SPCR

I'm looking for some insight from someone who owned both Redux and the standard beige version. Looking at their website, the Redux lineup seems to be worse by a slight margin than their brown counterpart. Looking at some online reviews, the results are opposite. The most comprehensive tests I've found are from CoolingTechnique and from their results, Redux are noticeable better. Searching for other reviews and forums, the results are mixed, some say they are noisier, other say they are better but no one seems to have own both of have a clear answer.

Now before you recommend other fans, know that in my journey to avoid buying puke brown fans, I've owned quite a few other brands. Yet, nothing compared or has been as impressive as an old Noctua NH-P12 and a Noctua Industrial PPC I own. Fans I've tried:

Phanteks - 3 out of 5 had bad bearings, the two that worked were quite good but the failure rate was a downer so I've returned them.

Xigmatek, Cooler Master, True Quiet, Corsair, ID-Cooling, Scythe and a few others, most have been moved in other builds due to various issues, either noise at low speeds, PWM clicking, horizontal mounting problems and so on.

Fans I like and I currently use in my system are: an Arctic F12 , which is used as bottom intake, Be Quiet! used for front intake and Cougar for exhaust. This is a decent setup, but the BeQuiet!, while they are exceptionally quiet, they could use some better airflow and static, my puke brown Noctua offers all that. Cougars are also very good fans, butt still no match for the brown poo.

So I own one puke brown and one Industrial PPC, I saw it's better than anything else I've tried. I want to go all Noctua but never owned a Redux, I would appreciate any insight on this. Should I get Redux or Brown poo.

HerrXRDS wrote:I'm looking for some insight from someone who owned both Redux and the standard beige version. Looking at their website, the Redux lineup seems to be worse by a slight margin than their brown counterpart. Looking at some online reviews, the results are opposite. The most comprehensive tests I've found are from CoolingTechnique and from their results, Redux are noticeable better. Searching for other reviews and forums, the results are mixed, some say they are noisier, other say they are better but no one seems to have own both of have a clear answer.

A while ago I bought a pair of P14r Redux PWM for my NH-C14: with reference to the original brown/pink P14, I didn't found any really noticeable noise difference at my usual speeds (around 200rpm at idle, around 600rpm at load: being differently controlled their settings are different, 10-29% duty cycle vs 25-50% voltage, and the Redux are more effective at full speed because they actually spin faster, 1500rpm vs 1200rpm).
Broadly speaking I'm fully satisfied by both these fans.

To be simple enough, redux fans are technologically mostly previous gen Noctua fans, with grey color instead of brown, and with just the fan & screws in the kit. No noticeable noise difference.

Thank you for the replies. Being that there's no big difference between the two, I went and bought 10 Redux fans due to Larry's review on the P14 compared to A14 , he said the P14 has a more pleasant sound signature and figured the P14s REDUX is just a redesigned P14 in a square case.

Why were there no Noctua fans in the last couple of fan round-ups? Surely they are some of the more popular fans for people on this website. I've been rather skeptical of them (and of their price tag) but it seems like these redux ones have come down in price dramatically.