ARCTIC F12 TC - 120 mm Case Fan with Temperature Control, Quiet Motor, Computer, Fan Speed: 300-1350 RPM - Black, White

I bought a 120mm for the front and an 80mm for the back of my old server. I had recently removed the old single 80mm exhaust that came in the original case and purchased a new 120 for the front that was advertised as "silent" with great airflow. It didn't come with screws, was noisy as hell, and I couldn't even feel any airflow past the disk drives. Bummer.I installed the new Arctic Temp Controlled fans and was pleasantly surprised. Very quiet, good airflow. Chassis temp is lowest it's been in years with fans idling or at low speed and very quiet most of the time. When the server is under heavy load you can hear some fan noise, but the case stays cool. Just the way it's supposed to work. Fans work exactly as advertised. At this price, I didn't expect that but took a chance upon recommendation from friend.Note: The fans came with the new style mounting screws, which I prefer. I have read complaints about these screws being too soft and the heads stripping easily. The idea here folks is if your accidentally cross-threading the screws, the screw gets damaged instead of the plastic fan case. Which would YOU prefer to replace, a screw or the fan?

Arctic is a brand I'd highly recommend. I have an Arctic freeze pro rev 2.0 cooling my cpu, and it still hasn't died 2 years after installation. Both my friends Cooler "Master" fans died, as well as their same branded case fans. The real selling point behind these fans is the feature of having an independent temperature sensor connected to the fan. The fan connects with a 3 prong setup, which explains the need for the temperature sensor. Each fan, if multiple are applied to a case, will independently rise and lower fan speeds as deemed necessary, saving on energy consumption, noise, and fan life. I have tested to see if the fan does increase in speed with temperature, due to the fact that at idle, this fan does not seem to move much air. Keep in mind though that my other case fans are not Arctic brand, so they run off the 4 prong mobo connection and receive their orders from the mobo itself, hence why the Arctic fan might not feel the need to assist until its deemed necessary. But when it is needed, the second it is needed, it does work, quietly and efficiently.

This review is for the ARCTIC F12 TC - 120 mm Case Fan with Temperature ControlI just purchased two of these. I tend to have slightly unusual uses for products like these. I do use them in computers but I am one of the people who has never really been happy with PWM. Especially as it is implemented in my motherboard and BIOS (I've had the same motherboard for years).The obvious and nice thing about these fans is you put the temperature probe where you thing the heat is the highest and you simply use as many of these fans as you need and you don't have to configure any settings.There is only one major con I have discovered with these fans (and other lower end fans in Arctic's line, from what I can tell). The cables on these things are incredibly thin. And not in a good way. I don't really know or care whether this causes them to be less efficient but what bothers me is sometimes when you plug fans into a header, they can be stubborn to get back off. Now of course you really should never pull on a fan cable but sometimes you might kind of have to unless you want to take your whole PC apart. And the cables on most fans (at least the ones I've had) are more than robust enough to at least withstand a gentle tug or two here and there. These? I wouldn't pull on these.But anyway, I started to install one of these fans in my case and things were going pretty good until I started trying to find a suitable location to place the temperature probe. I decided to zip tie it in a location that was about right. I then went to snip the excess off the zip tie and you guessed it. I accidentally snipped the wire that goes to the temperature probe.Now I'm not great at soldering but I can do it if I have to but my hands are just not very steady. Which means I hate to solder. Even when I'm soldering connections that are fairly large. The wires on this fan are so delicate that you almost can't even strip the insulation off of them with a razor blade without either cutting the whole wire in half or cutting multiple strands of the super thin wires within (of which there are very few).I kid you not, soldering these wires back together and covering the connections safely with heat shrink was practically brain surgery. I ordered two fans because I needed two of them. Exactly two. I did not want to order another one to replace the one I foolishly chopped the probe off of so I knew it would be a miracle of I got this probe soldered back on just right. Somehow I did and the fan miraculously still does what it's supposed to do. But it would have been a lot less tedious if the wires had enough meat on them to where you don't have to almost put them under a microscope to work with them.Obviously, this is not something Arctic ever intends for a customer to have to do. It was my mistake. Thicker wires would not have prevented me from chopping them in half. It's just that if you ever have to fix them, you have your work cut out for you in a bad way.Otherwise, these are some of the quietest fans I own. The temperature sensor seems to work really well. I haven't even see it get close to full speed yet so I don't even know how loud they be if they did ramp up that high.I'll have to update this review over time since I can't say much about their actual quality or longevity having just gotten them. I think the temperature control thing is a really great feature though and don't know why it's not more common. This is almost a premium feature on a very affordable fan (which seems to be pretty well made as well). Some manufacturers would sell you fans with zero features that won't last a year for this price.Update (couple days later)Now that I have had some experience with them, I do have to say that although I still think they are quiet, this is mostly true only so long as they remain below 1,000 RPMs. At about 300-900 RPM, they are about as quiet as it gets. Above 950 RPMs, the noise level goes up significantly. This is especially true if you're using them as intake fans. Which for whatever reason, is fairly common. Many fans make more objectionable noise when used as intake. At top speed, they're pretty noisy. So if you're buying them and thinking you're going to put the probe in a location where there's a lot of heat, the RPMs are probably going to go well over 1000 and it's going to be noisy. So the best strategy would probably be to buy more of them than you think you'll need and use them in a case that has a lot of fan slots so you can just add more fans and they'll move more slowly.