Introduction

ARCTIC, previously known as Arctic Cooling, has been around for nearly 25 years now with physical offices in North America, Europe, and Asia and a vast retail network spread across more than 65 countries. The company is known for good quality products offering high value to end users, and we’ve reviewed several ARCTIC products already—the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III seems especially popular among our readers. But if there was ever a product segment that made ARCTIC famous, it would be the fans that are used on those coolers. If I could get a dollar every time I saw a request for an ARCTIC fan review, I’d be happily retired by now. I am happy to say the wait is over, and today we cover the ARCTIC P12 PWM.

Did you know TechPowerUp has already done a review of an ARCTIC fan product? Granted that it was over 16 years ago and it’s a USB fan, but at least no one can say we’ve never reviewed one. But seriously though, the ARCTIC P12 PWM and its various associated fan siblings have been immensely popular for years. It’s not a new fan thus, and ARCTIC doesn’t even claim to win any performance metrics. In fact, the P12 PWM is even listed as a case fan—one of the main reasons I was hesitant to cover it, given I test fans on a radiator with higher airflow restriction than a typical case filter or even air cooler. But then ARCTIC has been pairing its AIO cooler radiators with these very fans, so I figured we might as well put it to the test! The exact version being examined today is the P12 PWM PST (PWM sharing technology), offering RPM readout and control passthrough if you want to daisy-chain fans together on a radiator. It comes in three color options but is otherwise functionally identical to the standard ARCTIC P12 PWM fan, although please note that the P12 PWM PST CO is slightly different in that it is meant for continuous operation and uses different fan bearings (dual ball bearings) compared to the other two. Let’s thank ARCTIC for providing review samples to TechPowerUp and begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications