Tetrium wrote on 2021-11-13, 17:42:
This is a case fan. These are designed to be installed onto the insides of a computer case.
If you want to cool your CPU, you will need to use a CPU cooler.
That's just the webstore's description, which is useless. They call all stand-alone fans 'case fans', even high static pressure fans meant for coolers or radiators. Nowhere on noctua's product page will you find anything about it being a 'case fan'. There's also no reason you can't use low static pressure fans on coolers (what's usually referred to as case fans) as long as they provide enough performance for your needs. Which with a pentium 3 you don't need much. This 6 cm noctua will absolutely provide more than enough performance to cool any P3.
As for which CPU cooler to get to go along with it. It depends on the motherboard. If there's enough room around the CPU socket, then most socket A/462 cooler will fit and accept a standard 6 cm fan such as this noctua. If there's capacitors or other obstructions close around the socket, that might prevent some bulkier sockat A/462 from fitting, then you might look for an older/smaller socket 370 cooler. In that case, just make sure it's at least 6 cm in size, then the fan will fit for sure.
Whichever cooler you do end up getting, be sure to replace its fan with this noctua one. It's arguably one of the best and quietest 6 cm fans you can get, probably even the very best when it comes to performance to noise ratio. It will almost certainly perform better than whatever fan comes with the cooler.