This undercover warranty investigation is a one-year follow-up from our series that investigated ASUS for motherboards incinerating AMD CPUs, at the end of which ASUS promised a number of improvements to its then-anti-consumer warranty processes. Spoiler alert: They’re still anti-consumer. We sent our ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme in for warranty repair for issues with the left joystick (“drift”). The device also had a broken microSD card. ASUS then pointed to the world’s tiniest scratch and tried to charge us $200 for it under threat of sending back a disassembled device if we didn’t pay within 5 days. It felt like extortion. If you’re wondering whether ASUS is worth buying, the answer for anyone who values support should be “no.”
We have now tested ASUS’ motherboard and ROG Ally warranty and RMA processes. Both have been anti-consumer experiences.
I worked with a guy that said “don’t tell me you used noctua fans on your 3d printer” I was like 😮. He really thought they were shit. He’s wrong.
For 3D printers, they’re subpar.
Noctua fans are typically 12v and tuned for lower speed for lower noise; in 3DP you’re generally looking for 24v fans* with the highest CFM:static pressure ratio you can get which will generally mean a louder, higher RPM fan.
They’ll work, but you can generally get industrial fans from Delta, Sunon, etc that are a better fit for the application, often for less money.
* - 5v and 12v fans are getting more common simply because they tend to be more available. Preference for high CFM:static pressure holds true regardless.
They’re not shit, but a lot of people don’t realize that a big reason they’re quieter is because they don’t spin as fast, therefore they’re moving less air. Noctua is typically trading cooling performance for less noise, which can also be achieved by throwing a resistor inline on a non-Noctua fan.
That being said, their motors are higher quality and, at least in my experience, tend to last longer than cheap fans.