Noctua's Fanless 'Passive CPU Cooler' Slated to Arrive Soon...

travm said:
If they made a 30% smaller version it would just be a regular heatsink with a fan. The size is a feature, and is required.
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Nope, regular heatsinks have their fins much closer together. This one has a larger fin gap.
 
ZodaEX said:
Nope, regular heatsinks have their fins much closer together. This one has a larger fin gap.
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A regular sized heatsink would be limited to much lower TDP. They have heatsinks in the size you want that can handle that TDP range and more, even without a fan.
 
Nobu said:
A regular sized heatsink would be limited to much lower TDP. They have heatsinks in the size you want that can handle that TDP range and more, even without a fan.
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I know that. I said this one is different than those because the gaps between the heatsink are so much larger than a normal heatsink.
 
Apparently it officially "launches" today.

Noctua made a video showing off the true size of this thing.

 




I'm watching this right now

*wow, he put it on an 11900k, right away. He played GTA 5 for 30 minutes and it only got to 90c (open air test bench). Not bad for one of the hottest CPUs on the market.
 
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chameleoneel said:




I'm watching this right now

*wow, he put it on an 11900k, right away. He played GTA 5 for 30 minutes and it only got to 90c (open air test bench). Not bad for one of the hottest CPUs on the market.
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That wouldn't fly in a closed system I would bet.
 
vegeta535 said:
That wouldn't fly in a closed system I would bet.
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Yeah I watched another review and for some reason-----also did not build it into a case. I don't understand why bother making a video, if you aren't going to try that?

I mean, Dawid is fun. But he's usually a bit more thorough, too.
 
sp where is that 50lb passice case linus showed off years ago was a complete chonker but looked impressive id stuck it outside i winter.
 
JSHamlet234 said:
This is easily the dumbest way to spend $110 in 2021.
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Exactly. Fanless heatsinks have been around for ages and will always be the least efficient method for removing heat. They can work in a few "silent" operations, but people tacking them onto high power components and testing them against forced air solutions is pointless.

It still needs fresh air to function, and if your pc has any fans at all there goes the "passive" argument. There are incredibly quiet fans nowadays as well.
 
NightReaver said:
Exactly. Fanless heatsinks have been around for ages and will always be the least efficient method for removing heat. They can work in a few "silent" operations, but people tacking them onto high power components and testing them against forced air solutions is pointless.

It still needs fresh air to function, and if your pc has any fans at all there goes the "passive" argument. There are incredibly quiet fans nowadays as well.
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So don't use them in a PC with fans then. Problem solved.
 
I'd be curious to know how well it fares against Silverstone's HE02 fanless offering or even Noctua's own nh-d15 in passive mode.
 
My dream has always been a very powerful system, passively cooled.

If I added two more MORA3 420s, I think it could be possible but the issue is that the system heats the room and passive cooling efficiency starts to tank. I suspect a passive air system will have the same challenges in a small room...
 
ZodaEX said:
So don't use them in a PC with fans then. Problem solved.
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And limit yourself to basically a 35W processor? Without at least one fan moving some air around, you're going to still have a problem. The cases that Noctua recommends all have direct flow from the bottom to the top to assist with the chimney effect without a PSU in the way on either the top or bottom.

I suppose it would work with a large bottom fan and large top fan running slowly to assist the convection.
 
kirbyrj said:
And limit yourself to basically a 35W processor? Without at least one fan moving some air around, you're going to still have a problem. The cases that Noctua recommends all have direct flow from the bottom to the top to assist with the chimney effect without a PSU in the way on either the top or bottom.

I suppose it would work with a large bottom fan and large top fan running slowly to assist the convection.
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That's the other crazy thing. Cant even use this in a low power SFF setup. So you end up needing a decent sized box to put this in. Forget having it in a closet somewhere too.

It's expensive and inefficient. They literally had to make a crappier radiator (less fin area) just so passive air could actually go through it.
 
LOL, so many seem to misunderstand this product. It is not meant to be a high end cooler, it is meant as a niche product. The large fin spacing is not a bug, it is a feature, the most important feature to be precise. This heatsink is designed from the grounds up to not have a fan.
It is not meant for high end gaming systems or workstations. But it is great to low-medium powered htpcs and home servers. I'd pay more than $110 to have my server completely silent. Alas the biggest noise is coming from the HDDs, I'm counting the days until I can finally afford a decent sized array of SSDs. Then it will be worth to go full passive.

I'd be interested to see how much better is this compared to a NH-D15 with the fans removed. There is zero point in comparing this to water coolers and top air coolers, or slapping it on 200W cpus. Or putting a fan on it for that matter. If I wanted a cooler with a fan I'd look at the gazillion options available.
 
kirbyrj said:
And limit yourself to basically a 35W processor? Without at least one fan moving some air around, you're going to still have a problem. The cases that Noctua recommends all have direct flow from the bottom to the top to assist with the chimney effect without a PSU in the way on either the top or bottom.

I suppose it would work with a large bottom fan and large top fan running slowly to assist the convection.
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You wouldn't have to go that low. I have run my 65W processor fanless for over 2 years in my NZXT case with a vented top roof on a Scythe Katana 4. Which is a higher TDP CPU and lower performance heatsink than your example is and it never got near reaching it's rated 72C Tcasemax temperature. These are more effective than you assume they are.
 
M76 said:
LOL, so many seem to misunderstand this product. It is not meant to be a high end cooler, it is meant as a niche product. The large fin spacing is not a bug, it is a feature, the most important feature to be precise. This heatsink is designed from the grounds up to not have a fan.
It is not meant for high end gaming systems or workstations. But it is great to low-medium powered htpcs and home servers. I'd pay more than $110 to have my server completely silent. Alas the biggest noise is coming from the HDDs, I'm counting the days until I can finally afford a decent sized array of SSDs. Then it will be worth to go full passive.

I'd be interested to see how much better is this compared to a NH-D15 with the fans removed. There is zero point in comparing this to water coolers and top air coolers, or slapping it on 200W cpus. Or putting a fan on it for that matter. If I wanted a cooler with a fan I'd look at the gazillion options available.
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I completely understand where you’re coming from, however, it is very expensive when you can really only cool a very low wattage processor without any fans in the case. I’m not even sure it would be able to cool a 65 watt processor without throttling except in a very well thought out case. For example one of the soon to be released AMD APUs as a home theater PC or something. I would think if there was something like a Xbox series X case with quiet 140 mm fans it might work very well.
 
ZodaEX said:
You wouldn't have to go that low. I have run my 65W processor fanless for over 2 years in my NZXT case with a vented top roof on a Scythe Katana 4. Which is a higher TDP CPU and lower performance heatsink than your example is and it never got near reaching it's rated 72C Tcasemax temperature. These are more effective than you assume they are.
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No other fans in the case? I mean from what I’m seeing it looks like you need at least a little assistance from somewhere to keep the air moving. I might be wrong though. I’m just going by review videos.

Plus if you add in anything even a power supply or a video card then you are going to get some fan noise.

I mean I guess I’m just not the target market for this product.
 
kirbyrj said:
No other fans in the case? I mean from what I’m seeing it looks like you need at least a little assistance from somewhere to keep the air moving. I might be wrong though. I’m just going by review videos.

Plus if you add in anything even a power supply or a video card then you are going to get some fan noise.

I mean I guess I’m just not the target market for this product.
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Correct. No fans what so ever in the case. The trick is to give the hot air a path to rise directly upward. And not use a high TDP video card either. If I recall my GPU is 50W TDP, however it came stock with a big honking heatsink intended for passive cooling use. I also inverted the power supply so the hot air can rise straight up without the heat getting trapped in the roof of the PSU. Hot air wants to rise. It's obsessed with rising straight up. You just need to give it a clear path to do so, use an adequate heatsink and not use high TDP parts. Not everybody needs high end components for what they use their computer for.
 
kirbyrj said:
I completely understand where you’re coming from, however, it is very expensive when you can really only cool a very low wattage processor without any fans in the case. I’m not even sure it would be able to cool a 65 watt processor without throttling except in a very well thought out case. For example one of the soon to be released AMD APUs as a home theater PC or something. I would think if there was something like a Xbox series X case with quiet 140 mm fans it might work very well.
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It's a very niche product, so price is going to matter less. I suspect that as soon as one is prepared to have a fan in the system the use case would fall outside of this niche; in that case one may as well use one of the cheaper non-passive alternatives.
 
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emphy said:
It's a very niche product, ...
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Exactly. If I could be satisfied with (say) a 3600 CPU, I'd probably be an NH-P1 customer. I hate, loathe, and despise fan noise, and have the money to back it. A Seasonic fanless PSU along with an NH-P1 and maybe a couple 140mm beQuiet Silent Wings 3 case fans turned off except in dire need, would be ideal. Unfortunately there aren't any recent generation passive GPU's.
 
pitingres said:
Exactly. If I could be satisfied with (say) a 3600 CPU, I'd probably be an NH-P1 customer. I hate, loathe, and despise fan noise, and have the money to back it. A Seasonic fanless PSU along with an NH-P1 and maybe a couple 140mm beQuiet Silent Wings 3 case fans turned off except in dire need, would be ideal. Unfortunately there aren't any recent generation passive GPU's.
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The 1650 is only one generation old right?
 
I usually rely quite heavily on passive methods. For example, my old Gigabyte 9600GT had a big chunk of aluminum and heatpipes. On its own it was horrible, actually. Scalding hot after some gaming.

However, all it took was a random 60mm fan spinning so slowly you could make out the pattern on the hub sticker and it stayed at like 50-60 and that is with an overclock. Dead silent.

I used to do the same with my dual P3 system, it had 2x low power edition Coppermines@ 400MHz (underclock by half, web/file server), with just the radiators mounted. 120mm case fan did the rest.

I could go on. This has never failed me, doing this with the raspberry Pi4 now - a small (but tall) radiator and a 60mm fan undervolted to 5V (it manages to run on USB). 51 degrees while folding during a heatwave.

I always avoid running small fans at high speeds and go for the largest radiator with some super slow case fans instead.
If it weren't for the fact I already have a mugen 5, I'd buy this thing.
 
I ordered two of them. I'm surprised it's taken so long for a manufacturer to make a heatsink like these.
 
kirbyrj said:
I completely understand where you’re coming from, however, it is very expensive when you can really only cool a very low wattage processor without any fans in the case. I’m not even sure it would be able to cool a 65 watt processor without throttling except in a very well thought out case. For example one of the soon to be released AMD APUs as a home theater PC or something. I would think if there was something like a Xbox series X case with quiet 140 mm fans it might work very well.
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You seem to be fixated on price/cooling performance figure. Like somehow this is meant to be bargain bin priced since it has a smaller cooling capacity than hi-end air coolers that are not silent.
And still thinking about how to augment it with fans. If you are going to do that this is not for you.
 
kirbyrj said:
I mean I guess I’m just not the target market for this product.
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M76 said:
You seem to be fixated on price/cooling performance figure. Like somehow this is meant to be bargain bin priced since it has a smaller cooling capacity than hi-end air coolers that are not silent.
And still thinking about how to augment it with fans. If you are going to do that this is not for you.
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See above.
 
Idk, to each their own I suppose. I can't imagine a room so silent that I can hear even modern low rpm fans......I'd probably go nuts lol.

*Edit* Though TBF, if it was such a niche specialty product, why send a sample in to be reviewed against forced air coolers? It was never going to be comparable.
 
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NightReaver said:
Idk, to each their own I suppose. I can't imagine a room so silent that I can hear even modern low rpm fans......I'd probably go nuts lol.

*Edit* Though TBF, if it was such a niche specialty product, why send a sample in to be reviewed against forced air coolers? It was never going to be comparable.
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I'm really sensitive noise, I can tolerate it to a point during the day, but at night even the smallest noise keeps me awake. That includes humming of low rpm fans that aren't even in the same room. I was cutting up cases 20 years ago to remove grills to reduce the noise.
But as long as there are spinner drives in the picture there is no point in going fanless as those make more noise than 600-800 rpm fans, which is the noise level I can tolerate during the night.
 
NightReaver said:
...I can't imagine a room so silent that I can hear even modern low rpm fans...
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I have a server containing a single 140mm fan that runs at ~300rpm in my room. At night, if the window is closed, I can just about hear it from the other side of the room, 3m away. It's a really quiet fan too; I can't measure exactly how loud because it's quieter than the most sensitive microphone I have, which has a noise floor around 25dBA. I live in a quiet area of a city, so it's not unusually quiet around here like it would be if I lived in the middle of nowhere. Double-glazing is just that good at cutting out external noise.

I'm the sort of person that would buy a heatsink like this, but unfortunately my PC produces too much heat to work with it, even with a fan, and all the computers that are low-power enough (like the server mentioned above) are too small for it to fit into. If I was building a machine from scratch then I would definitely get one.
 
Would love to see some accurate test results of this against Thermal right Le Grand Mach (passive cooler evolved from HR-22 which evolved from HR-02 .. 0bviously oriented properly for warm air rising.
As others have posted, would like to see how it does against any of the many big coolers out there.
I'm guessing massive size and fin area of coolers like LGM will do better than twin towers.

I have my doubts about it's thick fins with wider spacing are any better than normal thickness fins on massive coolers like LGM & HR-22.
 
doyll said:
Would love to see some accurate test results of this against Thermal right Le Grand Mach (passive cooler evolved from HR-22 which evolved from HR-02 .. 0bviously oriented properly for warm air rising.
As others have posted, would like to see how it does against any of the many big coolers out there.
I'm guessing massive size and fin area of coolers like LGM will do better than twin towers.

I have my doubts about it's thick fins with wider spacing are any better than normal thickness fins on massive coolers like LGM & HR-22.
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This would actually be useful. Idk why they didn't compare it against other passive solutions.
 
doyll said:
Would love to see some accurate test results of this against Thermal right Le Grand Mach (passive cooler evolved from HR-22 which evolved from HR-02 .. 0bviously oriented properly for warm air rising.
As others have posted, would like to see how it does against any of the many big coolers out there.
I'm guessing massive size and fin area of coolers like LGM will do better than twin towers.

I have my doubts about it's thick fins with wider spacing are any better than normal thickness fins on massive coolers like LGM & HR-22.
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For the same materials with a good design, total surface area and average airflow over all fins determine cooling capacity.
Fanless needs wide spaced fins to allow air to flow naturally.
But with much less fins and slower air flow, cooling capacity is vastly reduced.

This assumes you are talking vs tower coolers using fans.
An important thing to know.
 
kirbyrj said:
No other fans in the case? I mean from what I’m seeing it looks like you need at least a little assistance from somewhere to keep the air moving. I might be wrong though. I’m just going by review videos.

Plus if you add in anything even a power supply or a video card then you are going to get some fan noise.

I mean I guess I’m just not the target market for this product.
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There are a lot of PSUs that have fan stop up to a couple of hundred watts and if you are going for a noiseless system you would most likely use an APU or a low powered fanless GPU. It will most likely handle a 65w APU just fine as long as you are not running it at 100% CPU for several hours. At least my passively cooled 2400G system is fine for around 40 or so minutes at 100% load with default TDP before it throttles, but I use a streacom case with heatpipes that connect to heat sinks on the side. The market for passively cooled system is probably quite small and it is mostly low powered servers, HTPCs etc. that are the target market. Anything running at a lot of power will need fans.
 
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