Breaking the Rules: We 3D Printed a Noctua Computer Fan

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]We're finally gonna answer the question.

[00:00:02]Only with this level of precision can you get the true answer to the question of if I buy an Noctua NFA 12G2 for like $40, destroy it to claim the motor and then print my own to put the the motor into like some sort of cannibal movie where they wear the skin of their victims.

[00:00:27]Will it be better than the original Noctto fan? Well, we will have your answer.

[00:00:35]No one else is going to do this to this degree.

[00:00:42]It's working. Hang on.

[00:00:47]We've made our own unofficial official Noctua fans. Noctua released 3D CAD models of several of its products, recently adding to them the NFA12 G2.

[00:00:58]Noctua's page says that these are for mechanical design, spacing, animations, but not 3D printing. These files are definitely not supposed to be 3D printed. Noa says, quote, "Do not use these models for 3D printing." End quote. Now, this immediately was met with headlines like, quote, "You can now 3D print your own Noctua fans, but you can't build a full clone. Challenge accepted. Allow us to introduce you to the full clone.

[00:01:26]I to be fair, we did have to buy a Noctua fan and cut it into pieces to make the full clone cuz we needed to get the motor out of it. But technically, they said we couldn't build a full clone and it's right here. Look, I guess what we're saying is all you need to build your own Noctua fan for cheaper is to to first buy a Noctua fan and cut it into pieces and take the motor out. But and then then you can make your own fan. Today, Mike's going to work through making the fan and 3D printing it. I'm going to run Noctua's NF12G2 through our fan tester, and then I'll test Mike's version of it.

[00:02:02]If it works at all, we'll be happy with it. But the full disclaimer is we're like brand new to 3D printing. little late to it. I mean, I've covered it in the past, but this is our first kind of real project. We've done anything with a 3D printer in a video. So, a lot of you know a whole hell of a lot more about 3D printing than us. So, we are going to be noobs at going through this process.

[00:02:23]And, uh, if you have ideas or feedback or whatever, wide open to it. We'd love to read it, to study it. Uh, we've had a lot of fun with 3D printing. And Mike in particular with Andrew, they've been working on the 3D printer for a while with a bunch of different projects. So, this is kind of our first one we're showing off. Uh, and we're just we're just we're going to make some fans and then we're going to go completely overkill on testing those fans in a Hemi and a quick chamber and on a fan tester because why the [ __ ] not? It's fun to do. Let's get into it. Before that, this video is brought to you by the Thermaltch TR100 portable miniITX case.

[00:02:56]The TR100 case has a mesh ventilated front panel, heavily perforated side and top panels, and claims to support up to 280 mm liquid coolers, and large GPUs up to 360 mm long and 70 mm thick. It even has an optional suitcase with cutouts for the system, a mouse, keyboard, and monitor for transport. The Thermaltch TR100 MiniITX case targets portable, smaller form factor PC building while maintaining compatibility for relatively large components. Learn more at the link in the description below. All right, so Noctto files aren't exact one:1 replicas of the actual fans they sell. They're close in some ways, but they're very different in others. And uh it's still awesome that Noctar released CAD files at all because it allows us to do stupid stuff like this. Okay, that's all right. That's that's maybe not the best example of the we we'll we'll fix that. Anyway, it's awesome they released these because it's fun to do this stuff and they are clear about the uses. They say quote, "These public 3D CAD models accurately represent mounting dimensions as well as the overall external dimensions of the product. to protect our intellectual property. Certain features such as fan impeller geometries have been slightly modified while remaining visually very close to the actual product. End quote. Let's jump over to Mike to build the fan.

[00:04:10]>> Okay, my job is to print that. So, this is the G2 fan. Um, when they initially announced that they were going to release these CAD files publicly, um, I went ahead and downloaded the, uh, A12 25 120 mm regular firstg fan. Uh, and I went ahead and just printed it. Uh, there's a lot of things that aren't exactly 3D printing optimized.

[00:04:36]Obviously, the software, we're using Bamboo Lab software, um, threw in a bunch of supports, rightfully so.

[00:04:42]There's a bunch of overhanging areas. Um you can see a bunch of supports on the sides here for uh where all these cutouts are. And then the first challenge we're going to deal with or first problem we're going to solve for is going to be the impeller. So you could see that the uh file has absolutely no cutouts or space or modeling for where the motor would go.

[00:05:05]And we can see that here in the software as well on the G2 fan.

[00:05:10]You can see that's just a solid block.

[00:05:13]Um, so we're going to have to fix that and make it fit on a motor. Um, speaking of motor, we're going to need one first because obviously we can't 3D print a motor. So, let's go cut up an actual knock to a fan and harvest its motor. They've got like a sticker of some kind on the back here.

[00:05:33]Okay, cool. W That's like a hefty like metal. That's like a serious serious sticker. It looks like this is just press fit.

[00:05:56]We're free. Looks pretty good. So, truth be told, this is actually the second time I've done this. Um, so I'm going to cut along like right in front of the top of the impeller blades here along the entire outside of this motor housing. So we did this earlier and I realized that the um impeller material is actually structural so it helped it float in the center of the motor. But like now this doesn't spin freely.

[00:06:27]So, I've got to We have to make sure to keep part of this impeller intact, otherwise we can't use the motor.

[00:06:43]Take a look. See if this thing It's going.

[00:06:51]Look at that.

[00:06:54]Better than the day it was made.

[00:06:57]All right, so Mike is 3D printing his fan. We're going to test the Noctua NFA12 G2. We need baseline numbers of the PPV model. And to do that, we're going to throw it on the fan tester, which we've been using this a lot lately in our case reviews. That's going to provide air for the machine. Now, we need the power from the circuit breaker.

[00:07:23]This is our pre-flight checklist. We need to um make sure it's all working and calibrated. So, I switch to manual mode. If you peer in through the window here, you'll see that there's these almost submarine like vault doors that open and close along with the counter blower in the machine, which is down here. That's what provides the testing capabilities. We need to also calibrate our results for the machine.

[00:07:50]First though, we need to zero this out.

[00:07:56]Yeah.

[00:07:59]So, that's just opened up all the valves, the doors in here that we were just looking at. They're all open now.

[00:08:05]And down here, you can see we've got like a negative 002. That's fine. That's within reason. But zeroing it out. Uh sometimes you'll get like a minus1 minus 2. This is pressure millimeters aqua.

[00:08:17]And um what the machine's doing now is calibrating, getting everything set back to zero. So then when we can run our test, it starts at baseline zero instead of like minus two or something. I got to go back behind the machine really quick.

[00:08:28]All right. So on the back here we have Oh. Oh. Oh, there's there's snipers.

[00:08:33]It's got to be Jensen's people. They found us.

[00:08:37]>> They've infiltrated us.

[00:08:38]>> They've infiltrated. This is pretty empty right now. I need to fill this for It's still wet, so that's good. So this is a sock. I It's not like literally a sock. That's just what they call it.

[00:08:47]This is a piece of cloth. It hangs over this. This thing's an uh thermometer and so there's this like metal rod that sticks in and actually if you get a shot down so you see TD is temperature dry.

[00:09:02]TWW is temperature wet and this D is a uh so this is a temperature sensor. The one in this box is the same thing. It's just a thermometer except it's got that piece of cloth wrapped over it and then there's this fan uh that just provides some some cooling. And so what this does is this going to let us adjust for humidity. So, humidity control uh and altitude and things like that really matter. So, in order to do our test in, I need to get this at least half filled.

[00:09:28]We have now zeroed out. So, auto zero is at zero. If you look down here, every gauge that should be zero is zero. Now, we just need to actually run a test. And the first thing we're going to do is a quick orifice tester for calibration, which is the uh system resistance curve.

[00:09:52]And we're going to do resistance settings starting at four steps of four going up to 40 CFM. So, the way this works is that counter blower I was showing earlier is actually gonna provide all of the the movement of the air for the machine and it's going to try and suck air through into the machine uh through this kind of like known size uh hole. So, you can see here we've got calibration reports in the back from the manufacturer. And so every time we do major major rounds of testing, I do this. I do this for the uh uh Haven BF360 most recently. And here's our calibration report. I'll check it against this. So this um at this point this is this is running and we'll check in when it's done and then start the test of the noto fan while Mike is hopefully things are going smoothly in there. I don't know. All right. So after removing the motor I went ahead and measured the dimensions the outside dimensions of the motor housing here. Um and I've modeled or cut us a hole inside of the impeller that hopefully will fit snugly when we print it. Um, so I think our next step is to go ahead and send this to the printer and see what comes out.

[00:11:18]I've got the first test run of the impeller done here. And just as a quick side note, we're using Bamboo Labs PLA Basic. Um, I did a little bit of research. I know there's stiffer filaments out there, but this was the stiffest one we had on hand and we've got a lot of it. So, I wanted to just use something simple and easy to work with. I mean, this this stuff prints really well. So, um, but speaking of printing well, this did not. Um, so the Bamboo Lab software threw a bunch of supports on the underside. So, it printed like this, of course, and it threw in a bunch of supports on the underside and still was not good enough to help um prevent this from becoming all stringy and and uneven. Obviously, this is going to perform like crap if we try to, you know, move air with it. Um, so I think we're going to have to solve for that next and try to figure out either supports or some other kind of solution. But, uh, why don't we go ahead and try to test fit this on the motor to see if it fits at all.

[00:12:17]Okay. So, it's a little tight. So, I'll have to fix that. So, I'm going to go address that and uh we'll check back in after our next test print.

[00:12:32]Okay, so this this print kind of failed, but I think it has enough for us to do like another dimensional test. What's different about this print is the layer height. We went down to a much lower layer height. So, previously we had been printing at 02, which is kind of your default. Um, this is at 08. Um, what I noticed, and you know, as a disclaimer, we're very new to 3D printing. We're figuring this out as we go. Um, so if you guys knew that, more power to you.

[00:12:57]where where we did not this was discovered during this project. So, um but we noticed what we noticed was when we swapped to the lower layer height, it had a lot less uh it had I was able to do a lot more aggressive of an angle before it added support. I think going forward I'm just going to print in a super low layer height cuz the print time doesn't really matter for this type of project. We're just printing it one off. So, um let's see.

[00:13:21]Oo, I think we're in business. It's starting to look like a fan. This is spinning pretty easily. This might be a little too loose. So, let's go ahead and tighten that up. To test this, I don't need to print the whole thing. So, I've just been printing the collar here. Um, and I found a dimension that fits pretty darn good. And that's like nice and snug. So, let's go ahead and print the whole impeller.

[00:14:06]Hopefully this fits nice. A little loose, but I think that'll work.

[00:14:14]Yeah, I think that'll be just fine.

[00:14:19]Nice. Cool. Next step is to work on the frame. And the first step of that is going to be figuring out how we're going to mount it. And then we'll we'll get to measuring it and making it fit to the frame. All right, so we're back. This is done. The uh the system resistance report is complete. All the numbers look good. These match our calibrated report.

[00:14:40]And so what this means at this point, machine's good. We're calibrated. We've got the water refill. Everything's looking good on it. And now I need to actually get the noto fan on here. We're gonna need to do a two-step process.

[00:14:52]One is getting all the screws in.

[00:15:00]Cool. Okay, couple more steps here.

[00:15:02]First one, we need a way to read this with a laser. Someone's left safety goggles at my station here. I'm I'm not sure if we just forgot to put them back or if it's it's a it's a message for me from OSHA. So, uh, this part's pretty dangerous. We're going to apply the scissors to uh, attack sensor.

[00:15:31]>> Thank you, Steve.

[00:15:32]>> Safety first. Are you ready?

[00:15:34]>> I think so.

[00:15:35]>> You might want to adjust your volume down.

[00:15:43]Okay.

[00:15:46]Cool.

[00:15:48]I need to adjust this laser tack. You'll notice there's this green LED here on the back of the laser tachometer.

[00:15:56]And when I spin this, when the sticker crosses the laser, we see it light up.

[00:16:03]PC control mode, optic mode. And now we're going to set up a test. So, we're going to do a fan performance curve test. And then I'm going to run one set of tests at just 100 for everything.

[00:16:14]100% duty cycle, 100% start and stop.

[00:16:16]We'll do another set of tests at 40% start with 5% increments, 100% stop. So that means 40, 45, 50, 55, so on. But we'll start with 100 100. All right, good to go.

[00:16:29]You can see it's starting to provide power for the fan. So this is just kind of Yep, there we go. 12 volts. So everything is starting to spin up. And in a second if it starts opening valves.

[00:16:40]Yep, that was the first valve. So, very smooth. We'll let this finish. We'll get the results and then once they give me the other fan, I'll throw that on here.

[00:16:53]That looks pretty good. Let's get it measured and start fitting the frame to it. Okay, so I've been hard at work on getting the frame ready.

[00:17:05]After a number of different attempts, I decided to try to make the frame itself a little bit more 3D printing friendly.

[00:17:11]If we take a look here at this model on the right, um this is going to be our more final 3D printed version. So, you can see I've I've removed all the cavitation um that that they they put in there to reduce weight and, you know, material for injection molding, but obviously that's not a problem here. And we want that all kind of filled in. I removed the holes for the rubber grommets that go on the corners of the fan. Um, I wanted to make uh very sure not to remove any features like these uh outlets and inlet kind of uh the fillets that would affect potentially affect the performance cuz I don't want to affect the air flow. I want to retain as much of whatever they have modeled here for air flow as possible. Um, I've also been working pretty hard on the dimension.

[00:18:02]So, dimension of this hole. So, this is where this this brass or I assume this is brass, but where this part of the motor is going to insert into the frame.

[00:18:11]I I really didn't want to glue this or use anything kind of permanent in case it wasn't good or something broke. Um, so I added a very slight um and it's not perceptible to the eye, but a very slight taper to this hole so that when we insert it, it's going to go in partially, but then eventually stop when it hits that taper and it gets too tight. So, let's go ahead and slap it all together and see what happens.

[00:18:43]Press that in.

[00:18:46]Look at that.

[00:18:49]I made a fan. Well, I didn't make it, but I printed it.

[00:18:54]I made it printable.

[00:18:57]Don't worry about that. Those are those are normal noises when you're making fans.

[00:19:05]It's working. Hang on.

[00:19:11]All right, that sounds better.

[00:19:14]>> What was the issue?

[00:19:15]>> It was just striking a little bit uh because I didn't have it far enough on the hub there. But now it's working. We got some special filaments for maybe a final run. Some color appropriate. I don't know how this one's going to print. This is like a wood fil filament, but it looks pretty close to the the brown that we want.

[00:19:40]And this looks pretty close to the beige that we want.

[00:19:52]Is it done? Oh, it's ready.

[00:19:56]It's knocked to our covers. Wow. Okay.

[00:19:59]Oh, >> don't forget >> we don't want it to vibrate.

[00:20:04]>> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is definitely acoustically um Well, it's Hang on.

[00:20:11]Okay, now the acoustics should be pretty compelling.

[00:20:16]>> I just picked up a beige PLA and then we actually had some rosewood wood PLA grain.

[00:20:23]>> Yeah, wood grain, which is it they say that and I was like, "Oh, okay. It's just going to look like wood or have wood, but it actually smells like wood when it's printing. So, I don't know if they actually like put wood.

[00:20:33]>> There's wood. There's wood in it. It's uh I think it was like 30% or something was the marketing, >> which is wild that it doesn't cause more problems, but >> yeah. All right. I'm curious about this.

[00:20:43]So, Oh. Oh my god. There's We're going to need a taxi to get from the blade to the frame.

[00:20:48]>> Three >> 3.7.

[00:20:53]>> They haven't tried marketing bigger number better yet for that one. So, I mean, context for everyone, the getting the blade closer to the frame is better for performance. You're utilizing more of the inner area to actually push the air, and there's um it'll be better for flow. But the downside is different plastics will stretch as it spins and with age, and so they start clipping the inside of the frame housing. Um, but this uses liquid crystal polymer, uh, which to my knowledge is not 3D printable, but is also the reason these fans are unbelievably expensive. But anyway, I think they're definitely sub 1 mm.

[00:21:30]>> Do you have any Do we have any feeler gauges?

[00:21:33]>> Yeah, feeler gauges should be like 0.5 probably.

[00:21:37]>> Oh, wow. It's also going to be hard cuz it's on a I'm putting a flat feeler on a curved surface, so >> sub 6, right? Yeah.

[00:21:47]>> So, subsight. Yeah. Maybe maybe.5 something. This is one of the real ones.

[00:21:53]>> Sorry, I didn't mean to.

[00:21:55]>> They're both real. Okay. This is one of the Noctua fans. Uh, and then this is the 3D printed one. We've got two 3D printed ones.

[00:22:03]>> So, it's press fit. That one actually the Noctua the second round came out a little bit tighter than the first round.

[00:22:09]So, >> it might be due to like filament or just because it was the same setting. So, >> yeah. I mean, that's worth mentioning, too. The filament's going to impact a lot of stuff. We didn't try to like actually do a bunch of um research on if you were to 3D print the fan, which filament would be best. Yeah, >> I will. I will put it on the fan machine.

[00:22:26]>> Okay, >> best of luck.

[00:22:28]>> Good luck, little fan.

[00:22:29]>> Yeah, Noctua has not provided the same exact files for a lot of reasons we already talked about. And so, uh I I do not expect their fan with a 3mm gap will perform anywhere near as well as the fan with like a 0 point whatever it was, like five. I don't know. It's like plus or when you're at plus or minus 0.1 from 0.5, it doesn't really matter the 0.1 anymore against like 3.17. So, uh, we just need Maxim for this test and it's fine.

[00:23:00]I've already tested a a gray version of the 3D printed fan from Mike. So, now the question is, how much do the Noxy colors really add to the performance? The gap fill this time is going to be substantial.

[00:23:18]All right, let's see if it works. Set up a new test.

[00:23:22]Mike felt pretty good about it, so I trust his judgment. There's no bad noise to it. I don't know. It's pretty impressive, honestly. It's the It's the That's the the new Gamers Nexus fan. Look at that. You can't even tell them apart. So, with that, let's cut over to the chart and wrap this up. All right, the results for this are pretty simple, but they are fun. The 3D printed NF12G2 file from Noctua in combination with an actual NF12 G2 motor resulted in far worse results than an actual NFA12 G2 that was made, you know, in a factory with balancing and more precise CAD file and liquid crystal polymer. Credit to Mike. He did an incredible job getting this thing to work at all. And it's actually a lot better than I would have expected. It's just not anywhere close to the actual NF12 G2. But yeah, it's probably on par with like a $1 case fan from a factory or something. The NFA12 G2 had a maximum pressure result of 3.23 mm H2O. In like forlike conditions, the 3D printed version of the fan had a 2.65 result.

[00:24:31]The flow was also far apart with the NF12 G2 at 65 CFM and our fan at 36.9.

[00:24:38]Amazingly though, we had acoustics at the same level when tested in our Hemiooic chamber. We tested at a distance of just half a meter and at a 100% fan speed because we wanted to make sure we maximized the ability to see differences in the results. By noise level alone, there weren't really any differences. The 3D printed fan was technically 1 dB louder. Some of that lack of higher noise may just be because it's not moving as much air. As for the question we all really cared about, printing with a different color filament and apparently about 30% wood grain and the dark brown for the blades. I don't I don't know if Nocta has considered using wood for their blades, but we've proven that at least in some capacity you can.

[00:25:18]I guess they do it in propellers, but anyway, it didn't result in major changes. Although we thought we had discovered Noctua's secret to performance, this objective, definitive, well-refined, and researched testing process proves that once and for all, brown and beige colors are not the reason that Noctua's fans perform the way they do. We thought that all this talk of so-called physics was just pure [ __ ] and that it was all to do with the fan colors. Maybe we got the hex code wrong or we need a different panone. But at least for now, it looks like Noctua has won this battle with its the so-called physics. For fun and just because we have it here, we also pointed our Hemiian coic chamber and its mic and mic at the 3D printed fan and the Noctua NF12G2 to test for frequency spectrum. They both have spikes that are similar, but the 3D printed fan spike occurs at 369 hertz. The NFA12G2 occurs at 275 hertz, which almost perfectly lines up with the blade pass frequency. We're not sure exactly what the spike is from the 3D printed version, but it at least occurs in a similar way, just higher up in the frequency range. The Nocta fan has a much lower noise level overall across the high end of the frequency spectrum.

[00:26:29]It's technically louder in the 1200 to 2,000Hz range, but lower after that. And then the total noise level is pretty similar. The 3D printed fan is also louder in the lower frequency range.

[00:26:39]significantly actually in the 200 to 500 Hz range in particular. Overall, the level is about the same, but the 3D printed model has less smooth of an overall noise arc from low to high frequency. So, that's going to be it for this content. Now, again, Noctua says they don't even want you 3D printing these fans.

[00:26:59]It's not like a It's not a binding contract, but it's supposed to be for people to use for their PC building projects and modeling and things like that and software. Uh, but it was fun.

[00:27:09]You can 3D print it. You're not going to get a motor. Uh but as we've shown here, you know, Noctua, I think probably can get over the fact that we went against them and 3D printed the fan because we did have to buy four Noctua fans, which is like uh I think it was [ __ ] I think it was like $200.

[00:27:29]Uh it was Yeah, it was about $200. 150 bucks with taxes. We had to buy four Nocta fans to cut into pieces and reclaim motors for this testing. So, I don't even think they could be that mad about it. Uh, but I I Oh [ __ ] The all the testing is going to be invalid.

[00:27:47]Wait, wait, there's still time.

[00:27:56]Okay. Oh, that was close. All right. So, the first number the first number might be wrong, but the rest of them will be good. Uh, so that's going to be it for our testing. Um, it is it's about half as good as the Noctua fan for the flow.

[00:28:13]And we're not going to talk about the pressure, but you could feasibly do it.

[00:28:18]And I guess if you wanted to like buy a 50 cent like Hua Bay special fan and rip that motor out and then 3D print this and you know and hollow it out with a Dremel and then taper it so you can press fit it and everything. If you did that, you would have a fan that looks like an Octa fan for very cheap.

[00:28:44]So maybe that's the consumer that's the consumer advice we have for you.

[00:28:48]Thanks for watching. To support this type of content, which clearly deserves the support uh that we have spent like a week on this because it was fun, you can go to store.garosexus.net, grab something like one of our modmats, our coaster packs, uh soldering and project mats, all useful for this kind of thing, especially the soldering and project mats have been really successful lately. So, thank you for that. and patreon.com/gamersaxes.