Noctua Fanless Passive CPU Cooler Release Date | No Sound, Aluminum Heat Distribution, and More!

Urian B., Tech Times 18 May 2021, 03:05 am

What is the best way to cool your CPU? This topic has been discussed hundreds of times over with certain people taking PC cooling to a whole new level. While others like to live life on the edge experimenting and using more complicated forms of engineering like liquid nitrogen cooling (which is advised against beginners), new technology provides desktop users more options to cool their computer.

Noctua Fanless CPU Cooler Release Date

Noctua is releasing a fanless CPU cooler that is expected to come out soon. The Australian company announced that the CPU cooler is coming out some time very soon. With the hype building up around fanless passive CPU cooling, here's what you'll want to know about the upcoming cooler.

Noctua confirmed in an email that the upcoming cooler is indeed coming out some time during the 2nd quarter and its price will be revealed upon its launch. The company initially introduced the idea for its upcoming "Passive CPU Cooler" back in 2019 at the Computex trade show.

Noctua Passive Fanless CPU Cooler Prototype

The product nixes the fans on a particular standard CPU cooler and instead relies on bulking up the metal heatsink in order to make use of larger aluminum fins that can distribute heat within the cooler. The prototype unit coming from Noctua actually ended up pretty large, weighing 3.3 pounds.

The plus side of the Noctua fanless passive CPU cooler is that it is actually very silent. Due to it generating no sound, the fanless design should then appeal to PC builders liking their rigs smooth and quiet. No fans also mean less dust buildup as well.

Noctua Fanless CPU Cooler Threshold

At most, Noctua's cooler is capable of running a CPU at just 120 watts inside an entire fanless case. If the desktop rig, however, has fans of its own, the threshold will then rise up to 180 watts.

The big question is still whether or not the product is really capable of keeping the CPU cool (or maybe at least just cool enough). Back in 2019, Noctua demoed the prototype on a new fanless desktop case that is built with an Intel Core i9-9900K processor running at a whopping 95 watts.

Noctua Fanless CPU Cooler Reaches 95 Degrees Celsius

Although it remains quiet, the reported Intel processor was still able to get pretty hot reaching 92 to 95 degrees celsius. This occurred while the PC was trying to run a CPU stress-test workload. The test was specifically designed to test out the limits of certain desktop hardware.

Noctua planned to previously release the Passive CPU Cooler during the 1st quarter, the company, however, delayed the launch until the 2nd quarter. In a previous interview with RelaxedTech, Noctua said one challenge has actually been mass-producing the unconventional CPU cooler in a way that remains "cost-efficient."