Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Noctua stole my idea!”.
Hi, I never even saw it coming in 2021, I emailed seic about the possibility of bringing together their amazing power supplies and noct toas class leading cooling fans to create an ultimate LT Edition power supply. They rejected my proposal and yet 3 years later here it is in fairness. The reason they turned me down was they were already working on it, but I still can’t help wondering about what could have been in and wondering what took them so long as it turns out. The answer is, oh, the usual no to of things because, rather than simply chucking in their fan and calling it a day, they obsessed over details that would make just about anyone else’s eyes completely glaze over and they ended up with something that might become the go-to Power supply for quiet enthusiasts, they’re, also showing off a pumpless thermos siphon prototype a no for real.
We’Re really done this time, successor to the legendary en hd15 CPU Cooler. Second generation NFA series fans and a desk fan kit with a price tag that has even brand loyalists asking. Have you guys completely lost Linus’s segue to his sponsor, build Redux? They make it easy to get into the world of PC gaming.
Just pick your games see the performance that you can expect and the pros at build Redux will build the PC for you check them out at the link in the video description across its entire operating range. The prime tx600 noctu Edition is quieter than SE Sonic’s solo efforts, and not just by a little bit. The cutout design alone accounts for about two DB of improvement by avoiding any situation where the fan blade can run parallel to the grill and as for the other 6 to 8 DB, that comes from a very unconventional choice.
You see the regular edition of this power supply uses a 135 mm fan and everybody knows that larger fans are good because they can move the same amount of air at lower noise levels, but noctua Engineers aren’t paid to do what everybody knows. They’Re paid to make. Damn good and sure, and what they found was that the densely packed internal components of a premium power supply create such high levels of back pressure that their 120 mm NF 12 Fen would be a superior Choice other than that.
It’S basically the same titanium efficiency, rated unit that you’ve come to know and love with ATX, 3.1 compliance and uh. I guess they also threw in some brown accented cables for good measure, solid work, guys slow but solid, and that’s going to be a bit of a pattern here, cuz once again, noctu is showing their second generation nhd15 they’ve had the heat sink component done for some Time now, but the second generation NF A14 fan that contributes to much of the performance uplift has been kicking their Collective butts. So why don’t we talk about that? First, you see in order to push air through a dense fin array like on a heat sink or a radiator. You need to overcome a considerable amount of back pressure.
Now they didn’t want to resort to a thicker profile like some of their competitors, so once you’ve optimized your blade geometry and added centrifugal turbulators to your Hub. One of the only options left is to explore how to reduce the leakage that comes back around the outside of your blades. The only problem is that, once you start getting the blades this close to the frame, the small details start to matter a lot now they had already addressed the fan itself flattening out and stretching slightly as it was spinning, but what they found was that the frame Was deforming over time from the mounting pressure of either radiator screws on the Square versions or even from their own wire Clips on the round ones that ship with their heat sinks, not right away, mind you, but at elevated temperatures and over a span of 10 plus Years it could, which is why it’s been such a nightmare, to validate the good news, is that, with some frame, reinforcement and tweaks to both their wire clips and the corner grommets for for their radiator fans, they were able to overcome this on both round and square Versions without resorting to Exotic materials like liquid, Crystal polymer plastic, which is bringing the expected price of these down from 45 to uh4 us thanks noctua back to the heat sink though, or should I say, heat sinks, they are announcing three versions of the second gen nhd15 That sparked an uncharacteristically, intense disc between me and Jacob. Generally, we get along pretty well, but I’m not a huge fan of this move and I’m going to explain why in a moment, first, let’s explain their side of the story.
The lineup will include three separate versions with varying levels of flatness on the base, a standard one which will be slightly convex at the base, producing slightly elevated, mounting pressure in the middle, a more convex one to increase pressure in the middle and a less convex one. To decrease pressure in the middle of the base now noctu explains that for most of their customers they still recommend the standard configuration but for modern Intel platforms. They’Ve found that over time there is a tendency for the top of the CPU to become significantly concave, which measurably harms the performance of flat or even slightly convex heat sinks. This degradation can be mitigated somewhat by using a washer mod to reduce the the pressure of Intel’s own CPU retention mechanism, but for CPUs that have already been deformed, the best option they found was to bow out the base of the heat sink. Hence the HBC version. They also said that, if you suspect your CPU has been heavily deformed already, you may want to try combining a lower pressure washer mod with their High convexity cooler. As for AMD, who spreads out their logic and their IOD under a much larger heat spreader, they found that, if you don’t want to use their offset Mount which moves the cooler down a little bit a flatter, but still not totally flat approach, optimizes contact across a Larger area contributing again to a measurable performance Improvement, which all sounds extremely reasonable, I mean who wouldn’t want better performance. What is your problem? Linus? I guess it’s just that I’ve seen this movie before and I worry that noctua is falling into the same trap as the water cooling companies did back in the mid 2000s inspired by modders who experimented with thicker O-rings in their CPU blocks, manufacturers began bowing out the Copper bases of their cold plates kicking off sort of an arms race for who could best Target the die area of a CPU. With a super high press contact point, the resulting performance was great, very similar to what noctua is showing off here. But what everyone learned over time was that CP, U designs, change and today’s contact optimization is tomorrow’s contact misalignment and one of the things that I admire.
So much about this company is that a noct to a cooler is never obsolete. We demonstrated this recently when we installed their first ever product on a modern platform with a Moun kit that they still provide to their customers for free, and we got pretty good results. This indefinite support for their legacy products encouraged, is a one-time investment in a admittedly expensive but highquality product that can be reused, many times reducing waste and I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how a platform optimized base that is a little better today, but maybe not As good tomorrow is aligned with noct’s values with all that said, I understand the pressure that they’re under I mean the competition knows that reviewers are going to be benchmarking, coolers on worn out testbench CPUs and those guys are going to optimize accordingly and the average customer Can’T be expected to look past who’s at the top of a performance chart or even consider that they’re probably not going to be overclocking their CPU anyway. So I guess all I can really do is wait and see how this plays out this time around and hope that at some point, Intel is going to get their thermal under control. So we don’t have to resort to such silliness in order to tame their Flagship chips. Ooh, here’s something I wouldn’t mind resorting to, though I’m super excited about this, like the ice giant cooler that we’ve shown you guys before nowi prototype here is a phase change.
Thermos siphon, but unlike the ice giant, it uses a familiar AO style form factor for good compatibility and safer shipping. In modern cases, it’s pumpless using gravity to feed liquid from the condenser unit up here, o this one down to the bottom of the CPU and uses capillary action in the evaporator to enhanced flow. Drawing that liquid toward the drier areas where it will be turn to a gas and make its way, naturally upward toward the condenser again they’re, targeting similar performance to AI coolers on the market, either in 240 or 360 mm form factors.
But without the noise and reliability issues that are inherent with the lowcost pumps that you find in existing water coolers, are they going to be the ones to finally bring this concept to Market? I sure hope so, eventually bringing us finally to knox’s greatest gift ever to sweaty Gamers, a $ 100 desk fan. In all seriousness, though, I think the community backlash about this thing is kind of undeserved. I mean for one thing: knock to a products being expensive is kind of nothing new and for another. You don’t have to buy it, and I don’t even mean that in a like. Well, so what it’s expensive you could just not buy it. I mean that the air flow amplifier add-on thing here that dramatically increases the effective cooling range, can just be 3D printed with files that knock to it provides for you for free, and then you can just bolt it to any fan.
You want. You only really have to pay them to use this thing. If you really want the fan controller and oh, oh, okay, that’s not made of metal uh here the cool magnetic mounting base. This is about as consumer friendly, an approach to this product as they possibly could have taken. I mean it’s not like they redirected engineering resources from NFA 12 Gen 2.
To this thing, it’s a completely different skill set, and the same goes for the rubber grommets that are for Hocking a fan on top of your AV receiver or whatever. If you guys don’t like this, just make one yourself using a 3D printing service and hey while you’re at it, you can make yourself a segue to our sponsor paperlike as we power through the digital age. Some of us miss Ye Old pen and paper for note. Taking and creative writing or drawing and with the paperlike 2.1 iPad screen protector, you can blend together Both Worlds manufacturer in Switzerland, it uses their exclusive micro bead technology called Nano dots to emulate the stroke resistance of paper without sacrificing screen Clarity.
In fact, paper lake is so confident in their screen protector. They will offer a free replacement or refund within 100 days. Yes, 100 days, so go check out paperlike at the link in the descript description and unleash your iPad’s full potential as a notebook. If you guys enjoyed this video get subscribed, so you can see the results of a friendly little bet that I have with Jacob from noctua. I was teasing him about chasing every fraction of a degree on CPUs. You can’t even overclock anyway, and he goes well yeah, but it’s not about that.
It’S more about the acoustic benefit at the same temperature, so you can run your fans at a lower RPM and I’m like okay In fairness. You are talking my language here, but I could probably get a better benefit from some cheap, auto motive panel lining crap from AliExpress with Haring, thermals and uh. He said, I guess we’re on by the way for those of you who watched all the way to the end you get to do something fun, you get to poke fun at the people who actually think I’m mad about the supposed betrayal in the intro. We continue to have an excellent relationship with cic, who we appreciate both for their sponsorship support and outstanding products and with nocta who continues to spend no money with us at all. Like always yet cheap skates yeah, you heard me, but who we do collaborate occasionally with out of mutual respect.
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