice overall. Why? 140 mm fans’ increased diameter means they can perform better than 120 mm fans at a given RPM. So you can run your 140 mm fans slower for reduced noise while maintaining equal airflow to a 120 mm fan.