Up on the review block today we’ve got a fan! Yep it’s a plan old fan, well sort of, it’s from Noctua so that should tell you that it’s not just any plain old fan right?

The NF-B9 is a 92mm fan that is very different from every other fan out there on the market today, it has teeth on the blade, well technically they are called Vortex Control Notches, but they look like teeth to me. Anyway, the NF-B9 also has beveled blade tips, and Noctua’s own SC Drive system and SSO bearing to make for one very quiet fan that still can move quite a bit of air.

So, let’s just get right into this review…

Noctua NF-B9 92mm Fan Review

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: Noctua

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Noctua NF-B9 92mm Fan

The NF-B9’s highly-optimized blade design achieves an exceptional level of airflow and static pressure that most other fans can only reach at much higher speeds. Beveled blade tips, Vortex-Control Notches as well as Noctua’s SC drive system and premium-grade SSO-Bearing ensure outstanding quietness and long-term stability.

Specs:

Size: 92x92x25 mm

Bearing: SSO-Bearing

Blade Geometry: NF-B9 Blade Design

Rotational Speed (+/- 10%): 1600 RPM

Rotational Speed with L.N.A. (+/- 10%): 1300 RPM

Rotational Speed with U.L.N.A. (+/- 10%): 1000 RPM

Airflow: 64.3 m/h

Airflow with L.N.A.: 52.6 m/h

Airflow with U.L.N.A.: 41.1 m/h

Acoustical Noise: 17.6 dB(A)

Acoustical Noise with L.N.A.: 13.1 dB(A)

Acoustical Noise with U.L.N.A.: 7.9* dB(A)

Static Pressure: 1.61 mm H2O

Static Pressure with L.N.A.: 1.09 mm H2O

Static Pressure with U.L.N.A.: 0.64 mm H2O

Input Power: 1.32 W

Input Current: 0.11 A

Voltage Range: 12 V

MTBF: > 150.000 h

Scope of Delivery:

* Ultra-Low-Noise Adapter (U.L.N.A.)

* Low-Noise Adapter (L.N.A.)

* 4 Vibration Compensators

* 3:4-Pin Adapter

* 4 Fan Screws

Warranty: 6 years

Features:

Beveled Blade Tips

Due to advanced design measures like the beveled blade tips, the NF-B9 is surprisingly quiet despite its outstanding airflow and pressure performance.

Vortex-Control Notches

Psychoacoustic optimizations like the Vortex-Control Notches make the NF-B9’s noise pattern more pleasant to the human ear.

Smooth Commutation Drive

The new SC drive system reduces torque variations and thereby ensures improved running smoothness, particularly at lower speeds.

Next to aerodynamic noise and bearing related noises, the so called "commutation noise" or "switching noise" can play a major role in the noise emission of axial fans with brushless DC motors. At each transition from one stator coil to another, the rotor receives a sudden torque pulse when the next coil switches on. Each of these torque pulses causes a minute deformation of the whole fan structure. Depending on rpm, torque and the material of the fan, this can result in noticeable noises. Noctua’s Smooth Commutation Drive system provides more continuous switching in order to achieve a smoother transition between the stator coils and thereby significantly contributes to the fan’s overall quietness.

Self-stabilizing oil-pressure bearing

Noctua’s well proven SSO-Bearing technology guarantees supremely quiet operation and exceptional long-term stability.

Thanks to an optimized principle of operation, the self-stabilising oil-pressure bearing (SSO bearing) of the Noctua NF-S12 and NF-R8 series surpasses current types of ball, sleeve or liquid bearings in terms of long-term stability and quietness.

The rotary motion of the axis generates pressure upon the special oil enclosed within the bearing. This causes the build-up of a dynamic pressure field that centers and stabilizes the axis within the bearing shell. While conventional liquid bearings employ the principle of hydrodynamic pressure too, the SSO bearing is equipped with an additional magnet that supports the self-stabilization of the rotor axis. This allows for a faster, more precise and more reliable centering of the rotor axis and thus increases the long-term stability and quietness of the bearing: When the fan starts, the dynamic pressure field of the liquid bearing needs to build up first, which results in an initial precession of the axis, the so called gyro effect. This amounts to an increased abrasion until the axis is stabilized through the build-up of the dynamic pressure field, which may by and by lead to increased noise emission and bearing defects. Because of this, the SSO bearing possesses a built in magnet, whose field ensures the immediate self-stabilization of the rotor and hence reduces the gyro effect. In addition to the stabilization during the start-up phase of the fan, the supporting magnet allows for a more exact centering of the axis within the bearing shell and thus further reduces bearing resistance, abrasion and noise emission.

SSO compared to conventional sleeve and ball bearings

The sleeve and ball bearings currently predominating the fan market exhibit major drawbacks: While conventional sleeve bearings initially have very low noise emissions, they mostly possess unsatisfying long-term stability, which leads to a short overall lifespan and increasing noise after longer operating times. High grade ball bearings, on the other hand, while providing satisfying long-term stability operate at slightly higher noise levels from the beginning. The SSO bearing not only surpasses the quietness of conventional sleeve bearings but also the long-term stability of current top-of-the-line ball bearings.

NF-B9 Blade Design

Employing advanced noise-reduction techniques like Beveled Blade-Tips and Vortex-Control Notches, the NF-B9’s highly-optimized blade design provides superior pressure and airflow performance at extremely low noise levels.

By increasing the distance between the impeller and the frame at the outermost areas of the fan where the impeller achieves the highest velocities, beveled blade tips help to reduce critical rotor-stator interaction. This measure makes it possible to combine the large blade surface area and high profile chord length of a high-output blade geometry with excellent quietness of operation.

Basically, an increase in static pressure usually brings about higher noise emissions. In the case of the NF-B9, this problem is dealt with by adding Vortex-Control Notches to the blades’ trailing edges. Due to the two notches at the trailing edge, the flows along the suction and pressure side mix more smoothly. This allows for less turbulence and velocity loss, which leads to a significant reduction in noise emission as well as increased efficiency. In order to achieve the smoothest possible transition and maximum noise reduction, the Vortex-Control Notches are rounded in shape.

In addition to optimizing the joining of the flows at the trailing edge, the Vortex-Control Notches fulfil the task of psychoacoustic optimization: Due to the Vortex-Control Notches, trailing edge vortices are split up into several smaller vortices. Thus the noise is spread over a wider range of frequencies and therefore perceived as much less annoying.

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A Better Look at Things

The packaging for the NF-B9 is the familiar style of Noctua, well done with lots of information on the front, back and a fold out section with even more information explaining the technology behind the creation of this new fan.

Opening the package we find another plastic box that holds the fan and accessories in compartments.

Included with the NF-B9 is a 3-Pin Molex adapter, standard fan screws, silicone grommets or vibration compensators, and two fan speed adapters that are color coded.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the NF-B9 is not your normal fan, besides the Noctua style colors, the fan blades are very different than any other out there today. The fan and housing are very well made and sturdy, a top quality product that we’ve come to expect from Noctua.

Here’s a few close up shots of the fan blades themselves:

You can see that he differences from ‘normal’ fans aren’t just the ‘teeth’ but the blade itself is shaped very differently as well.

Installation, Testing and Comparison

For testing a fan I believe in testing its performance while attached to a CPU cooler, not just slapping it in a case and saying yeah that’s quiet, and it was easy to install and be done with it…

I tested the NF-B9 92mm fan using Noctua’s own NH-U9F CPU cooler on my Core2Quad Q6660 CPU, and put the NF-B9 up against the 92mm fan that came with it, the NF-9-1600 just to see what difference if any there is with this new style of fan.

The ambient room temperature was approximately 19C during all testing with a +/- .3 degree variation.

I tested the NF-B9 while it was connected to the CPU header of my mother board (varying RPMS), while connected straight to Molex (1600RPMS), connected with L.N.A Adapter (1300RPMS), and with the U.L.N.A Adapter (1000RPMS). All speeds were quiet in that they added little or no noise to my case and could not be heard over the rest of the fans in my case and components.

The NF-9-1600 from the Noctua NH-U9F CPU Cooler runs at a max speed of 1600RPMS while connected to Molex, and the speed varies when connected to the motherboards CPU header as with most any fan.

In the following graph you’ll see quite a few temperatures for my Q6660 CPU, the results show the highest recorded temperature of all four cores, recorded using CoreTemp while running two instances of Orthos Stress Prime with Affinity set to two cores for each instance effectively giving me 100% usage of all cores of the Q6660. Tests were run several times over a one week period and averaged out.

As you can see from the results there is a slight performance increase over the NF-9-1600 but not much, only a degree, and we can see that running the NF-B9 at 1600RPMS or 1300RPMS there is no difference in the performance either.

Overall, yes we see better temps with the NF-B9 and it’s very quiet as well…

I do believe the NF-B9 would make a great case fan also as most 92mm fans that come with cases today are a bit on the loud side. You can push the same amount of air with the Noctua and not be as loud.

I like the included rubber grommets, or Vibration Compensators as Noctua calls them, I do think they make a difference and installation is easier with them.

The Noctua NF-B9 is supposedly quieter than the NF-S-1600 as well, but I don’t have the equipment to test those claims I can only report what my ears tell me and they are both very quiet…

Summary:

Noctua makes great products and they seem to get better with each revision or re-engineering of them.

The NF-B9 is a great choice for those looking for great performance without the added noise that comes with high CFM fans.

Noctua always has nice extras with their products, most fans come with a set of screws and maybe a Molex adapter, but the NF-B9 comes with fan speed adapters and silicone vibration dampeners as well.

DragonSteelMods gives the Noctua NF-B9 92mm fan a 5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.

Pros:

-Quiet

-Well made

-Lots of extras

-Different operating modes/speeds

Cons:

-None really

I would like to thank Noctua for the chance to review the NF-B9 92mm Fan and for their continued support of DSM.

Discuss, Questions HERE