I've been busy testing to find the best PC fans for any build. PC builders often overlook fans when buying components, but cool hardware is essential for optimal gaming performance. We recommend making sure your fans are up to a high standard, for both cooler and quieter PC operation.
The best PC fan today is the Noctua NF-A12x25 G2. Specifically, the chromax.black version. It's much easier on the eyes than the company's famous brown and beige option but just as excellent. It performs incredibly well during testing, easily dominating when speed and noise are factored in.
If you prefer something more affordable, check out Arctic's P12 Pro. You can buy a multipack of these very capable fans for very little money. They also come in a couple different options including A-RGB, white, and reverse.
The quick list
Expect to pay: $35 / £29
Expect to pay: $27 / £23 (5-pack)
Expect to pay: $34 / £28
Jacob has been testing fans for over half a decade. As someone that often likes to get into the weeds for each and every PC build he works on, he pays close attention to pressure ratings and airflow measurements of each one. He brings that level of attention to this guide, along with his very own at-home wind tunnel and anemometer setup to test manufacturer's claims and decide on his top picks.
July 17, 2026: Updated with new picks following a fresh round of fan testing.
The best PC fan
✅ You want a quiet PC: The NF-A12x25 G2 is able to deliver spectacular airflow throughout its limited RPM range, and does so especially quietly.
❌ You want a cheap option: The NF-A12x25 G2 is an impressive thing, but it's also mighty expensive. You could buy five P12 Pro fans for less than a single G2.
We rate the Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 PWM as the best PC fan for its high airflow at lower RPMs and low noise.
It's available in two colors: black (chromax.black) or beige/brown. This fan is rated to an expected lifespan (MTTF) of over 150,000 hours. That's pretty good by comparison to the bulk of fans below 100,000 hours, and up there with more reliable units. Noctua offers a six-year warranty with this fan, which is again right up there with some of the best around.
On a technical level, Noctua has done the near-impossible here with an extremely small gap between the fan blades and the housing. It's just 0.5 mm, or in layman's terms, as thin as a milkman's dinner. This tiny gap is partially responsible for this fan's impressive performance, even at low RPM, and Noctua's massive headache trying to build the darn thing. It took roughly a decade to get right.
Spinning at up to 1800 RPM, the A12x25 G2 isn't the quickest of the bunch. It pushes 2.2 m/s at that speed, as measured by my own anemometer, which is right in the middle of the pack of those I tested.
What's more impressive is that it hit the third-lowest noise reading while delivering that 2.2 m/s of the ten fans tested alongside it in my most recent group test. It delivered that 2.2 m/s at 42.5 dBA. The two lower than that are the NF-A12x25 PWM at 2 m/s at 41 dBA and the Arctic P12 PWM PST at 1.8 m/s at 42 dBA.
The G2 also continues to push plenty of air at lower speeds, managing even 0.4 m/s at 360 rpm. High airflow at lower RPMs will make the most difference in day-to-day use, where your fan will run to varying duty cycles, often set by the BIOS. You'll quite likely find your PC hovering around 40–80% more often than not, which is when this fan is at its best.
The A12x25 G2 will cost you $35/€35, which is undoubtedly a lot of money for any fan, even one as good as this. If you're looking for something cheaper, we have just the thing below.
The best budget PC fan
✅ You need lots of fans: You can grab a five-pack of matching P12 Pro fans for very little these days.
❌ You want silence: The P12 Pro is very loud at full speed. You'll want to adjust your fan curve to keep the noise down.
The best budget PC fans have to be the Arctic P12 Pro. These fans are a new and improved version of our previous pick, the Arctic P12 PST PWM, but they offer a higher airflow rating, static pressure, and RPM.
There are a couple options to choose from for the P12 Pro: standard black fans, white fans, and A-RGB fans. All of which are very affordable, but especially the standard black fans. We've seen five of those on sale for as little as $18. Eighteen bucks!
This fan is rated to a high airflow of 77 CFM, but using my anemometer and makeshift wind tunnel, I can test it myself. The P12 Pro produces 2.9 m/s at max RPM, the highest measurement recorded in my recent retest of ten popular fans.
The P12 Pro isn't quite a match at slower speeds to our best fan pick, the Noctua NF-A12x25 G2, offering 1.95 m/s at around 1,934 RPM. That's a good bit below the 2.2 m/s of the Noctua model at 1,800 RPM. Though its still an excellent unit, and considerably cheaper by comparison. You can nearly buy five P12 Pros for the price of a single NF-A12x25 G2.
Arctic rates the P12 Pro to a spectacular 6.9 mm H2O, which is a high figure for any fan, let alone an affordable one such as this. I don't have the equipment to test static pressure, but our friends at Cybenetics do, and they put this fan up there for static pressure with a Cybenetics Diamond rating.
My only word of warning is that you must adjust your fan curve with the P12 Pro. These fans get very loud at max RPM and they don't really need to run that fast in normal usage. They're just fine at slower speeds.
The best RGB PC fan
✅ You want a unified look: Corsair's singular iCUE Link system lets you control all your fans at once with minimal fuss. There are also reverse options available for the cleanest look once installed as lower or side intake.
❌ You don't want to rely on an app: You're stuck with iCUE here, which is not the most reliable nor easy to use application around.
Corsair knows what it's doing when it comes to RGB lighting. The Corsair iCUE Link LX120 RGB is a seriously good-looking fan with lovely, diffused RGB effects. And it's not a bad fan, either.
The Starter Kit is the best way to get set-up with the LX120. This includes three fans, iCUE Link System Hub, and a couple cables. All of which is required to control lighting and speeds via the iCUE software.
Each LX120 includes magnetic snap-together connections on either side. Using a proprietary connection, it's possible to hook up a bunch of fans directly to one another, or use one of the included cables to extend further around your case. You only need to have one side ending up at the System Hub and you're good to go. You can connect up to 24 devices to a single System Hub making for a complete system-wide cooling and lighting system if you so choose.
The System Hub is a bit fiddly, in that it requires a spare PCIe 6-pin connection and a USB 2.0 header. These fans are also a little pricier than, say, the P12 Pro above, even with A-RGB. However, the LX120 version I've picked here came out on top of the more expensive QX120 fans in my testing: the LX120 hits an admirable 2.4 m/s at full speed (2,400 RPM). They are a little louder than some (such as the G2) at 46 dBA at full speed, but down at 1900 RPM they still push 2 m/s for a more managable 42 dBA. So I'd run them on a lower fan curve in the iCUE software for best results.
There are heaps of built-in color options for the fans, ranging from basic static colours and patterns to the more specialised and involved murals, as Corsair calls them. The diffused lighting on the LX120 looks particularly fantastic with moving and shifting lighting, in a way that individually visible LEDs just don't.
PC fan FAQ
Do I need 120 mm or 140 mm PC fans?
Generally, the bigger the fan, the more airflow it generates. Bigger fans can get away with spinning slower and making less noise. So, all round, it's a good idea if you have the support in your case.
How should I install my fans inside my PC case?
There are a lot of answers to this, depending on your case design and the number and size of fans. Though, generally, you want air moving in one direction, be that front to back, back to front, or bottom to top. You should avoid trying to push air through the top of your case and out the bottom, as hot, less dense air rises.
A handful of intake fans and one or two exhaust fans is generally all you need. If you add any extra, you'll likely have more than ample airflow.
How do I know which direction a fan is blowing?
Many fans include small arrows on the outer edge of the fan, which show the way the fan spins and the direction of airflow. If you're ever stuck and there are no such arrows, the plastic struts that hold the fan hub are usually on the exhaust side.
What are reverse PC fans?
Reverse fans are pretty straightforward. Rather than exhausting air over the struts holding the fan hub (motor), the struts are on the intake side. A reverse fan is ideal for use as an intake fan in the bottom of a case, or to the side of your motherboard, as you get to look at the lovely clean side of the fan while still operating them as intake.
Do I need PWM or DC fans?
The best option for almost every use case today is PWM. This stands for Pulse Width Modulation, and it means the fan is able to be controlled via an additional signal that can enable lower operating speeds and finer grain control compared to pure DC-only fans.
To score that additional PWM signal on a DC fan, a fourth pin is required on both the fan connector and motherboard header. If you only have three pin headers or connectors, you're stuck with plain DC.
DC is pretty great for fan control. It's not quite as fine-tuned as PWM can be, and DC fans often have higher RPM floors meaning they will run faster even set to their slowest speed, but they're more or less going to get the same job done almost just as well.
These days, PWM fans are almost everywhere and I haven't seen a motherboard without four-pin fan headers in a long time. So, while you should definitely check your headers to be sure, it's probably PWM you're after.
How we test
There are a lot of fans out there, adoring or otherwise, so we had to set a few guidelines. First, we limited our tests to 120 mm fans. It's not because we hate 140 mm. On the contrary, 140 mm fans are generally quieter and move more air, making them a great choice for any case that can handle the larger size.
But 120 mm is still the "default" case fan, and it's hard to compare different fan lines when you're also comparing different sizes, so we stuck to 120mm versions as a control. (We've tried to provide the model number for the 140 mm version where possible.)
With that in mind, we get a number of fan manufacturers to send over both their best-selling and latest 120 mm models. Then we hacked together a miniature wind tunnel with an anemometer inside, a device that measures airflow. The miniature wind tunnel is a box, but it's a specially-made box that we reuse for every test with a gap for a 120 mm fan on one end and a marked location for the anemometer at the other.
We then measure at various PWM duty cycles, in 10% increments, from 100% to 10%. At each step, we measure the airflow, RPM, and noise level with a sound meter located on top of the tunnel.
We end up with data that looks like this:
While we're far from lab conditions, we get a really good idea of the actual performance of each fan we test from this process. The data tends to follow the specifications and expectations for each fan, though it helps narrow down our recommendations between a lot of good options out there.
The one thing we can't test for is long-term reliability. Though we use these fans ourselves regularly, and if we were to run into an issue, we'd change our picks accordingly.
How to spot the best deal
Where are the best PC fan deals?
In the US:
Amazon - Often $10 or more off the best PC fans
Walmart - Some discounted PC fans
B&H Photo - A small selection of case fans
Newegg - Great PC fans with $20+ savings
Best Buy - Save up to $34 on some of the best PC fans around
In the UK:
Amazon - Small discounts on PC fans
Overclockers - Air cooling champs for less
Ebuyer - Up to £10 off case fans
