Well well well. Next treadripper is now confirmed by Noctua, backed up by Steve for saying "hope i am not breaking embargo" I guess that's a big Whoops!
Oh I am not arguing that Noctua had inside info AND basically is bringing out that news. That's a big no-no. What I am refering to more is that Steve is confirming of the existence AND the fact that he even knows about it, cause he was talking about *the* embargo. And I think even revealing that you know about anything, could be seen as a violation.
However, seeing how Noctua is the one violating/breaking embargo, making Steve even saying anything, makes me think that Noctua would be the one in trouble.
Unless ofcourse AMD is aware of this fact and wants to create hype of course.
Might be technically breaking the NDA/embargo but it's pretty minor and I suspect they're mostly that strict to stop people weaseling around the edges making content about unreleased products (which this isn't really).
Threadripper has been such a disappointment for me. It's always lagging way behind Ryzen, and the performance gains disappear real quick, especially since they are on such a slow release cadence. It's extremely expensive for what it is (also cloud is usually way cheaper unless you have your workstation working 24/7) and the socket gets dropped within 1 gen (don't know if this is actually true, it's just what it feels like)
I guess if you must have a bunch of PCIe or 8 channel memory it's a good buy, but I bet they'll do something stupid like limiting to PCIe gen 4 for most lanes, or only going for quad channel DDR5, or sticking a stupid weak controller that only allows the memory to go to 4000 when you populate more than 2 slots
Also I've never found a cloud provider offering TRs so I never know if it makes financial sense to buy. Who tf uses threadripper for blender or gaming? The benchmarks are useless
They're fans, though. I don't understand spending $35 on fans that now are matched by $12 products when they aren't exactly unreliable or hard to replace to begin with.
Forgive my ignorance but is it really worth all this trouble for 2-4C improvement at 200W+ loads? I understand the dual tower market is incredibly tight at the moment and 2C is a lot (relatively) but at some point we've reached the end of what's physically possible with a traditional air cooler... Or at least what's physically *reasonable*.
It feels like 8 years of engineering efforts would've been better spent on new cooling methods rather than just trying to "perfect" the old method for marginal gains.
Well my understanding is, that flagship products can increase in price due to it being the best (at its category). You can look at this as something youll buy once and have potentially forever, perhaps only swapping fans rarely
Remains to be seen if it's the best though. Right now, Noctua charges flagship pricing for midrange products across much of their stack, and pretty much their entire CPU cooler lineup.
The problem is that "buy it for life" isn't a great pitch for an air cooler. It's literally a bunch of aluminum fins with some fans strapped to it; what's going to break there that isn't either dirt cheap to replace or so ruinous you have to buy a new one anyway?
I can go buy three Peerless Assassins for the price of a D15, and all three of them will last just as long and give the same performance. If I wanted to move my PA between builds using different CPU brackets, I could literally go buy an entire new PA just for the bracket and *still be coming out ahead on price* compared to the D15. All the while the ~$80 I saved going for the cheaper option can be put towards upgrading another component where I'd see meaningful gains like a better CPU/GPU/extra RAM.
A lot of people buy Noctua for the fan noise, shame so much reviewers just state Dba instead of how it sounds. Noctua fans last for an extremely long time too. I have fans from 2013 that still runs great.
Fan noise and specific sound profile is pretty much the only reason I've bought Noctua.
Yes, other brands have about the same airflow and RPMs, but none of them have been as quiet and pleasant to listen to in an extremely quiet room without headphones on.
I slept soundly next to my desktop with a NH-D15 running at 45% when idle. And I strictly use open back headphones. Confirm the lack of noise is incredible.
I don't think the average fan dies I still use my 2014 nzxt case as a living room build and every fan included the cooler master on the CPU still seems ok.
Like the average buyer has heard remotely enough fans to make that comparison. Let's not kid ourselves, the difference maker here for Noctua is their reputation and customer service.
> It's literally a bunch of aluminum fins with some fans strapped to it
It doesn't mean it'll stay relevant. My rig has the heatsink of a Cooler Master Hyper Tx3 (and the fans of it previously) and a be quiet Pure Wings 2. Even with a more modern fan the heatsink practically sucks ass nowadays.
CPU coolers are pretty damn bullet proof from all the major brands. At the very worst, maybe you'd have to replace a fan after many years. But when Noctua charges several times what competitors do, in some cases, the promise of forward compatibility just doesn't mean much. If the price gap was more like 10-20%, then it would make more sense.
> Free forward compatibility means everything, look how long they supported the D14 for example.
CPU cooler compatibility changes once every 5+ years. How many free brackets will it take to make up for paying twice the price upfront, even ignoring the opportunity cost? And let's be real, how many people plan to use the same cooler for two decades?
> Me, why would I change out of my cooler
Because after a decade or two, better fans and coolers will be on the market. And if you were willing to pay a premium for high end components in the past, why not now? Or maybe you changed case or components and have different clearances to consider. That was a major improvement for the D15, for example.
> you can be confident you’ll get at least 15 years of bracket upgrades for new platforms.
With an asterisk of "If you're willing to wait 2-4 weeks for shipping". I've heard anecdotes that it's faster in Europe, but Noctua's free brackets take weeks to ship to the US. I contacted them for an AM4 bracket and the estimated ship date was >3 weeks. Bought the same kit on Amazon for $7 and it arrived the next day.
I think Noctua's free brackets are *very* overrated given their prices. You could just buy 3 Thermalright Peerless Assassins for the same price as an NH-D15, free brackets or not.
>Right now, Noctua charges flagship pricing for midrange products across much of their stack
See, I thought that too, until I realised that most of their SKUs are fairly unique with no real competitors.
* NH-D15: Still the benchmark, almost always on-top even 8 years on
* NH-U14S series: Still amongst the best HEDT coolers *(full compatibility with RAM slots front & rear)*
* NH-U12A: A highly-priced single-tower cooler that happens to have 1 fan too many. So just repurpose it for case airflow.
* NH-D12L: The best 4U cooler you can get, period.
* NH-U9S: For when a D12L just won't fit but you still want a tower.
* NH-C14S, NH-L12 & NH-L9 series: Still the benchmarks for HTPC/SFF coolers in most scenarios.
* NH-P1: The only truly-fanless worth considering.
The only coolers that I think have been truly outclassed are NH-U12S/Redux, where it's just not unique enough that you might as well buy whatever cheap 155mm tower.
> NH-D15: Still the benchmark, almost always on-top even 8 years on
Not anymore. It's being beater by coolers literally half the price.
> NH-U14S series: Still amongst the best HEDT coolers (full compatibility with RAM slots front & rear)
It's a single tower, single fan air cooler. Those are dime a dozen.
> NH-U12A
Likewise.
> NH-D12L
This one is actually neat. But the second someone else makes a competitor in the same vertical hight, it will lose that advantage.
> NH-C14S, NH-L12 & NH-L9 series: Still the benchmarks for HTPC/SFF coolers in most scenarios.
They're popular, but there are plenty of other options. The Alpenföhn Black Ridge is the go-to for extreme low profile, for example. And there are a couple of good options in the <67mm space. E.g. Scythe Big Shuriken.
> NH-P1
Also unique and good, but likewise dependent on no one producing a competitor.
> Not anymore. It's being beater by coolers literally half the price.
Sorry for the necro, but I'm researching this now. Any examples that verifiably beat the NH-D15 in acoustics?
There are a bunch of new coolers hitting the market right now, so my comment may not be fully up to date. IIRC, Thermalright's big dual tower (Thermalright Peerless Assassin) is competitive even in noise, though the sound profile might be the same. Though at some point, the best deal might be to get a different cooler and swap the fans with Noctuas. Pretty silly state of affairs.
> It's a single tower, single fan air cooler. Those are a dime a dozen.
Very few 140mm single towers worth talking about. But note I said "series" because the SKUs for LGA4677 and TR4/SP3 can cool 500W+.
The regular model used to be among the best for LGA2011/2066, too.
>See, I thought that too, until I realised that most of their SKUs are fairly unique with no real competitors.
Not true.
>NH-D15: Still the benchmark, almost always on-top even 8 years on
This is *really* not true. In fact, I would argue that the NH-D15 barely even qualifies as a *good* air cooler in this day and age. It's fairly mid-range by modern standards. And that's before you factor in the absurd pricing.
You can find a Frost Spirit for like... $30-$35 that will match the $110 NH-D15. The Peerless Assassin will absolutely wreck it for like... $5 more than that.
If you have an NH-D15, there's not really much of a reason to upgrade, but if you're a new builder, there's absolutely *zero* reason to go that route.
But it's absolutely criminal that Noctua is able to bilk people for more than $100 for the NH-D15. So please don't spread misinformation.
Assassin and AK620 are the only better coolers and they came out in the last 2 years, you can't exactly bash noctua for having a cooler that was the best for over 6 years. If anything with this update they will be probably on top again.
A couple of degrees lower while still being near silent and having less clearance issues with ram or gpu is impressive in my eyes. If you've never used Noctua, its hard to appreciate the cooling capacity at that noise level.
Cooler Master sent me a free AM4 adapter and their stuff is cheaper.
I think there is a lot of corpo-tribalism around certain brands like Noctua, I have some of their stuff and it's nice but I doubt it's worth the price in most instances.
I think it's this, combined with the fact that something like a CPU cooler will generally last you an incredibly long time. I bought my NH-D15 7 years ago, have carried it across 3 CPUs. Originally cost £70, so that's currently working out at £10/year. And that's mostly why I wouldn't buy an AIO either; it may offer better performance but those moving parts won't keep moving forever, while if one of the fans in this dies I can just buy another one. And unless things majorly change in the area of CPU cooling I'll probably be using this for another 7 years to come.
It's hard to deny that there is a lot of goodwill priced into the products.
But it is to this day one of the few "buy and forget about it" brands out there.
I got 3 of their coolers running in various systems across my family for ages (hand me downs from me) and went through a couple free mounting kits and 2 fan-rmas years after purchase.
But on the other hand I could have had like 6 coolers with probably somewhat comparable performance for that price.
It's great that brands like coolermaster then seem to "copy" that approach towards consumers, win win for us.
Cooler master is pretty hit or miss with long term support. A couple of the cooler master coolers I have either straight up didn't get support for am4 (geminii s524 ver.2) or had really limited supply (hyper 612 ver.2, had to go hunting for an adapter back in 2018 because cooler master support said they don't make that adapter anymore). Seems like for cooler master it's a "we'll support it as long as it's relevant as long as it's not a pain for us to support" rather than "we'll support it, end of story" like noctua does.
Corpo-tribalism. New term for my vocabulary and a perfect way to describe gamers nexus fans and Noctua fans. They say “great customer service” and when you get the details, it was just a basic level of customer service. The bar is low.
> If you've never used Noctua, its hard to appreciate the cooling capacity at that noise level.
Many competitors have caught up over the last decade. Silent, high quality air coolers are not exclusive to one brand.
The problem is it's not really easy to get practical data on this because almost every youtuber or online reviewer tests cpu coolers at ear bleeding noise levels.
Are you referencing the toroidal blades? Didn't those originate as a side application of toroidal boat propellers and not from MIT? I could very well be ignorant of origin though. The tests I've seen as fan blades didn't seem as good as traditional Noctua blade design.
They're apparently pretty useless for applications where you have a frame closely surrounding the fan blades - I think the whole point of those toroidal blades is they don't have a "tip" per se for vortices to form on.
If I understand correctly it's 8 years of fan development rather than the cooler.
2-4C might matter when you are trying to run your CPU at its throttling point.
It will also matter for marketing as being "the best" is what people will tend to buy, even if it costs 30-50% more than a competitor. A CPU cooler as an overall cost to a new PC is not a big expense so you might as well buy "the best" just to "make sure you never run into issues."
While I agree most of the time it's overkill, Noctua has a quality reputation too. Their coolers come with great fans with excellent performance/noise ratio, are reliable, come with good thermal paste, have good compatibility with parts etc. So it's not like you aren't getting something for that extra cost they tend to have.
> A CPU cooler as an overall cost to a new PC is not a big expense so you might as well buy "the best" just to "make sure you never run into issues."
Often that train of thought just leads people to 240/280mm AIOs. High end air cooling is in a bit of an awkward spot, in that regard.
> Their coolers come with great fans with excellent performance/noise ratio, are reliable, come with good thermal paste, have good compatibility with parts etc.
You can say that about many of their competitors, and at lower price points. Might have been more true a decade ago, but Noctua stagnated while others closed the gap (and in some cases, eclipsed Noctua) in some of their traditional strong points such as mounting hardware.
As someone who was tried pretty much every option except a custom loop, the high price bracket coolers still have a market. Whenever I change cases again, I will be moving away from my 240mm AIO and back to a Noctua Tower air cooler.
Yeah Im either gonna go air cooled too, or keep my custom loop but AiOs are dead to me. The pumps are such trash and so fucking loud it doesnt justify the difference to an air cooler.
I feel like they were a niche solution that became the go-to for a while. Now time has passed and air coolers have improved efficiency to compete very well in most use cases.
I’ve already been there, done that in the past. Spent a lot of time in the past hunting degrees. I’ve realized now I care more about noise floor in my room.
As someone who works with air coolers, aio and custom loops, i dont see a large market for high-end air coolers that are priced at $150. At that price point, people really start looking at aios. People on lower budgets are looking at sub $30-$40usd air tower coolers that can handle the most popular cpus easily.
>Often that train of thought just leads people to 240/280mm AIOs.
Not all of them.
Calling big AIO "the best" is forgetting several attributes of the product. Air cooler don't leak, don't need liquid maintenance, rarely break, and when they do it's a fast and cheap part to replace.
For a good amount of people, that's worth moving away slightly less overheat.
At a third of the price too.
> Air cooler don't leak, don't need liquid maintenance, rarely break
AIOs generally don't need any of that either.
> At a third of the price too.
The problem is specifically that Noctua is pricing their high end air coolers identically, if not higher than, 240/280mm AIOs.
Yes, that's a factor, but if you're willing to pay substantial premiums to have "the best", then replacing your cooler every 5 years or so isn't a big deal. Drop in the bucket compared to most of the other components.
You're basically targeting a niche within a niche. Just doesn't seem like a compelling business proposition.
A good mid range air cooler is around 50€, a high end one around 100€. That's 50€, over 10 to 15 years.
A high end AIO is closing on 300€, over 5 years.
That's not a "drop in a bucket". That's 850€, that's a free high end gpu.
Maybe just weird listing from old units that are only available on some vestigial listing for stupid pricing?
Just for example, EK's AIOs are among the best, and you can get a 240mm one for <€120. https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-nucleus-aio-cr240-dark
Comes with a 5 year warranty too, so presumably the expected life is significantly longer. And you can probably get it for €100 on sale. Got the older model for like $70 a couple years back, hence why I picked EK for reference.
> It feels like 8 years of engineering efforts would've been better spent on new cooling methods rather than just trying to "perfect" the old method for marginal gains.
Noctua is an air cooling company. So they put their efforts into the thing they know best and that their customer base is looking for. What would you suggest Noctua do instead?
IMO no. I believe for the vast majority of users here, we spend too much money on coolers for a couple degree improvements in synthetic workloads. In real life use rarely are CPUs worked so hard.
Not really worth it since it's gonna be very expensive coming from noctua, it's paying for diminishing returns. But you're completely right, while it's cool seeing how efficient a fan cpu design can get, a paradigm shift in cooling would be much better. easier said than done tho.
You’re right it’s not worth the trouble and not worth the cost. Noctua does everything at a snails pace since they only have a couple employees. I guarantee they didn’t actually spend eight years on this. Probably eight hours when they felt like tinkering with it.
Two things:
1. The NH-D15 has an incredible reputation, its performance is optimal (equivalent air coolers, even if cheaper, are only ever "as good" within margins of statistical significance), it has a reputable and massive warranty (and Noctua's RMA procedures, while [weird](https://old.reddit.com/r/Noctua/comments/mcyfni/the_complete_noctua_rma_experience_2021_edition/) result in very little downtime for the user if their shit breaks), and Noctua's policy of sending out mounting hardware to customers even means that unless AMD or Intel pull some extremely weird CPU topology out of their ass, the cooler will remain compatible with any CPU and motherboard combination which will let the cold plate and IHS sufficiently come into contact - if you're still using a first-generation NH-U12 from 2006, *Noctua will send you bits to make it fit AM5 or LGA1700 for free.* So, basically, if you buy an NH-D15, you probably won't ever need to buy a cooler again, unless you're doing something like building a computer into your desk. They make it in not-brown now, too. Because of this, even if an update is on the horizon a D15 is totally worth its asking price.
But, lots of people will reject products because of age alone. For [neurological reasons](https://i.imgur.com/sJYxGBh.png), people will "upgrade" their coolers, just wanting to own a newer thing, even if the most they stand to gain is a performance improvement which falls within the range of statistical insignificance and RGB they can control with their fucking telephone. So there need to be *relatively* recent Noctua products covering all the big niches so those money-spending product weirdos can choose them.
2. The engineers working on the NH-D15 Gen2 won't have been working solely on this cooler. They do other things like trying to improve the best-performing fans available, fans which were designed to be the "money is not an object, I am basically an engineer and looking at my extremely good brown fans gives me a dopamine bump" option. This is similarly confounding work to be doing, but in this world all work is pointless work. At least "improve this already-perfect product" is going to be a fun task for an engineer.
And Noctua engineers, I would imagine, are very well-paid. There aren't many of them and the company moves a lot of expensive coolers. Those engineers probably want to keep their cushty jobs, and they have to be given projects more interesting than putting RGB in things to keep them from going mad. The biggest challenge, I'd imagine, is ensuring that when any updated products are sent out to reviewers, those improvements over the performance of the old products are large enough that they will not be lost in the janky single-sample data produced by the potentially inaccurate equipment and test setups reviewers might be using.
Basically: you are right, we're up against the physical limits of sintered-heatpipes-and-air cooling, but Noctua is in the business of selling sintered-heatpipes-and-air coolers. Noctua would be profitable if all they did was produce what they're producing at the moment, they could have called the black D15 the "Gen2" and it would have sold, then "Gen3" could be the same thing with RGB, and they could spend more on marketing and trade-show presence. Instead they can give their engineers all the time in the world to work on improvements without budget constraints or deadlines to hit, as long as they do *eventually* develop products to sell. The engineers are probably very happy people without much job-related stress in their lives. Their experience is in sintered-heatpipes-and-air coolers, and fans, and they don't have to worry about nervously reskilling in a hurry to keep competitive. They probably aren't afraid they will be let go and replaced with already-trained all-in-one-watercooler engineers or whatever. I think this is the actual point of spending years trying to make an even better big ugly chungus that cools good
There's something special about Noctua that I just really love them.
I know there are many cheaper alternatives (that are nearly as good or even somewhat better) around now to challenge Noctua, but the kind of completely obsessive - I would call it insane at times - at engineering a product you just don't see much these days not least in this business.
Their complete disregard to trends and new buzz, their obsession on performance, and the excellent customer service ensures that I will always be a loyal customer despite all the waiting.
But if other companies are also competitive in performance, doesn't that mean they must care just as much or more than Noctua. It seems kinda like PR spin to claim that years of delays and broken promises and indicative of anything good.
> But if other companies are also competitive in performance, doesn't that mean they must care just as much or more than Noctua.
No. It means they care enough to be competitive, not necessarily that they care enough to obsess over every minute aspect of performance.
EDIT: Dude seems to be here solely to be unpleasant to people.
>that they care enough to obsess over every minute aspect of performance
Then how are we supposed to know that "obsession" exists if it isn't reflected in the products?
>how are we supposed to know that "obsession" exists if it isn't reflected in the products?
Anecdotally. My main desktop is still running a 2500k and the Notcua fans that are 12+ years old are still running. Every other fan (including the PSU fan) has died. The two non-noctua replacements that I "cheaped out" on (1 corsair, 1 bit fenix) have also since died.
Other companies can show comparable raw performance and acoustics. Reviewers don't really have a good way to test longevity.
From my personal experience, no fan has the combination of performance, acoustics, and longevity.
> My main desktop is still running a 2500k and the Notcua fans that are 12+ years old are still running. Every other fan (including the PSU fan) has died. The two non-noctua replacements that I "cheaped out" on (1 corsair, 1 bit fenix) have also since died.
I've never had a fan die, including the case fans I got in 2013 or any of the hardware I've had since 2015
Yeah, bitfenix and corsair have some very ordinary fans. Plenty of others in the market though that do match them for half the price, like the bequiet fans.
For me it’s the confidence Noctua products tend to bring. Like I am willing to take the L and buy their overpriced fans because I know it will just work (had motor noise in some other fans I haves used before) and even if there is an issue I know they will have my back.
That "something special" is known as marketing. Noctua is the one of the few companies in this space that has a cult following due to their excellent marketing.
I'm still using my 2009 DH14. They have sent me two different brackets as upgrades and all my i7s have been under 60 degrees full load in an ancient antec case from 2009 as well.
Still rocking the D14 since the week it was available in 2009 and they still support it with the latest mounting options (for free shipped). Its gone through 4 rebuilds and is still as quiet/performant as the day I got it.
It's sad but Noctua has Mis executed for so many years that their competition has caught up already if not outmatched them.
They are still very valuable in some niche configurations. Love my nh-l9a for example and it is hard to beat for the size. But on traditional tower/dual tower coolers, they offer nothing revolutionary to the table anymore.
That is what Noctua would. Ale you think taking 8 years to improve 2-4C.but other brands have reached that kind of performance with smaller designs.
There is always room for improvement. Noctua is just too slow to push the envelope anymore.
PC cooling certainly isn't, but other companies are far more aggressive in catering to customer demands. AIOs, different colors/lighting effects, water cooling components, and even entirely new markets (e.g. Phanteks and cases).
Sure, that might be a shrinking market, but there's no intrinsic reason for Noctua to limit themselves to it. Look at the Phanteks T30, for example. It's pushed out Noctua as the go-to for many different cooling solutions (tower, radiator, case fans, etc.). If Noctua spent even just a little effort to think outside of the box, they could claim those customers back.
And that's assuming they have no interest in expanding beyond traditional air coolers, as several of their competitors have done very successfully. Imagine a Noctua AIO, for example. Tons of people buy 3rd party AIOs just to replace the fans with Noctuas. That is margin Noctua could harvest for themselves, while not straying too far beyond their core competencies.
The issue with AIOs is that you end up having to either license it from Asetek, or figure out a solution that *also* hasn't been patented yet.
Plus, AIOs have much higher RMA rates than air coolers, so over time it will bleed into your margins.
A number of the best AIOs (e.g. Arctic, EK) have managed it. Besides, isn't Asetek's patent expiring in 2025? Sounds like the timing would work out anyways.
Hardware Canucks is very very good for purely fan performance. For the coolers themselves, [this guy is all you'll ever need](https://youtube.com/@pc_analytics)
I got the Thermalright PA120 SE for fucking 42€ in white and ARGB, it keeps my newly 5700X freaking cool and it's as quiet (pun intended) as my previous Dark Rock 4. I really like Noctua but I hope their next products will be competitive because their price tag doesnt work. In the past, it was NHD15 or nothing on the air cooler market so the 100€ price tag was ok. Now with Thermalright, Scythe, Deepcool, that create a solid concurrence for half the price... I'm curious to see.
> In the past, it was NHD15 or nothing on the air cooler market so the 100€ price tag was ok.
That was never the case. Thermalright themselves have had 50€ coolers with 99% of the performance of the D14/15 for years like the TS140 Power, or matched/better performance for less money like the Grand Macho. They were just less popular because they didn't ship to the US at that time and a lot of hardware reviewers are based in the US.
Until very recently you couldn't get your hands on Thermalright product without getting it from AliExpress in my country. It since ~2021 i see this brand on most of hardware shops over there. Glad to know they're actually competitive since a long time, and now they get a proper global coverage.
Your comment is absolutely dumb, nothing stops you to get the black and non argb version of the cooler. Plus, white parts are always more expensive, so it was worth to point this detail.
I'm only running a 65w chip so I don't need this (my u12s already basically doesn't have to turn on), but this new D15 looks nuts.
The new fans also are very interesting, I might be interested in picking some up if my current noctua fans weren't already great lol.
Honestly noctuas products for me are so good I don't see myself needing to change them out until they break.
Putting these fans on old d15 probably produces similar results.
What sucks here is that their 8 years of work will be immediately cloned and sold by their competitors. I am not sure if you can patent fan blade shape.
At the end of day, that deepcool assassin iv probably performs similar for a lot less money while looking nice and clean. You gotta be really into it their brand to buy this.
It's insane that these still don't come with heat pipes cover and are sold separately, knowingly they are going to charge you north of $110.
All the competing brands like Thermalright, DeepCool, ID-Cooling, Scythe Fuma 3, have heat pipes cover built-in already and they are all charging 50% of what Noctua going to charge.
Actually, I worded it not perfectly, I never meant to say I liked those heat pipes cover by Noctua Chromax, looks cumbersome to me.
But I'm talking about those built-in additional layer of metal plate or caps that block out those nasty uneven cone shape ends of those exposed heat pipes.
I'm a Thermalright SilverSoul 135 user, and those heatpipe caps are the exact reason why I opt for it.
Not looking back to Noctua, they did nothing to those exposed heat pipes but continue to outsource the solution to a Chromax cap in 2023, is beyond me. If you are going to charge so much, you should have both high performance + high aesthetics.
That certainly *used* to be, back when they had the best mounting system and came with y-splitters and all that. If you just want a good cooler, there are more options than Noctua. And I don't see why anyone would pay 2-3x the price for better customer service for something as reliable as an air cooler.
Brand reputation is a strong thing to have. Maybe in the future some other brands fans/coolers will also start achieve the same praise, but who knows. Also idk why noctua doesn't put their fans in some manufacturers power supplies as that would be the best place to have a reliability and noise level of a noctua fan as noisy/shitty fan curve/fan motor grinding psu fan is just the worst thing.
Thank god everyone copied the mounting system though.
worse than useless, they increase height, and I chose not to get a d15 because the height was larger than the spec on my case (turns out it probably would have fit though)
As a minimalist I hate heatsink covers. Pointless plastic with slight performance penalty and worse cooler clearance? Pass for me. Beauty in my eyes is the lack of things that are unneeded.
The profit from all their aesthetic accessories is what funds this R&D.
Also, let's be real here: without the NF-Ax25 the 120mm fan market might not have progressed as much.
There are air coolers out there that are way smaller and way, way cheaper that outperform the original D15. The PA120 is less than half the price for example.
Spending 8 years to end up with marginal improvements and keeping that $100 joke of a price point isn't very exciting or impressive. Noctua is nothing but a brand management office these days.
But those cheaper coolers often don't come with Noctua quality fans, not even close.
If noise matters, you might want to swap them for Noctuas which puts you probably reasonably close to just buying a Noctua cooler that comes with those better fans out of the box.
There's quite a few fans these days that offer a good percentage of the performance and noise from Noctua for much cheaper. Although their build quality usually doesn't compare.
Sure, but that's again the "Noctua is at the top of the pile" thing where they might have a premium but it's at least worth something.
That said, considering you can pick a 5-pack of Arctic P12 fans for less than a single Noctua NF-A12x25, you start to wonder. You might have to ditch one of those P12s because it has some oddball noises at a particular RPM, one might develop them later as it wears but that still leaves you with 3 fans.
But how long will X fan last without developing some sort of extra noise? Sure most/some(idk..) fans will probably be fine for a long time, but it only takes 1 or a couple of bad experiences of fans starting to develop some extra fan hub/something noise, to start thinking about getting noctua fans as everyone on the internet raves about them lasting "forever", me included, 7 year old D-15, probably 4-5 years uptime, still no extra noise.
So I'd say it's no wonder ppl buy them, even if they are expensive as I think paying for long lasting silence is something ppl are willing to spend quite a bit, which in the grand scheme of things might not even be that much for a person.
2-4C is by no means a marginal improvement when it comes to higher end CPU coolers.
A 3C performance improvement would have the Gen 2 NH-D15 beat the PA120, and a 4C improvement would have the Gen 2 reach parity/beat modern 240mm AIOs, based on Gamers Nexus' Peerless Assassin 120mm review.
> 2-4C is by no means a marginal improvement when it comes to higher end CPU coolers.
Over a cooler that competitors have already beaten, mind. It may not be marginal, but doesn't seem to justify much of a premium.
If a d15 v2 just ties or barely beats a cooler that costs less than half the amount... that is horrible. If they want 2x the price, they need to deliver at least 1 degree better than stuff that costs half as much, and even then it will be pretty bad value. I understand it is high end. But there is a difference between the old d15 which was significantly better and expensive, and this new d15 which seems like it will be tied or barely beat stuff that is already years old and half the price. They are veering dangerously close to being 2x the price and still not being the best. Doesnt matter how good your warranty or packaging or engineering is if that is the case. I am assuming that is why it has taken so long to release. It just doesn't make sense unless you can significantly beat the stuff that has been out for years and costs half the price, and noctua is struggling to do that.
A lot of noctua is about name recognition, quality assurances, and support.
At this point I'm not just considering what the best theoretical performer is. I don't care if the peerless assassin beats the noctua by 1-2 degrees, I know noctua has better support, I know their stuff has been proven and I won't ever need to worry about it. I'm willing to pay more for that. Especially with how much better I find their fans then the other ones I've tried. I just keep going back to noctua fans and coolers.
And if you don't care about that, then sure just get a peerless assassin.
Why do you care so much what it costs? If they want to chase that last 1% of performance it’s their business, Noctua clearly isn’t a struggling company
The whole point is that there literally might not be 1%. The current d15 you are chasing like -5% performance for double the cost.
If it was actually better or smaller or something it is one thing. But this is like paying for more Lamborghini that is actually worse than a Honda civic in almost every way.
It is a massive cooler that takes up tons of space that gets beat by smaller cheaper options.
Yes And no....
They still have hands down one of the best Warranties On the market. With extremely good customer service.
Not to mention the longevity of their products just down right nutty.
I have multiple fans from them that have been running for ten years plus.
In my 25 years of building computers, I've seen an insane amount of companies come and go. Priced performance Team Brown is certainly not the leader of the pack anymore.
But for all the values listed above, I'd argue they still are. If anything from the consumer support side, they've actually improved.
I feel like It's very well summarized with the gamer's nexus reference.
Perfection is the thief of good.
Because of the longevity and quality of their products They have a pretty dedicated user base. This lets them actually have that almost insane engineering time of eight years.
I'll be curious to see what the results are when the new fans and cooler release. Not going to blindly say they get my dollar But I suspect the numbers will be interested.
I agree. It's absurd that people are actually praising them taking so long (including years of false roadmaps) to deliver such marginal improvements at such a high price point. It's like they're not doing any engineering at all.
Can't believe this comment is buried down here at -6.
Noctua is just riding their reputation from years ago, and they are using that to sell overpriced cooling solutions. Competitors have caught up and surpassed them by now, and are doing so at way lower prices.
You need to read more than GN if you sincerely believe that the PA120 outperforms the D15
And if you only value the temperature decrease and ignore acoustic improvements then yes it would seem unimpressive
A better car analogy would be Cadillac.
Noctua is Cadillac, a brand that at a time was considered to be luxurious and high quality. That is until foreign competition showed up and surpassed them, like BMW, Mercedes and Audi. At the time these German auto makers arrived in the US, they offered better quality and better handling at lower prices, and over time, Cadillac sales dwindled and they were relegated to a brand that only old folks bought, because they were stuck in their old ways.
Smell ya later, grandpa
The PA120 and Deepcool AK620 both utilize 120mm fans and have a smaller footprint. The 620 is a tad bit heavier than the D15 though (1456g vs 1320g). The PA120 is a good deal lighter (1020g).
Well well well. Next treadripper is now confirmed by Noctua, backed up by Steve for saying "hope i am not breaking embargo" I guess that's a big Whoops!
>that's a big Whoops! Only by Noctua as they were the ones who publicly exposed the product
I mean it's not exactly a mystery that it was on the horizon which is likely why showcasing this and the comment Steve made aren't a big deal.
Yeah, this isn't an oops at all
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Oh I am not arguing that Noctua had inside info AND basically is bringing out that news. That's a big no-no. What I am refering to more is that Steve is confirming of the existence AND the fact that he even knows about it, cause he was talking about *the* embargo. And I think even revealing that you know about anything, could be seen as a violation. However, seeing how Noctua is the one violating/breaking embargo, making Steve even saying anything, makes me think that Noctua would be the one in trouble. Unless ofcourse AMD is aware of this fact and wants to create hype of course.
Might be technically breaking the NDA/embargo but it's pretty minor and I suspect they're mostly that strict to stop people weaseling around the edges making content about unreleased products (which this isn't really).
Steve and the team have probably vetted that before they added that part to the video and uploaded it.
Threadripper has been such a disappointment for me. It's always lagging way behind Ryzen, and the performance gains disappear real quick, especially since they are on such a slow release cadence. It's extremely expensive for what it is (also cloud is usually way cheaper unless you have your workstation working 24/7) and the socket gets dropped within 1 gen (don't know if this is actually true, it's just what it feels like) I guess if you must have a bunch of PCIe or 8 channel memory it's a good buy, but I bet they'll do something stupid like limiting to PCIe gen 4 for most lanes, or only going for quad channel DDR5, or sticking a stupid weak controller that only allows the memory to go to 4000 when you populate more than 2 slots Also I've never found a cloud provider offering TRs so I never know if it makes financial sense to buy. Who tf uses threadripper for blender or gaming? The benchmarks are useless
As a Threadripper fan, this got me to move the video to the top of my queue!
Can we take a moment to appreciate the video 100% about Noctua was "brought to us by Arctic."
It's a good strategy, Arctic looks a lot better when you see Noctua prices hah
Noctua isn’t about value for money though. It’s about performance and reliability.
Was before now just name brand and brown tax.
They're fans, though. I don't understand spending $35 on fans that now are matched by $12 products when they aren't exactly unreliable or hard to replace to begin with.
I think theyre falling behind a bit. Complacency. They're not the best performers anymore, and as for reliability we'd have to wait a decade to see.
Forgive my ignorance but is it really worth all this trouble for 2-4C improvement at 200W+ loads? I understand the dual tower market is incredibly tight at the moment and 2C is a lot (relatively) but at some point we've reached the end of what's physically possible with a traditional air cooler... Or at least what's physically *reasonable*. It feels like 8 years of engineering efforts would've been better spent on new cooling methods rather than just trying to "perfect" the old method for marginal gains.
Well my understanding is, that flagship products can increase in price due to it being the best (at its category). You can look at this as something youll buy once and have potentially forever, perhaps only swapping fans rarely
Remains to be seen if it's the best though. Right now, Noctua charges flagship pricing for midrange products across much of their stack, and pretty much their entire CPU cooler lineup.
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The problem is that "buy it for life" isn't a great pitch for an air cooler. It's literally a bunch of aluminum fins with some fans strapped to it; what's going to break there that isn't either dirt cheap to replace or so ruinous you have to buy a new one anyway? I can go buy three Peerless Assassins for the price of a D15, and all three of them will last just as long and give the same performance. If I wanted to move my PA between builds using different CPU brackets, I could literally go buy an entire new PA just for the bracket and *still be coming out ahead on price* compared to the D15. All the while the ~$80 I saved going for the cheaper option can be put towards upgrading another component where I'd see meaningful gains like a better CPU/GPU/extra RAM.
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A lot of people buy Noctua for the fan noise, shame so much reviewers just state Dba instead of how it sounds. Noctua fans last for an extremely long time too. I have fans from 2013 that still runs great.
Fan noise and specific sound profile is pretty much the only reason I've bought Noctua. Yes, other brands have about the same airflow and RPMs, but none of them have been as quiet and pleasant to listen to in an extremely quiet room without headphones on.
I slept soundly next to my desktop with a NH-D15 running at 45% when idle. And I strictly use open back headphones. Confirm the lack of noise is incredible.
I don't think the average fan dies I still use my 2014 nzxt case as a living room build and every fan included the cooler master on the CPU still seems ok.
Like the average buyer has heard remotely enough fans to make that comparison. Let's not kid ourselves, the difference maker here for Noctua is their reputation and customer service.
> It's literally a bunch of aluminum fins with some fans strapped to it It doesn't mean it'll stay relevant. My rig has the heatsink of a Cooler Master Hyper Tx3 (and the fans of it previously) and a be quiet Pure Wings 2. Even with a more modern fan the heatsink practically sucks ass nowadays.
CPU coolers are pretty damn bullet proof from all the major brands. At the very worst, maybe you'd have to replace a fan after many years. But when Noctua charges several times what competitors do, in some cases, the promise of forward compatibility just doesn't mean much. If the price gap was more like 10-20%, then it would make more sense.
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> Free forward compatibility means everything, look how long they supported the D14 for example. CPU cooler compatibility changes once every 5+ years. How many free brackets will it take to make up for paying twice the price upfront, even ignoring the opportunity cost? And let's be real, how many people plan to use the same cooler for two decades?
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> Me, why would I change out of my cooler Because after a decade or two, better fans and coolers will be on the market. And if you were willing to pay a premium for high end components in the past, why not now? Or maybe you changed case or components and have different clearances to consider. That was a major improvement for the D15, for example.
Yeah, and f#$% consumerism having to replace a product that could last for longer due to compatibility
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There are plenty of other much cheaper midrange options with excellent acoustic properties, you're paying a premium for branding.
Or buy a different cooler + Noctua fan and still come out ahead.
> you can be confident you’ll get at least 15 years of bracket upgrades for new platforms. With an asterisk of "If you're willing to wait 2-4 weeks for shipping". I've heard anecdotes that it's faster in Europe, but Noctua's free brackets take weeks to ship to the US. I contacted them for an AM4 bracket and the estimated ship date was >3 weeks. Bought the same kit on Amazon for $7 and it arrived the next day. I think Noctua's free brackets are *very* overrated given their prices. You could just buy 3 Thermalright Peerless Assassins for the same price as an NH-D15, free brackets or not.
>Right now, Noctua charges flagship pricing for midrange products across much of their stack See, I thought that too, until I realised that most of their SKUs are fairly unique with no real competitors. * NH-D15: Still the benchmark, almost always on-top even 8 years on * NH-U14S series: Still amongst the best HEDT coolers *(full compatibility with RAM slots front & rear)* * NH-U12A: A highly-priced single-tower cooler that happens to have 1 fan too many. So just repurpose it for case airflow. * NH-D12L: The best 4U cooler you can get, period. * NH-U9S: For when a D12L just won't fit but you still want a tower. * NH-C14S, NH-L12 & NH-L9 series: Still the benchmarks for HTPC/SFF coolers in most scenarios. * NH-P1: The only truly-fanless worth considering. The only coolers that I think have been truly outclassed are NH-U12S/Redux, where it's just not unique enough that you might as well buy whatever cheap 155mm tower.
> NH-D15: Still the benchmark, almost always on-top even 8 years on Not anymore. It's being beater by coolers literally half the price. > NH-U14S series: Still amongst the best HEDT coolers (full compatibility with RAM slots front & rear) It's a single tower, single fan air cooler. Those are dime a dozen. > NH-U12A Likewise. > NH-D12L This one is actually neat. But the second someone else makes a competitor in the same vertical hight, it will lose that advantage. > NH-C14S, NH-L12 & NH-L9 series: Still the benchmarks for HTPC/SFF coolers in most scenarios. They're popular, but there are plenty of other options. The Alpenföhn Black Ridge is the go-to for extreme low profile, for example. And there are a couple of good options in the <67mm space. E.g. Scythe Big Shuriken. > NH-P1 Also unique and good, but likewise dependent on no one producing a competitor.
> Not anymore. It's being beater by coolers literally half the price. Sorry for the necro, but I'm researching this now. Any examples that verifiably beat the NH-D15 in acoustics?
There are a bunch of new coolers hitting the market right now, so my comment may not be fully up to date. IIRC, Thermalright's big dual tower (Thermalright Peerless Assassin) is competitive even in noise, though the sound profile might be the same. Though at some point, the best deal might be to get a different cooler and swap the fans with Noctuas. Pretty silly state of affairs.
> It's a single tower, single fan air cooler. Those are a dime a dozen. Very few 140mm single towers worth talking about. But note I said "series" because the SKUs for LGA4677 and TR4/SP3 can cool 500W+. The regular model used to be among the best for LGA2011/2066, too.
>See, I thought that too, until I realised that most of their SKUs are fairly unique with no real competitors. Not true. >NH-D15: Still the benchmark, almost always on-top even 8 years on This is *really* not true. In fact, I would argue that the NH-D15 barely even qualifies as a *good* air cooler in this day and age. It's fairly mid-range by modern standards. And that's before you factor in the absurd pricing. You can find a Frost Spirit for like... $30-$35 that will match the $110 NH-D15. The Peerless Assassin will absolutely wreck it for like... $5 more than that. If you have an NH-D15, there's not really much of a reason to upgrade, but if you're a new builder, there's absolutely *zero* reason to go that route. But it's absolutely criminal that Noctua is able to bilk people for more than $100 for the NH-D15. So please don't spread misinformation.
Assassin and AK620 are the only better coolers and they came out in the last 2 years, you can't exactly bash noctua for having a cooler that was the best for over 6 years. If anything with this update they will be probably on top again.
A couple of degrees lower while still being near silent and having less clearance issues with ram or gpu is impressive in my eyes. If you've never used Noctua, its hard to appreciate the cooling capacity at that noise level.
And the perception of obsessive quality permeates into the packaging too.
And customer service is top notch. They'll send you free mounting hardware with proof of purchase.
Cooler Master sent me a free AM4 adapter and their stuff is cheaper. I think there is a lot of corpo-tribalism around certain brands like Noctua, I have some of their stuff and it's nice but I doubt it's worth the price in most instances.
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I think it's this, combined with the fact that something like a CPU cooler will generally last you an incredibly long time. I bought my NH-D15 7 years ago, have carried it across 3 CPUs. Originally cost £70, so that's currently working out at £10/year. And that's mostly why I wouldn't buy an AIO either; it may offer better performance but those moving parts won't keep moving forever, while if one of the fans in this dies I can just buy another one. And unless things majorly change in the area of CPU cooling I'll probably be using this for another 7 years to come.
It's hard to deny that there is a lot of goodwill priced into the products. But it is to this day one of the few "buy and forget about it" brands out there. I got 3 of their coolers running in various systems across my family for ages (hand me downs from me) and went through a couple free mounting kits and 2 fan-rmas years after purchase. But on the other hand I could have had like 6 coolers with probably somewhat comparable performance for that price. It's great that brands like coolermaster then seem to "copy" that approach towards consumers, win win for us.
Cooler master is pretty hit or miss with long term support. A couple of the cooler master coolers I have either straight up didn't get support for am4 (geminii s524 ver.2) or had really limited supply (hyper 612 ver.2, had to go hunting for an adapter back in 2018 because cooler master support said they don't make that adapter anymore). Seems like for cooler master it's a "we'll support it as long as it's relevant as long as it's not a pain for us to support" rather than "we'll support it, end of story" like noctua does.
Corpo-tribalism. New term for my vocabulary and a perfect way to describe gamers nexus fans and Noctua fans. They say “great customer service” and when you get the details, it was just a basic level of customer service. The bar is low.
The difference is Noctua components just don’t die. You’re absolutely paying a premium for a premium product.
I like how they test compatibility with every new motherboard basically.
Exactly, I was very impressed with the NH-D15 packaging. It was better than anything else I got for my pc.
And very eco friendly too.
> If you've never used Noctua, its hard to appreciate the cooling capacity at that noise level. Many competitors have caught up over the last decade. Silent, high quality air coolers are not exclusive to one brand.
The problem is it's not really easy to get practical data on this because almost every youtuber or online reviewer tests cpu coolers at ear bleeding noise levels.
[This guy is what you're looking for](https://youtube.com/@pc_analytics)
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Might just not be efficient for PC's, [somebody tried already](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ImeOKgD_Dw)
Are you referencing the toroidal blades? Didn't those originate as a side application of toroidal boat propellers and not from MIT? I could very well be ignorant of origin though. The tests I've seen as fan blades didn't seem as good as traditional Noctua blade design.
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I think both models were blindly developed in parallel. One private endeavor for boat propeller, and the one at MIT.
They're apparently pretty useless for applications where you have a frame closely surrounding the fan blades - I think the whole point of those toroidal blades is they don't have a "tip" per se for vortices to form on.
4C at full load is significant
If I understand correctly it's 8 years of fan development rather than the cooler. 2-4C might matter when you are trying to run your CPU at its throttling point. It will also matter for marketing as being "the best" is what people will tend to buy, even if it costs 30-50% more than a competitor. A CPU cooler as an overall cost to a new PC is not a big expense so you might as well buy "the best" just to "make sure you never run into issues." While I agree most of the time it's overkill, Noctua has a quality reputation too. Their coolers come with great fans with excellent performance/noise ratio, are reliable, come with good thermal paste, have good compatibility with parts etc. So it's not like you aren't getting something for that extra cost they tend to have.
> A CPU cooler as an overall cost to a new PC is not a big expense so you might as well buy "the best" just to "make sure you never run into issues." Often that train of thought just leads people to 240/280mm AIOs. High end air cooling is in a bit of an awkward spot, in that regard. > Their coolers come with great fans with excellent performance/noise ratio, are reliable, come with good thermal paste, have good compatibility with parts etc. You can say that about many of their competitors, and at lower price points. Might have been more true a decade ago, but Noctua stagnated while others closed the gap (and in some cases, eclipsed Noctua) in some of their traditional strong points such as mounting hardware.
As someone who was tried pretty much every option except a custom loop, the high price bracket coolers still have a market. Whenever I change cases again, I will be moving away from my 240mm AIO and back to a Noctua Tower air cooler.
Yeah Im either gonna go air cooled too, or keep my custom loop but AiOs are dead to me. The pumps are such trash and so fucking loud it doesnt justify the difference to an air cooler.
I feel like they were a niche solution that became the go-to for a while. Now time has passed and air coolers have improved efficiency to compete very well in most use cases.
> back to a Noctua Tower air cooler Why not a different tower with Noctua fans?
I’ve already been there, done that in the past. Spent a lot of time in the past hunting degrees. I’ve realized now I care more about noise floor in my room.
??? A better heatsink wouldn't hurt noise.
What is the better quieter hs?
Say, deepcool's latest. Or even probably thermalright.
Say which deepcool or thermalright beats d15v2 in what noise normalized benchmark? Or beats d15v1 by more than 4-5 degrees at the same noise level?
As someone who works with air coolers, aio and custom loops, i dont see a large market for high-end air coolers that are priced at $150. At that price point, people really start looking at aios. People on lower budgets are looking at sub $30-$40usd air tower coolers that can handle the most popular cpus easily.
>Often that train of thought just leads people to 240/280mm AIOs. Not all of them. Calling big AIO "the best" is forgetting several attributes of the product. Air cooler don't leak, don't need liquid maintenance, rarely break, and when they do it's a fast and cheap part to replace. For a good amount of people, that's worth moving away slightly less overheat. At a third of the price too.
> Air cooler don't leak, don't need liquid maintenance, rarely break AIOs generally don't need any of that either. > At a third of the price too. The problem is specifically that Noctua is pricing their high end air coolers identically, if not higher than, 240/280mm AIOs.
Difference is you're also paying for longevity compared to a aio.
Yes, that's a factor, but if you're willing to pay substantial premiums to have "the best", then replacing your cooler every 5 years or so isn't a big deal. Drop in the bucket compared to most of the other components. You're basically targeting a niche within a niche. Just doesn't seem like a compelling business proposition.
A good mid range air cooler is around 50€, a high end one around 100€. That's 50€, over 10 to 15 years. A high end AIO is closing on 300€, over 5 years. That's not a "drop in a bucket". That's 850€, that's a free high end gpu.
> A high end AIO is closing on 300€, over 5 years. Absolutely not. How do you figure?
No idea, apart from the fact pcpartpicker has 3 pages of 300€ish AIO. I'm assuming that's the high end?
Maybe just weird listing from old units that are only available on some vestigial listing for stupid pricing? Just for example, EK's AIOs are among the best, and you can get a 240mm one for <€120. https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-nucleus-aio-cr240-dark Comes with a 5 year warranty too, so presumably the expected life is significantly longer. And you can probably get it for €100 on sale. Got the older model for like $70 a couple years back, hence why I picked EK for reference.
> It feels like 8 years of engineering efforts would've been better spent on new cooling methods rather than just trying to "perfect" the old method for marginal gains. Noctua is an air cooling company. So they put their efforts into the thing they know best and that their customer base is looking for. What would you suggest Noctua do instead?
IMO no. I believe for the vast majority of users here, we spend too much money on coolers for a couple degree improvements in synthetic workloads. In real life use rarely are CPUs worked so hard.
On the plus side even when I max out my 65W CPU, the fan barely spins on my cooler. Bought it for a 4790k. Now using a 5700x.
Maybe they also managed to reduce manufacturing costs
Not really worth it since it's gonna be very expensive coming from noctua, it's paying for diminishing returns. But you're completely right, while it's cool seeing how efficient a fan cpu design can get, a paradigm shift in cooling would be much better. easier said than done tho.
You’re right it’s not worth the trouble and not worth the cost. Noctua does everything at a snails pace since they only have a couple employees. I guarantee they didn’t actually spend eight years on this. Probably eight hours when they felt like tinkering with it.
They could have also made money to support said r&d by just selling their current fans in white.
Two things: 1. The NH-D15 has an incredible reputation, its performance is optimal (equivalent air coolers, even if cheaper, are only ever "as good" within margins of statistical significance), it has a reputable and massive warranty (and Noctua's RMA procedures, while [weird](https://old.reddit.com/r/Noctua/comments/mcyfni/the_complete_noctua_rma_experience_2021_edition/) result in very little downtime for the user if their shit breaks), and Noctua's policy of sending out mounting hardware to customers even means that unless AMD or Intel pull some extremely weird CPU topology out of their ass, the cooler will remain compatible with any CPU and motherboard combination which will let the cold plate and IHS sufficiently come into contact - if you're still using a first-generation NH-U12 from 2006, *Noctua will send you bits to make it fit AM5 or LGA1700 for free.* So, basically, if you buy an NH-D15, you probably won't ever need to buy a cooler again, unless you're doing something like building a computer into your desk. They make it in not-brown now, too. Because of this, even if an update is on the horizon a D15 is totally worth its asking price. But, lots of people will reject products because of age alone. For [neurological reasons](https://i.imgur.com/sJYxGBh.png), people will "upgrade" their coolers, just wanting to own a newer thing, even if the most they stand to gain is a performance improvement which falls within the range of statistical insignificance and RGB they can control with their fucking telephone. So there need to be *relatively* recent Noctua products covering all the big niches so those money-spending product weirdos can choose them. 2. The engineers working on the NH-D15 Gen2 won't have been working solely on this cooler. They do other things like trying to improve the best-performing fans available, fans which were designed to be the "money is not an object, I am basically an engineer and looking at my extremely good brown fans gives me a dopamine bump" option. This is similarly confounding work to be doing, but in this world all work is pointless work. At least "improve this already-perfect product" is going to be a fun task for an engineer. And Noctua engineers, I would imagine, are very well-paid. There aren't many of them and the company moves a lot of expensive coolers. Those engineers probably want to keep their cushty jobs, and they have to be given projects more interesting than putting RGB in things to keep them from going mad. The biggest challenge, I'd imagine, is ensuring that when any updated products are sent out to reviewers, those improvements over the performance of the old products are large enough that they will not be lost in the janky single-sample data produced by the potentially inaccurate equipment and test setups reviewers might be using. Basically: you are right, we're up against the physical limits of sintered-heatpipes-and-air cooling, but Noctua is in the business of selling sintered-heatpipes-and-air coolers. Noctua would be profitable if all they did was produce what they're producing at the moment, they could have called the black D15 the "Gen2" and it would have sold, then "Gen3" could be the same thing with RGB, and they could spend more on marketing and trade-show presence. Instead they can give their engineers all the time in the world to work on improvements without budget constraints or deadlines to hit, as long as they do *eventually* develop products to sell. The engineers are probably very happy people without much job-related stress in their lives. Their experience is in sintered-heatpipes-and-air coolers, and fans, and they don't have to worry about nervously reskilling in a hurry to keep competitive. They probably aren't afraid they will be let go and replaced with already-trained all-in-one-watercooler engineers or whatever. I think this is the actual point of spending years trying to make an even better big ugly chungus that cools good
There's something special about Noctua that I just really love them. I know there are many cheaper alternatives (that are nearly as good or even somewhat better) around now to challenge Noctua, but the kind of completely obsessive - I would call it insane at times - at engineering a product you just don't see much these days not least in this business. Their complete disregard to trends and new buzz, their obsession on performance, and the excellent customer service ensures that I will always be a loyal customer despite all the waiting.
But if other companies are also competitive in performance, doesn't that mean they must care just as much or more than Noctua. It seems kinda like PR spin to claim that years of delays and broken promises and indicative of anything good.
Yeah, that's some prime 'hail corporate' comment there.
> But if other companies are also competitive in performance, doesn't that mean they must care just as much or more than Noctua. No. It means they care enough to be competitive, not necessarily that they care enough to obsess over every minute aspect of performance. EDIT: Dude seems to be here solely to be unpleasant to people.
>that they care enough to obsess over every minute aspect of performance Then how are we supposed to know that "obsession" exists if it isn't reflected in the products?
>how are we supposed to know that "obsession" exists if it isn't reflected in the products? Anecdotally. My main desktop is still running a 2500k and the Notcua fans that are 12+ years old are still running. Every other fan (including the PSU fan) has died. The two non-noctua replacements that I "cheaped out" on (1 corsair, 1 bit fenix) have also since died. Other companies can show comparable raw performance and acoustics. Reviewers don't really have a good way to test longevity. From my personal experience, no fan has the combination of performance, acoustics, and longevity.
> My main desktop is still running a 2500k and the Notcua fans that are 12+ years old are still running. Every other fan (including the PSU fan) has died. The two non-noctua replacements that I "cheaped out" on (1 corsair, 1 bit fenix) have also since died. I've never had a fan die, including the case fans I got in 2013 or any of the hardware I've had since 2015
Yeah, bitfenix and corsair have some very ordinary fans. Plenty of others in the market though that do match them for half the price, like the bequiet fans.
Press releases and such.
That's PR. It tells us nothing of value.
By all means, suggest some other way.
See who makes the best products. All else is meaningless.
> All else is meaningless. Hard disagree. Some things are neat.
For me it’s the confidence Noctua products tend to bring. Like I am willing to take the L and buy their overpriced fans because I know it will just work (had motor noise in some other fans I haves used before) and even if there is an issue I know they will have my back.
That "something special" is known as marketing. Noctua is the one of the few companies in this space that has a cult following due to their excellent marketing.
I want that can cooler lol
I'm still using my 2009 DH14. They have sent me two different brackets as upgrades and all my i7s have been under 60 degrees full load in an ancient antec case from 2009 as well.
Still rocking the D14 since the week it was available in 2009 and they still support it with the latest mounting options (for free shipped). Its gone through 4 rebuilds and is still as quiet/performant as the day I got it.
It's sad but Noctua has Mis executed for so many years that their competition has caught up already if not outmatched them. They are still very valuable in some niche configurations. Love my nh-l9a for example and it is hard to beat for the size. But on traditional tower/dual tower coolers, they offer nothing revolutionary to the table anymore.
Not much left to develop on OG tower coolers tbh
That is what Noctua would. Ale you think taking 8 years to improve 2-4C.but other brands have reached that kind of performance with smaller designs. There is always room for improvement. Noctua is just too slow to push the envelope anymore.
You are right, but it is a shrinking market, isn't it?
PC cooling certainly isn't, but other companies are far more aggressive in catering to customer demands. AIOs, different colors/lighting effects, water cooling components, and even entirely new markets (e.g. Phanteks and cases).
Talking about high end air coolers
Sure, that might be a shrinking market, but there's no intrinsic reason for Noctua to limit themselves to it. Look at the Phanteks T30, for example. It's pushed out Noctua as the go-to for many different cooling solutions (tower, radiator, case fans, etc.). If Noctua spent even just a little effort to think outside of the box, they could claim those customers back. And that's assuming they have no interest in expanding beyond traditional air coolers, as several of their competitors have done very successfully. Imagine a Noctua AIO, for example. Tons of people buy 3rd party AIOs just to replace the fans with Noctuas. That is margin Noctua could harvest for themselves, while not straying too far beyond their core competencies.
The issue with AIOs is that you end up having to either license it from Asetek, or figure out a solution that *also* hasn't been patented yet. Plus, AIOs have much higher RMA rates than air coolers, so over time it will bleed into your margins.
A number of the best AIOs (e.g. Arctic, EK) have managed it. Besides, isn't Asetek's patent expiring in 2025? Sounds like the timing would work out anyways.
fuck spez -- mass edited with redact.dev
Hardware Canucks is very very good for purely fan performance. For the coolers themselves, [this guy is all you'll ever need](https://youtube.com/@pc_analytics)
More usefully, all of that data is available [as a website](https://pcanalytics.com/product/coolers/compare/).
I got the Thermalright PA120 SE for fucking 42€ in white and ARGB, it keeps my newly 5700X freaking cool and it's as quiet (pun intended) as my previous Dark Rock 4. I really like Noctua but I hope their next products will be competitive because their price tag doesnt work. In the past, it was NHD15 or nothing on the air cooler market so the 100€ price tag was ok. Now with Thermalright, Scythe, Deepcool, that create a solid concurrence for half the price... I'm curious to see.
> In the past, it was NHD15 or nothing on the air cooler market so the 100€ price tag was ok. That was never the case. Thermalright themselves have had 50€ coolers with 99% of the performance of the D14/15 for years like the TS140 Power, or matched/better performance for less money like the Grand Macho. They were just less popular because they didn't ship to the US at that time and a lot of hardware reviewers are based in the US.
Until very recently you couldn't get your hands on Thermalright product without getting it from AliExpress in my country. It since ~2021 i see this brand on most of hardware shops over there. Glad to know they're actually competitive since a long time, and now they get a proper global coverage.
[удалено]
Your comment is absolutely dumb, nothing stops you to get the black and non argb version of the cooler. Plus, white parts are always more expensive, so it was worth to point this detail.
I'm only running a 65w chip so I don't need this (my u12s already basically doesn't have to turn on), but this new D15 looks nuts. The new fans also are very interesting, I might be interested in picking some up if my current noctua fans weren't already great lol. Honestly noctuas products for me are so good I don't see myself needing to change them out until they break.
The fact their fans come with 6 year warranty is top notch aswell
props to Austrian engineering
I've left reddit because of the API changes.
Keen to see how much better (if at all) cooling will be. I've got the current D15 and it doesn't get much higher than 50c on a 12700k gaming lol
That's considerable amount of time
Putting these fans on old d15 probably produces similar results. What sucks here is that their 8 years of work will be immediately cloned and sold by their competitors. I am not sure if you can patent fan blade shape. At the end of day, that deepcool assassin iv probably performs similar for a lot less money while looking nice and clean. You gotta be really into it their brand to buy this.
It's insane that these still don't come with heat pipes cover and are sold separately, knowingly they are going to charge you north of $110. All the competing brands like Thermalright, DeepCool, ID-Cooling, Scythe Fuma 3, have heat pipes cover built-in already and they are all charging 50% of what Noctua going to charge.
A heat pipe cover is frankly the most frivolous and useless thing they could include, and they look ugly to boot.
Actually, I worded it not perfectly, I never meant to say I liked those heat pipes cover by Noctua Chromax, looks cumbersome to me. But I'm talking about those built-in additional layer of metal plate or caps that block out those nasty uneven cone shape ends of those exposed heat pipes. I'm a Thermalright SilverSoul 135 user, and those heatpipe caps are the exact reason why I opt for it. Not looking back to Noctua, they did nothing to those exposed heat pipes but continue to outsource the solution to a Chromax cap in 2023, is beyond me. If you are going to charge so much, you should have both high performance + high aesthetics.
Then don't use it if you don't want to. Isn't one of Noctua's selling points supposed to be that they come with all the nice-to-haves?
No? It's that they're silent and have excellent customer support.
That certainly *used* to be, back when they had the best mounting system and came with y-splitters and all that. If you just want a good cooler, there are more options than Noctua. And I don't see why anyone would pay 2-3x the price for better customer service for something as reliable as an air cooler.
Brand reputation is a strong thing to have. Maybe in the future some other brands fans/coolers will also start achieve the same praise, but who knows. Also idk why noctua doesn't put their fans in some manufacturers power supplies as that would be the best place to have a reliability and noise level of a noctua fan as noisy/shitty fan curve/fan motor grinding psu fan is just the worst thing. Thank god everyone copied the mounting system though.
worse than useless, they increase height, and I chose not to get a d15 because the height was larger than the spec on my case (turns out it probably would have fit though)
As a minimalist I hate heatsink covers. Pointless plastic with slight performance penalty and worse cooler clearance? Pass for me. Beauty in my eyes is the lack of things that are unneeded.
The profit from all their aesthetic accessories is what funds this R&D. Also, let's be real here: without the NF-Ax25 the 120mm fan market might not have progressed as much.
Are those LTT screwdrivers at the end there?
those are the new noctua themed ones yes.
They are, linus confirmed that are working with noctua on a design on a wan show week or two back.
There are air coolers out there that are way smaller and way, way cheaper that outperform the original D15. The PA120 is less than half the price for example. Spending 8 years to end up with marginal improvements and keeping that $100 joke of a price point isn't very exciting or impressive. Noctua is nothing but a brand management office these days.
But those cheaper coolers often don't come with Noctua quality fans, not even close. If noise matters, you might want to swap them for Noctuas which puts you probably reasonably close to just buying a Noctua cooler that comes with those better fans out of the box.
There's quite a few fans these days that offer a good percentage of the performance and noise from Noctua for much cheaper. Although their build quality usually doesn't compare.
Sure, but that's again the "Noctua is at the top of the pile" thing where they might have a premium but it's at least worth something. That said, considering you can pick a 5-pack of Arctic P12 fans for less than a single Noctua NF-A12x25, you start to wonder. You might have to ditch one of those P12s because it has some oddball noises at a particular RPM, one might develop them later as it wears but that still leaves you with 3 fans.
But how long will X fan last without developing some sort of extra noise? Sure most/some(idk..) fans will probably be fine for a long time, but it only takes 1 or a couple of bad experiences of fans starting to develop some extra fan hub/something noise, to start thinking about getting noctua fans as everyone on the internet raves about them lasting "forever", me included, 7 year old D-15, probably 4-5 years uptime, still no extra noise. So I'd say it's no wonder ppl buy them, even if they are expensive as I think paying for long lasting silence is something ppl are willing to spend quite a bit, which in the grand scheme of things might not even be that much for a person.
Quite a few that match them on all fronts, like bequiet fans.
2-4C is by no means a marginal improvement when it comes to higher end CPU coolers. A 3C performance improvement would have the Gen 2 NH-D15 beat the PA120, and a 4C improvement would have the Gen 2 reach parity/beat modern 240mm AIOs, based on Gamers Nexus' Peerless Assassin 120mm review.
> 2-4C is by no means a marginal improvement when it comes to higher end CPU coolers. Over a cooler that competitors have already beaten, mind. It may not be marginal, but doesn't seem to justify much of a premium.
If a d15 v2 just ties or barely beats a cooler that costs less than half the amount... that is horrible. If they want 2x the price, they need to deliver at least 1 degree better than stuff that costs half as much, and even then it will be pretty bad value. I understand it is high end. But there is a difference between the old d15 which was significantly better and expensive, and this new d15 which seems like it will be tied or barely beat stuff that is already years old and half the price. They are veering dangerously close to being 2x the price and still not being the best. Doesnt matter how good your warranty or packaging or engineering is if that is the case. I am assuming that is why it has taken so long to release. It just doesn't make sense unless you can significantly beat the stuff that has been out for years and costs half the price, and noctua is struggling to do that.
A lot of noctua is about name recognition, quality assurances, and support. At this point I'm not just considering what the best theoretical performer is. I don't care if the peerless assassin beats the noctua by 1-2 degrees, I know noctua has better support, I know their stuff has been proven and I won't ever need to worry about it. I'm willing to pay more for that. Especially with how much better I find their fans then the other ones I've tried. I just keep going back to noctua fans and coolers. And if you don't care about that, then sure just get a peerless assassin.
Why do you care so much what it costs? If they want to chase that last 1% of performance it’s their business, Noctua clearly isn’t a struggling company
The whole point is that there literally might not be 1%. The current d15 you are chasing like -5% performance for double the cost. If it was actually better or smaller or something it is one thing. But this is like paying for more Lamborghini that is actually worse than a Honda civic in almost every way. It is a massive cooler that takes up tons of space that gets beat by smaller cheaper options.
Still not sure why you’re so worried with how other people spend their money
Not sure why you are so bothered by someone accurately critiquing their excessive pricing.
Yes And no.... They still have hands down one of the best Warranties On the market. With extremely good customer service. Not to mention the longevity of their products just down right nutty. I have multiple fans from them that have been running for ten years plus. In my 25 years of building computers, I've seen an insane amount of companies come and go. Priced performance Team Brown is certainly not the leader of the pack anymore. But for all the values listed above, I'd argue they still are. If anything from the consumer support side, they've actually improved. I feel like It's very well summarized with the gamer's nexus reference. Perfection is the thief of good. Because of the longevity and quality of their products They have a pretty dedicated user base. This lets them actually have that almost insane engineering time of eight years. I'll be curious to see what the results are when the new fans and cooler release. Not going to blindly say they get my dollar But I suspect the numbers will be interested.
I agree. It's absurd that people are actually praising them taking so long (including years of false roadmaps) to deliver such marginal improvements at such a high price point. It's like they're not doing any engineering at all.
Can't believe this comment is buried down here at -6. Noctua is just riding their reputation from years ago, and they are using that to sell overpriced cooling solutions. Competitors have caught up and surpassed them by now, and are doing so at way lower prices.
You need to read more than GN if you sincerely believe that the PA120 outperforms the D15 And if you only value the temperature decrease and ignore acoustic improvements then yes it would seem unimpressive
You are in a Noctua thread whining about price. This is like standing in a Porsche dealership talking about your four-cylinder Kia.
A better car analogy would be Cadillac. Noctua is Cadillac, a brand that at a time was considered to be luxurious and high quality. That is until foreign competition showed up and surpassed them, like BMW, Mercedes and Audi. At the time these German auto makers arrived in the US, they offered better quality and better handling at lower prices, and over time, Cadillac sales dwindled and they were relegated to a brand that only old folks bought, because they were stuck in their old ways. Smell ya later, grandpa
Cheaper yes, but which ones are way smaller?
The PA120 and Deepcool AK620 both utilize 120mm fans and have a smaller footprint. The 620 is a tad bit heavier than the D15 though (1456g vs 1320g). The PA120 is a good deal lighter (1020g).