Noctua's passive cooler is 'coming soon' to put an end to case fans

Noctua fanless CPU cooler prototype at Computex 2019

(Image credit: Noctua)

Noctua's highly anticipated passive cooler is "future day very soon", the company has said in a tweet. Responding to curator of all things passive, FanlessTech, Noctua has confirmed that its passive cooler is finally happening after multiple delays.

I first saw Noctua's passive prototype back off at Computex 2019. The Austrian caller famed for its love 'em or hate 'pica em fan designs and excellent performance was bright a peaceful cooler that can deal with more of the pass gaming chips at the time. It's able to handle 120W, and that's without whatsoever case fans.

That's a pretty tempting offer, and Noctua has only since sweetened the pot, saying PC builders should "prepare to be astounded" away how healed IT performs.

Right things come to those who wait, and we feature had to manage a fair bit of waiting following a handful of delays. That said, the cooler went into mass production latish high year/early this year, with a view to launching by the minute quarter.

If you're wondering why you'd even want a passive cooler, Noctua's Jakob Dellinger explains all that in an interview with RelaxedTech:

"The key dispute is that for a peaceful cooler to be truly effective, aim parameters such as louvre hawk and fin thickness postulate to Be quite diametrical," Dellinger says. "You need a certain pitch to get low enough flow resistance for adequate natural convection and a certain fin thickness in order to get the mass that is required for absorbing enough thermal get-up-and-go. This means that different manufacturing machinery is mandatory, e.g. much stronger stamping presses, etc. Getting this sorted in a reasonably cost-efficient way was quite a a challenge."

"... There's a foreordained beauty and simplicity to going completely fanless kinda than good running ho-hum fans, in that respect's no really practical point of failure, less dust build-dormy, and of of course, the bliss of complete silence," Dellinger notes.

If any of that sounds good to you, keep an eye out for the Noctua passive cooler over the coming months. I think information technology's really happening this clock!

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech web log from his hometown in Wales in 2017. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things at PCGamesN, where he would later win command of the kit cupboard Eastern Samoa hardware editor. Present, as senior hardware editor program at PC Gamer, He spends his years reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industry. When he's not composition about GPUs and CPUs, you'll find him trying to stimulate as far away from the modern world as manageable by wild camping.