Noctua is at it again at Computex 2019 with a slew of cooling products. This time, they are venturing into the world of silent computing – as if their products are not silent enough.
The object of our interest here is the yet to be named fanless CPU cooler at their booth. It’s a prototype, but a working one regardless.
Designing a capable fanless solution
According to the guys from the Austrian company, the fanless CPU cooler is a completely custom-designed for the best natural convection. Performance targets from Noctua are up to 120W in a fanless case with good natural convection backing it up. Performance goes up to 180W with a quiet case fans or a fan directly on the cooler.
The asymmetric design helps for better PCIe clearance and also helps RAM clearance on existing LGA115x and AM4 motherboards. Another thing to note here are the thickness and distance between the heatsinks. Something that Noctua possibly thought of as a solution for the best possible passive cooling performance.
Prototype performance
Of course, it wouldn’t be Noctua without a demo so there’s one running at Computex with the fanless cooler. TDP of the CPU inside the test system is at 117W during the stress tests. That’s close to the claimed capabilities of the cooler regardless of the CPU’s model.
Performance wise, the cooler is able to cool the CPU passively, albeit at 96ºC. That’s actually excellent, since the system is fully enclosed and completely fanless with a fanless GPU to boot.
Pricing and Availability
Noctua stated that the fanless CPU cooler is slated for a 2020 release. Pricing is yet to be decided and from where things are going, it seems that the cooler is arriving before next year’s Computex – similar to that of what happened with the NH-U12A. That of course is a speculation but we know Noctua isn’t anywhere near lazy as I am. One thing’s for sure though, the cooler is to be bundled with new NT-H2 thermal compound.
