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Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

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Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#251

Post by DrNefario »

herbst wrote: post #145
navane wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fan broke after five? years of near 24/7 use. Customer support was very easy to reach. They sent me a new one after I sent some serial numbers as proof. They asked me then to break off a blade, and a picture of it so I didn't have to sent it back.

I get why. But that still seems wasteful

Anecdotally, when my Xtrfy MZ1 mouse cable started shorting 5V to ground, they required a similar process (cutting the cable) before sending a replacement.

This was their response when I asked why: > Yes this policy was put in place because there was multiple instances of people reselling their faulty products after receiving a replacement.

> The secondhand buyers then reached out to us, let down to have received a broken product.

I'd imagine it's a similar reason for Noctua.

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#252

Post by jaapz »

ufocia wrote: post #170
vladvasiliu wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I have a bunch of lower-end black fans, some of them quite old, from before transparent cases were a thing. They're actually pretty much gray if I don't wipe them off. Noctua's signature... brown-orange? Whatever that color is, it has the same issue. The blades are basically gray if I don't wipe them. Haven't seen anybody start a gray craze, though. Though I have a grayish motorbike that also shows dust and dir…

If it were about performance and not marketing, they'd try to optimize for resistance to dust adhesion and resource consumption: energy, cost, durability, etc.

What makes you think they don't?

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#253

Post by krs_ »

biosboiii wrote: post #154
matsemann wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we solved the yellowing? I guess many of us have memories of old and ugly yellow computers.

TIL: Generally all plastics exposed to UV start to photodegrade. If you google why old computers turn particularly yellow most sources point to bromine-based flame retardant agents in the plastic, but some people make a convincing case[1] that ABS just naturally turns yellow in UV light. Not much real research into that topic, interestingly. [1] https://medium.com/@pueojit/a-look-into-the-yellowing-and-de...

I've had a few experiences with retrobrighting and having it come out really nicely, then after being stored away in a box for a couple of years it's somehow yellow again. It's probably different with different plastics but it doesn't seem so clear cut that it's always the UV light causing it.

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#254

Post by picture »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #155
nolok wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to industrial manufacturing, a think of lot of people are not realizing (by lack of education on the matter in general knowledge or schooling) the difference between levels of manufacturing, the precision required for some things, and how the hard part is having the full chain (making the tool that can make the tool that can make the tool that ...) because you can't jump from nothing to milimeter precis…

This analysis is missing price though. A lot of times it's cheaper to just full send it than produce a full run at a given quality with a low rejection rate. The "old" way of making a black fan is you just QC check them, send the good ones to Noctua, send the crappy ones to someone who DGAF because they're putting them some sort of industrial appliance that needs airflow through the box. Everyone "wins" this way beca…

Yes you provide a great example of binning and market separation. Though I think in this case there's some limiting factors that make it infeasible to bin these fancy Noctua fan rotors including: 1) tooling have limited lifetime and will get sloppier and worse yields as time goes on. It's inefficient to use precious cycles of a precise tool and die on producing lower grade parts. 2) the material itself is likely more expensive than what industrial/lower grade use cases require. Why use reject Noctua when you can get regular crappy plastic for 1/500th the cost? 3) I expect Noctua stuff to be a much lower volume than lower cost/quality vendors so the volume of Noctua rejects is likely too low for a company to dedicate a product line using it. 4) brand/marketing reasons

Another obvious use case of binning is for microchips where the same die can be "wounded" to create multiple product variants that target different market segments, and also yield improvement from being able to isolate and disable an area of the die that are defective. However improving the manufacturability and yield itself is still fundamentally important

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#255

Post by layer8 »

brookst wrote: post #247
layer8 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, half a millimeter isn’t even that much precision, generally speaking. You wouldn’t be anywhere close to manufacturing a working ball pen at that precision. Or even an acceptable keyboard, if we stay with plastic. With fans blades, the difficulty is probably the precision relative to the fan diameter.

The difficulty is clearance between two moving parts, with blades that deform slightly due to air pressure (at different amounts for different speeds) and with thermal expansion.

That’s not what the article says, they relate it to reproducibility of the manufacturing process: “Achieving such small tip clearances is essentially at the absolute limit of what injection moulding can consistently reproduce”. Though maybe they misphrased that, as for example Lego pieces have significantly smaller tolerances and are also manufactured using injection molding.

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#256

Post by Brian_K_White »

nerdsniper wrote: post #105
fxtentacle wrote: post #38

This is content marketing executed perfectly :) Reading it, I learned something new and interesting and they had an opportunity to show off one of their differentiators against the competition (low leakage flow due to tighter tolerances) and then at the end they casually mention the new product that has just opened for pre-orders.

I'd love more white, personally. I also don't understand the obsession with black. For me, black objects are very difficult to observe in detail, and that irks me.

Because it's a fan and I don't want to see it, and if I must see it, I don't want it to have any color of it's own since chances are very low that whatever color it is just happens to be the perfect addition to all my other posessions next to it.

I don't understand why anyone would think this is an obsession with black.

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#257

Post by initatus »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #91
LiamPowell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2×? Try 5× for the Noctua NF-A12x25 compared the the Arctic P12 Pro that matches or beats it in most metrics. Which isn't to say the Noctua fan is bad, it's just a luxury product for reasons other than performance.

Disclaimer: I read HWCooling like everyone serious about the subject. These reviews aren't everything, the appalling QC that results in resonances or coil whine lottery isn't mentioned. In general, yes, Noctua is overpriced and Arctic is an incredible value, but when you want to optimize your silence/performance ratio, it's still Noctua, BeQuiet or (sometimes) Thermalright.

> coil whine lottery

This was a fun revelation when I got into watercooling. You might not hear coil whine over a gpus fans. But remove the fans and put it under load and whoo boy.

So this confuses social media discussions on the topic by mixing together everyone's reports, regardless of their level of acoustic masking. "My card has no whine!" says the guy with three 2000 rpm fans going etc.

Gpu waterblocks seem to be shifting towards fully enclosed "tomb" style and I can't help but wonder if coil whine contributed to that decision.

But on topic, I had seven a12x25 in my last build, two a12 and four a20 in my current build. They are exceptional. A computer is as quiet as it's loudest part. If your care about noise, why would you ever skimp on the moving parts.

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#258

Post by buran77 »

moontear wrote: post #65
fxtentacle wrote: post #38

This is content marketing executed perfectly :) Reading it, I learned something new and interesting and they had an opportunity to show off one of their differentiators against the competition (low leakage flow due to tighter tolerances) and then at the end they casually mention the new product that has just opened for pre-orders.

I enjoyed reading it. Informative and showing of their processes and giving some intricate details. And yes, the end goal is to sell products which is fine by me. I take this over any generic non-saying marketing-blurb any time.

Normally I love this kind of article too because I consider it engineering, not marketing, the product name dropping at the end just reinforces the message. But either I'm missing some details that could have been spelled our more clearly, or the engineers were taking a break when the marketers were writing some parts. I'd love to stand corrected if someone more informed has details.

> advanced polymers such as Sterrox® LCP

> we have implemented a tip clearance of only 0.5mm (120mm models) or 0.7mm (140mm models)

> Achieving such small tip clearances is essentially at the absolute limit of what injection moulding can consistently reproduce.

Typical tolerances for injection moulding are 0.1mm, or 0.03 for high precision, or even better. LEGO was said to be in the 0.01-0.03mm. So on the face of it the last statement is patently false or at least too generic, injection moulding can consistently do much better than 0.5mm. With standard injection moulding precision (0.1mm) the worst case scenario for the two parts (fan and shroud) mating would still stay comfortably below 0.5mm.

So the question to the experts, is Sterrox® LCP that much harder to work with and the marketing team just didn't understand the importance of being clear about this? Is it a decimal point typo and the numbers should be 0.05 and 0.07?

Re: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

#259

Post by lm411 »

j16sdiz wrote: post #2

If you need that kind of precision, yes. But I don't think they really need that.

The quality difference between various fans is absolutely huge.

I can put in a few Noctua fans and be confident they are going to last 5+ years of running 24x7. Or I can put in 25% cheaper fans and be pretty much guaranteed one or more is going to fail within the first couple years.

In my opinion, fans are never a place to cheap out when building a PC - server or desktop, whatever.

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