Worse Noctua fan quality after moving production to China

[Dash Lambda]

7 hours ago, Vode said:

Am I the only one who finds the color scheme awesome?

 

Seriously in a Black case with black components a Founders Edition GTX card and Noctua fans look damn awesome.

I do prefer their iPPC fans, but I have nothing against their typical colors.

Maybe that's just because I don't pay any unnecessary attention to color-coordination.

[SurvivorNVL]

Can never go wrong with Thermalright.

[NumLock21]

Noctua's knockoff brand

 

Spoiler

Coctua

 

 

[randomhkkid]

20 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Its not just price its about the output. No one does quantity like china. Huge impoverished workforce & one party governance that can bulldoze and entire village at will. No one else on earth, yet, is able to do mass manufacture at the scale and quantity that can match china. India is trying to compete in the race to the bottom, but India has a thing called democracy getting in the way

Output and quality of output are not inversely related. Take Apple for example, despite what you may think of them as a brand their QC and build quality are widely regarded as the forefront of the industry. Their main manufacturer Foxconn is based in China.

 

I'm slightly confused to your reply, no where did I indicate that choosing a high quality manufacturer in China means low production volume. It's the choice of the company, in this case it looks like Noctua moved there to reduce costs.

[SCHISCHKA]

39 minutes ago, randomhkkid said:

Output and quality of output are not inversely related. Take Apple for example, despite what you may think of them as a brand their QC and build quality are widely regarded as the forefront of the industry. Their main manufacturer Foxconn is based in China.

 

I'm slightly confused to your reply, no where did I indicate that choosing a high quality manufacturer in China means low production volume. It's the choice of the company, in this case it looks like Noctua moved there to reduce costs.

read it again. that is not what i said

[TheMcSame]

On 21/07/2017 at 9:08 AM, SCHISCHKA said:

im not a fan of any manufacturing going to china. They just regularly screw up quality for negligible savings of retail price

The problem likely isn't with the manufacturer. It's more than likely that the problem is with Noctua getting greedy, manufacturers will make what they're paid to make. Pay them to make something high quality and, if it's within their capability (if it's not within their capability then it's poor research on the brand's behalf), they'll do it. Pay them to cut corners and make something cheap and they will. Manufacturers make what they're told/paid to make, quality doesn't just tank because production has moved off to China, there's always another factor at play.

[randomhkkid]

6 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

read it again. that is not what i said

I'm aware, what I'm saying is all your reply states is that China has the ability to produce on a large scale. My point is that this has no bearing on quality unless the company contracting the manufacturers chooses lesser ones. 

[randomhkkid]

3 hours ago, TheMcSame said:

Manufacturers make what they're told/paid to make, quality doesn't just tank because production has moved off to China, there's always another factor at play.

Exactly

[Skanky Sylveon]

I have to say, i'm not thrilled about the news.  Even if tests are done, and they come back negligible, the differences are quite large in some areas.

I won't loose any sleep over it though, after all there are many quality brands.

be quiet!

Noiseblocker

Thermalright

Cryorig

There are of course others, but those are the first ones that come to my mind.

[ravenshrike]

2 hours ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

I have to say, i'm not thrilled about the news.  Even if tests are done, and they come back negligible, the differences are quite large in some areas.

So what you're saying is that because of a sample size of one in an extremely poor test environment(Seriously, he couldn't set up a shoebox?) taken by cell phone video you know the differences are quite large? Noctua has 3 things the smart person buys them for. Longevity, performance, and dB output. The video posted shows none of these.

[Skanky Sylveon]

On 7/23/2017 at 9:16 PM, ravenshrike said:

So what you're saying is that because of a sample size of one in an extremely poor test environment(Seriously, he couldn't set up a shoebox?) taken by cell phone video you know the differences are quite large? Noctua has 3 things the smart person buys them for. Longevity, performance, and dB output. The video posted shows none of these.

I was mainly referring to this image. 

Relax, i'm not saying that Noctua is shit now.  I'm just saying that I expected tighter manufacturing tolerances from a company with a reputation such as Noctua.

And that Noctua isn't the only premium fan manufacturer out there, so even if there is a difference, I will just buy something else.

 

Edit:

It's the small differences that separates the good products from the great products.  

And it's the even smaller differences that separates the great products from the superb products.

 

I've always considered Noctua to make superb products, and while there will probably be little to no difference in performance between the two fans, I expect tighter manufacturing tolerances from a superb product.

[Denis Rakhmanov]

3 hours ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

I was mainly referring to this image. 

If i were to buy and i have this two as an option, then based on this picture i would go with chinese.

But there should be proper testing done. because pictures cannot tell sound performance.

[AnonymousGuy]

On 7/22/2017 at 3:50 AM, TheMcSame said:

The problem likely isn't with the manufacturer. It's more than likely that the problem is with Noctua getting greedy, manufacturers will make what they're paid to make. Pay them to make something high quality and, if it's within their capability (if it's not within their capability then it's poor research on the brand's behalf), they'll do it. Pay them to cut corners and make something cheap and they will. Manufacturers make what they're told/paid to make, quality doesn't just tank because production has moved off to China, there's always another factor at play.

One of the "tricks" with manufacturing in China is you have to spell out exactly -and I mean down to the smallest detail- what you want them to do and they will do it.  If you just say "put a power cord on it" and give no additional instructions they'll put a 1" long cord made from the cheapest materials possible.

[Dash Lambda]

10 hours ago, Denis Rakhmanov said:

If I were to buy and I had these two as options, then based on this picture I would go with the Chinese.

Why?

To me it looks like the Chinese one uses simpler geometry, a worn out mold, maybe cheaper plastic... It just looks worse in that picture.

[AshleyAshes]

Why would ANYONE want BROWN FANS anyway!?

There, I said it, I finally said it.

 

BlackNoise NB-eLoops for evah.

[Skanky Sylveon]

3 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

Why?

To me it looks like the Chinese one uses simpler geometry, a worn out mold, maybe cheaper plastic... It just looks worse in that picture.

Perhaps he likes the colors a little more?

3 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Why would ANYONE want BROWN FANS anyway!?

There, I said it, I finally said it.

 

BlackNoise NB-eLoops for evah.

I actually somewhat like Noctua's color scheme, it feels "vintage".  They look terrible in most builds though.

 

I have never tried Noiseblocker, but I have heard nothing but good things from them, perhaps now is the time to try them out.

[Snadzies]

Looks like Be Quiet! may be getting more business from me if the quality of these Noctua fans starts to slip further.

[Skanky Sylveon]

4 hours ago, Snadzies said:

Looks like Be Quiet! may be getting more business from me if the quality of these Noctua fans starts to slip further.

be quiet! is nice, both in terms of ascetics and acoustics.

[NumLock21]

Anyone saw the reddit reply from Noctua?

Quote

 

We apologize about your experience with our NF-A14 PWM fans. It seems to have been an issue with our mass production molds. This issue has been raised with our manufacturing partners in mainland China. We have an extremely high attention for detail and we only release our products when they are ready to be released. We can understand your frustration with our switch of manufacturing location, we're developing new molds as we speak. This oversight that our team has taken is extremely disheartening for us however we're working on it and we'll be in touch with you to ship out replacements.

We would personally like to apologize for the poor oversight we took during our manufacturing phase and we appreciate your attention to detail, which our team lacked in this case.

Kindest Regards, Jakob Leitner

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/6o4rzo/visible_manufacturing_differences_between_noctua/

 

 

[GoodBytes]

8 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Anyone saw the reddit reply from Noctua?

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/6o4rzo/visible_manufacturing_differences_between_noctua/

 

 

Good, but the problem is that it will be nice and neat for a few months, and then, as discuss, quality will degrade if Noctua doesn't inspect EVERYTHING. So we have to test their fans, 1 month from now, 6 months from now, even 1 year from now, to ensure that Noctua is really ensuring the same built quality. 'cause let's not be honest, not everyone will check their fans and compare it with their old ones.

 

All Noctua is saying now is: "Thank you for noticing, we are seeing with the manufacture to fix it so that it is correct for the next batch... no recall is done with retail stores, so if people don't notice to RMA them under warranty, they won't notice that they have less for their money. While we just forced the manufacture to fix their molding, we hope that they'll keep changing their mold as needed"

[NumLock21]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

Good, but the problem is that it will be nice and neat for a few months, and then, as discuss, quality will degrade if Noctua doesn't inspect EVERYTHING. So we have to test their fans, 1 month from now, 6 months from now, even 1 year from now, to ensure that Noctua is really ensuring the same built quality. 'cause let's not be honest, not everyone will check their fans and compare it with their old ones.

Well Noctua will have to do random inspections, as well as buying their product from the retail market, to make sure the product is up to their standards. The inspection needs to be random, much like restaurants, so they can't prepare it a few days before the inspection date.

[Skanky Sylveon]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

Anyone saw the reddit reply from Noctua?

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/6o4rzo/visible_manufacturing_differences_between_noctua/

 

 

Glad to hear.

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Good, but the problem is that it will be nice and neat for a few months, and then, as discuss, quality will degrade if Noctua doesn't inspect EVERYTHING. So we have to test their fans, 1 month from now, 6 months from now, even 1 year from now, to ensure that Noctua is really ensuring the same built quality. 'cause let's not be honest, not everyone will check their fans and compare it with their old ones.

 

All Noctua is saying now is: "Thank you for noticing, we are seeing with the manufacture to fix it so that it is correct for the next batch... no recall is done with retail stores, so if people don't notice to RMA them under warranty, they won't notice that they have less for their money. While we just forced the manufacture to fix their molding, we hope that they'll keep changing their mold as needed"

I would expect random inspections from every manufacturer to be honest.

Let's also try to remember that even though china is usually known for quantity over quality, there are decent production plants there as well.

We honestly don't know whether the Chinese production plant was being cheap, or whether they made an honest mistake.  Only time will tell on that part.

Noctua, not doing a recall sucks though.

[KE2012]

I would be more concerned by what you can't see, e.g the motors internals. 

[Skanky Sylveon]

1 minute ago, KE2012 said:

I would be more concerned by what you can't see, e.g the motors internals. 

Very true.  It would be a lot more difficult to tell whether the motors internals are of lesser quality.

[KE2012]

10 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

Very true.  It would be a lot more difficult to tell whether the motors internals are of lesser quality.

Yup. Things can look the same too and be of completely different quality.