Arctic P12/P14, My experience

DragonTamer1 · September 28, 2020

Seeing how much these were hyped up, I bought some for my system to see how they are and, I'm not super impressed. I've tested 3 P14s and one P12 and they work for what I was trying to do, but I feel like these are being hyped up a little too much.

They are very quiet (most of the time, see below) and they move a good amount of air, but their build quality is lacking. The blades are very porous which is probably why it is so cheap and light. I know it's porous because one of the blades came in contact with the case while testing and ripped itself off.

One of the other P14s came in contact with its own frame while I was slowly turning it over to see where the noise mentioned below started. this put a chip in the blade but it is still working normally.

All of the p14s I tested make a very loud moaning nose when mounted as a top intake... unless it is pulling air through some sort of obstruction. The noise got worse when mounted to the case. It's almost like the fan is trying to lift itself out of the housing but it's strange that it doesn't do it while a as a top exhaust. Putting a dust filter in front fixed this more or less. No this is not the same noise reported at 1000 RPM as starts around 500-600 RPM and continues to max speed.

On one of the fans I noticed the fan blades were not an even length while spinning This didn't seem to add any vibration or noise, just something I noticed. I didn't check the other fans.

The fans have extremely close tolerance to the frames of the fans, I have an ongoing problem with one of the fans actually sucking in its dust filter so it starts rubbing on the center hub. I had this with other fans as well but usually pushing the slack out of the dust filter and tightening down the screws to hold it fixed this issue, the P14 is still rubbing on it though. I managed to mostly get rid of it by putting some foam padding between the fan and dust filter to space them out more.

Based on what I experienced, they are not bad fans but they they are not the be-all-end-all of fans. They have their place in the market but shouldn't be recommended as a substitute for something like Noctua or Be Quiet fans. Their use case should also be considered before recommending them. They shouldn't be right up against dust filters (at least ones that don't have rigid frames to support them), and they probably shouldn't be up against the frame of the case on the intake side because of the shattered blade.

The picture below is post amputated fan blade, I don't have one of the inside of the blade since I couldn't get my camera to focus. Normally I try to glue fan blades back on, but what ever kind of plastic they used it doesn't seem to work well with super glue.