Noctua's Fanless CPU Cooler Launches for $109, But Expect It to Run Hot

You can now buy Noctua’s fanless CPU cooler for $109. But the completely silent product has a rather obvious limitation: It’ll struggle to cool more powerful AMD and Intel chips, forcing the processors to run at lower clock speeds.   

On Tuesday, the Austrian company launched the NH-P1, which is designed to passively cool a desktop PC processor without generating any sound. You can find it in stock on Amazon. 

The NH-P1 works by nixing the fans on a conventional CPU cooler, and reworking the metal heatsink to better absorb and dissipate heat from the processor. The result is a 2.6-pound cooler that’s 5.98 by 6.06 by 6.22 inches in dimension, but with enough clearance for your RAM slots.

“A lot of engineering work went into designing this unit for fanless operation from the ground up,” Noctua CEO Roland Mossig said in the announcement. Unlike other heatsinks, the NH-P1 has thicker and more widely spaced metal fins to optimize the cooling. 

The other benefit of the NH-P1 is how it promises to collect less dust. In addition, the product’s design looks rather cool inside a PC case (no pun intended). 

However, there’s a clear drawback. Despite the giant heatsink, “high CPU temperatures are inevitable,” Noctua said in a 15-minute video about the NH-P1 cooler. 

You can expect temperatures to reach 90 to 95 degrees Celsius for current AMD processors that draw over 80 watts in power. For Intel processors, temperatures can surge to 100-115 degrees. 

As a result, the overheating can prevent a CPU from reaching its full clock speeds when running an intensive workload. Noctua’s video demonstrates this by pairing the NH-P1 with an Intel Core i9-11900K. The CPU reaches between 93 to 100 degrees Celsius while running at 3.6GHz, which is slightly higher than the 3.5GHz base clock speed. 

However, the Intel Core i9-11900K is only able to reach boost clock speeds once the NH-P1 is outfitted with a 120mm fan and the desktop case's top panel is removed. Even then, the processor’s boost clock speed only reaches 4.4GHz, well below the 5.3GHz max turbo frequency. Adding a fan to the NH-P1 also ruins the point of the product, and it looks unsightly.

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Noctua created a dedicated website that lets you search which CPUs, motherboards, and cases are compatible with the fanless cooler. 

The site reveals the NH-P1 will struggle to fully cool AMD’s latest Ryzen 5000 processors, and some of Intel’s Core i7 and i9 processors. Noctua warns the CPUs “might fall slightly below base-clock under continuous full load,” due to the apparent overheating. 

The product also can’t cool many AMD Ryzen 3000 processors, unless you attach a 120mm fan to the heatsink. But even then, the CPUs may not be able to reach the base clock speed under a continuous full load.  

Hence, the NH-P1 does have some clear pros and cons. Noctua adds that the NH-P1 is best-suited for PC processors with “low to moderate heat dissipation,” inside a desktop case with plenty of airflow. No CPU overclocking should also be done with the NH-P1.