Comment by lm411

The quality difference between various fans is absolutely huge.

I can put in a few Noctua fans and be confident they are going to last 5+ years of running 24x7. Or I can put in 25% cheaper fans and be pretty much guaranteed one or more is going to fail within the first couple years.

In my opinion, fans are never a place to cheap out when building a PC - server or desktop, whatever.