Noctua Releases New Fan Made Of Liquid-Crystal Polymer – NF-A12x25

Noctua shouldn’t need an introduction, it’s one of the best known enthusiast computer cooler suppliers in the market, offering up the best heatsinks and fans going, for all different price ranges. While new products come along with marginal changes, it’s quite rare to see something that’s actually new.

Designing and building a high tolerance fan on the cheap is not that simple. Plastics warp under pressure, expand and contract under different thermal conditions, and while flexibility helps make the product more durable, it can cause havoc for aerodynamics. For the last 4.5 years, Noctua has developed a new fan with a very ambitious 0.5mm clearance between the fan blade and frame, using a new plastic it’s created.

Called Sterrox LCP, it’s a glass-fiber reinforced liquid-crystal polymer with a very high tensile strength and low thermal expansion, two key characteristics important for fan design. When a fan spins up, there is a fair amount of centrifugal force that stretches the blade out, couple this with thermal expansion from the hot air that is often expelled from a system, the blade can stretch over time.

That clearance between the fan blade and the frame is critical in preventing a backdraft from the air being pushed through, which reduces static pressure and the overall effectiveness of the fan. Getting that 0.5mm clearance is very difficult with standard plastics, especially when you take normal manufacture tolerances into account. The stiffer blade also reduces acoustic effects from the turbulence created, resulting in a quieter fan as well. Noctua went further still with a steel reinforced central hub

Fortunately for Noctua, the research paid off and is now releasing its first fan based off of this new material, the NF-A12x25, a 120mm fan that is to become the new flagship in the series. It differs from the others in that it is a general purpose fan, rather than one that is tuned for static pressure or volume airflow, like the with NF-F12 and NF-S12A. It is only at the extremes that the other fans perform better. For most use cases, the NF-AF12x25 will be the preferred choice according to Noctua.

The only thing missing now from this re-engineered fan is the inclusion of magnetic bearings, and then it would practically tick every box for what makes the ultimate fan. Noctua is releasing three versions of the fan, which includes the standard 4-pin PWM type for dynamic fan control via motherboards, a FLX type which is a 3-pin type with 3 different speeds that can be set via a cable, and the ULN or Ultra Low Noise, which should be self explanatory. A 120mm to 140mm fan adapter is also being made available as well, for larger radiators. For pricing, well, it’s pretty steep at $30 for each type of NF-AF12x25, not as bad as some of the RGB fans on the market, but includes Noctua’s 6-year warranty.