This year, Noctua is concentrating on refining its existing line up of excellent fans and CPU air coolers. At Computex last week, the company showed off its new 120mm A series fan, which uses a new blade design in order to deliver performance that lands somewhere in-between the F12 and the S12A, delivering strong air flow and high pressure.
However, these fans are having some issues with manufacturing as the 0.5mm clearance at the end of the fan blades requires some precise manufacturing.
Another new reveal Noctua had in store this year is something called Project Chromax, which are essentially coloured rubber corner pieces to help Noctua's fans fit in with other colour themed builds. There are a few photos of prototypes that are interesting, purely so you can see how the hardware looks during development, and an oddity in a spacer frame that moves the fan by a fraction of a millimetre and reduces temperatures by 0.3 degrees.
Above you can see a Skylake ready cooler from Noctua. It's not massively different from past models dating all of the way back to Socket 478. A lot of the fundamentals have remained the same but over time, Noctua has refined its cooler by experimenting with the additional heatpipe or two, or by offsetting the radiator slightly or even making the radiator thicker to work well with a single fan or two.
One more thing Noctua is working on is ANC, or Active Noise Cancellation, this was announced a while back but is making a return alongside the new A-series fans. The technology has now shrunk to the point where it can fit inside the fan hub, which means it may be closer to coming out.
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KitGuru Says: Noctua has built up quite the legacy over the years, having built some of the best air coolers and quietest fans on the market. Are any of you using a Noctua cooler or fans in your rig?
Jesus finally some colour! The brown has always put me off to the point I would go with a competitor.
Finally, a Gentle Typhoon made by Noctua (notice the exact fan blade count and shape and compare it to the GT AP-15 or AP-45. It can’t get any better than this 🙂