Noctua, new information on the long-awaited fanless heatsink
Noctua
Noctua is mainly known for its highly efficient air coolers which offer excellent performance and low noise. However, some people want their PC to make no noise at all and prefer fanless solutions and cases.Noctua first showed its fanless CPU cooler prototype at Computex 2019 The tower cooler was equipped with lots of aluminum fins, six heat pipes and weighed about 1.5Kg. It is designed to cool a CPU with a TDP of up to 120W in a completely fanless case, or a processor with a TDP of up to 180W in a case with quiet fans. The product was made primarily for AMD's AM4 and Intel's LGA115x platforms, although it is reasonable to expect that it will be compatible with the LGA1200 and likely the LGA1700 as well.
Noctua is traditionally a very serious company when it comes to research and development, for this reason it took some time to finalize the specifications and, according to the latest roadmap, the product is expected to debut on the market in the second quarter of this year. When asked to be slightly more specific, a company rep said on Twitter (as pointed out by TechPowerUp) that the unit "will be coming very soon."
Noctua recently spoke about the challenges he has had to face in the design of its fanless CPU cooler. Given the operation of modern desktop processors and their erratic behavior, cooling systems must always remove relatively large amounts of heat. Therefore, a passive cooling solution not only consists of a large heat sink with lots of fins and without a fan, it is a completely different device from an engineering point of view.
Jakob Dellinger, in an interview with RelaxedTech, said:
The main challenge to be faced in order for a passive heatsink to be truly effective is to define design parameters such as the pitch and thickness of the fins quite different than a more traditional unit. A certain pitch is required to obtain a sufficiently low flow resistance for adequate natural convection and a certain fin thickness to have the necessary mass to absorb enough heat energy.
This means that different production machinery is required e.g. much stronger printing presses, etc. Organizing this in a reasonably cost-effective way was a real challenge. […] We found this exciting possibility and we hope that many customers share this feeling. There is a certain beauty and simplicity to running your system in a completely fanless manner rather than just spinning the fans slowly - there is no real breaking point, less dust buildup, and of course the bliss of complete silence. .
Noctua has yet to reveal the price of its passive cooler, but at least we now know that the product will hit the market shortly.
You want to keep the temperatures of your powerful processor at bay, especially during the summer period, and are you looking for an air cooler with high performance and low noise? We recommend the Noctua NH-U12A, which you can buy on Amazon at a very attractive price.
Noctua confirms its passive CPU cooler is coming soon
Most likely at Computex 2021
It appears that Noctua's passive CPU cooler will be launching soon.
In a response to Fanlesstech over at Twitter, Noctua has confirmed its passive CPU cooler will be launching soon, most likely during Computex 2021 show.
Unfortunately, there are still no details about the CPU cooler itself and all we have to go on is the prototype that Noctua showcased before. It is left to be seen if such a cooler will be able to cope with the latest CPUs from Intel and AMD, but in any case, we expect a high-end quality Noctua product.
Earlier rumors and the prototype pictured back at Computex 2019 show was a 1.5kg heavy unit capable of handling up to 120W.
Hopefully, we will hear more about it soon.
