Yes, I know. Fans. Not hot-snottin' CPUs or graphics cards, just spinny things that blow air around your PC case. Hardly the first thing you think of when it comes to Black Friday deals but what if you already have all the hardware you need right now? You don't have to spend any money at all in the sales (and I strongly recommend you don't, if there's no pressing need) but if you want to spruce up your gaming rig and give your ears some much-deserved relief then a set of Noctua fans might be just the ticket.
My main work and gaming PC has a full set of Noctua NF-P14s redux fans ($16.95 apiece on Amazon), that I've installed over time to replace those that came with the case (Fractal Design North XL) and the CPU cooler (Arctic Liquid Freezer III, $90.08 for the 360 mm version on Amazon). They didn't alter the overall thermal levels of my rig that much but they made a huge difference to how much noise it makes.
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And this is the key feature about all of Noctua's fans—you get the same airflow as pretty much any other fan, but the acoustics are so much better. Not just in terms of volume and pitch, but also with regards to bearing noise. My PC isn't silent (that's not going to happen with a Core i7 14700KF and an RTX 4080 Super) but it's far less intrusive than it was with the original fans.
Because they're so good, they're rarely on sale but you can save a penny or two by picking up an NF-P12s bundle on Amazon. We rate these as being the best affordable PC fans that you can buy right now.
I've selected the triple fan bundle but you can also get two for $46.95 or five for $75.95. The reason why I've gone for three is that's the most common configuration of pre-installed 120 mm fans that most PC cases have. Normally they're all RGB-festooned so do bear in mind that you'll lose all those lovely lights if you do go down the Noctua route.
Noctua ships its fan bundles with a really set pair of cables: One is a header splitter, and the other is a 30 cm (12 inches) extension cable. They're very high quality but that's par course for being part of the Noctua fraternity. Join the clan and see...well, hear...just what all the fuss is about.
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