[adrian_b]

The benchmarks do not tell everything.

I have used Noctua fans in computers where they worked for a decade or so, even 24x7, until an upgrade or replacement of the computer was required by other reasons than because of the fans.

I have also had many problems caused by cheaper fans.

So now I always prefer to use rather expensive fans and power supplies, from brands with which I have accumulated many years of experience, for peace of mind.

Perhaps other brands of fans that nowadays give similar results in benchmarks also have similar reliability, but I am not willing to bet on it.

[kenhwang]

If we're going by anecdotes, my last Noctuas showing signs of failure (I had 6 of them, one was ~200rpm slower than it should be, one took a several seconds longer to start spinning from a stop) about a year after the end of warranty was partially why I retired them. Same with the set of Noctuas before them (apparently my first set was from 2010). I suppose they all technically still spun so they were still usable, just not to original performance; still, hard to be too upset about the product making it through the long warranty period without issue.

But my Arctics that was installed in the same case that ran for the same amount of time are still chugging along strong, and those are about as cheap as fans get. Different load/use case though so it's probably not a fair comparison.

These days, I really think the competition has caught up or passed Noctua.