Noctua passive CPU cooler now available for purchase, bold claims for cooling capability

[Random_Person1234]

Summary

Noctua's passive CPU cooler, named the NH-P1, is now available to purchase on Newegg for $100. As it is a passive cooler, it does not use any fans and will generate absolutely no noise if used like out of the box. However, you can add a 120mm fan if you choose. The Newegg product page makes bold claims about the NH-P1's cooling capability. It states that this cooler is recommended for CPUs with low to moderate heat dissipation. However, it goes on to list multiple CPUs, including the i9-9900K and Ryzen 9 3950X, which run pretty hot under load.

 

Quotes

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FanlessTech has spotted Noctua's highly anticipated NH-P1 passive heatsink at Newegg for $100. Noctua hasn't revealed the highly-anticipated heatsink to the public yet, but Newegg's listing suggests that an official announcement shouldn't be far behind.

Quote

The NH-P1 features a fanless design with six heatpipes that transfer heat from the processor towards the massive radiator with widely spaced fins. Noctua claims 100% compatibility with memory slots and the first PCIe expansion slot for most ATX and microATX motherboards. For added cooling or consumers that want to leverage a semi-passive configuration, Noctua recommends pairing the passive CPU cooler with the brand's own NF-A12x25 LS-PWM 120mm cooling fan that's barely audible.

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Noctua advises consumers not to use the CPU cooler for overclocking or with processors that are space heaters. Being a passive cooler, the NH-P1's performance depends on various factors, including ambient temperature and the other hardware inside your system. Therefore, Noctua doesn't commit to a TDP (thermal design power) rating, instead suggesting that consumers consult the NH-P1's processor compatibility list.

From Newegg product page:

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Recommended for CPUs with low to moderate heat dissipation (see CPU compatibility list), e.g. Intel 9900K, 9700K or AMD Ryzen 2700X, 3950X 3700X, 3400G, etc.

 

My thoughts

Given how quiet Noctua fans already are, I wonder if it would be better to just have better cooling with a normal fan that is already quiet rather than sacrifice temps with a large passive cooler like this. Also, I don't think this will be able to handle a 9900K or 3950X under full load without throttling. However, I could be surprised. I await Gamers Nexus's review on this cooler. 

 

Sources

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/noctua-nh-p1-passive-heatsink-100-dollars

https://www.newegg.com/p/2RM-001D-001D0

[IkeaGnome]

4 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

I don't think this will be able to handle a 9900K or 3950X under full load without throttling

Noctua is saying it can't. I couldn't find the Noctua page on it yet though either. I'd love to see what the dimensions on this are. Newegg doesn't have them listed. Could be used in some interesting set ups.

[Bitter]

If you have a case fan blowing even somewhat on this thing it'll move some heat, I wouldn't worry about it tons. I've fiddled with passive cooling in the past, even a little bit of air past the fins really gets the heat moving as long as you're within the thermal envelope for the cooler, but once it starts to run away you can't cool it back down without reducing load.

[thechinchinsong]

I guess its a good option for those that really can't stand any noise at all.

[WhitetailAni]

I'm curious what happens if you strap two NF-A15 fans to the top and bottom of this cooler, working in push/pull.

Does the added airflow give greater efficiency than a regular NH-D15 or similar, or is it better since it's designed to work without concentrated airflow?

[Bitter]

13 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I'm curious what happens if you strap two NF-A15 fans to the top and bottom of this cooler, working in push/pull.

Does the added airflow give greater efficiency than a regular NH-D15 or similar, or is it better since it's designed to work without concentrated airflow?

fins are too widely spaced to take advantage of more airflow, a single low speed fan moving high even modest air will give peak performance. Something something boundary layers I think most of the air just goes woosh between the fins without taking much heat with. Densely packed fins and high static pressure fans offer the highest density of heat transfer because more of the air is touching more of the metal.

[Bombastinator]

34 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

I guess its a good option for those that really can't stand any noise at all.

There are a few other rather specific uses as well, generally industrial, but more or less yes.

[Bombastinator]

Fanless coolers are not new.  There was a company called NoFan that specialized in them.  They did coolers that were all heat pipe all the time.  One generally needs a really massive cooler to do it though.  There were problems with them being so big and heavy they caused problems for motherboards.  LTT did a video about a company making motherboards where the cpu was reversed onto the back of the board which eliminates a mess of them. The only remaining problem I can think of other than case fitment; weight, could be eliminated as well by using the motherboard screw holes as additional radiator mount points. With that and the slowly reducing thermal requirements of CPUs and the increasing power of on die GPUs, fans may no longer be needed, and a true totally silent system of high end power would become possible. ATM video cards often pull multiple times the power (and therefore generate multiple times the heat) so there are a lot of fans associated with them. Meaning until that is solved a silent machine of greater than Htpc power probably isn’t in the cards.  There are passive consumer video cards but they tend to be less powerful than on die stuff at this point (I absolutely hate apu/iGPU.  Pick a term.  They're the same damn thing!)

[Arika]

It's not really passive though, is it. You still have case fans that will move air through the fins

[Tieox]

@LinusTech care to drop *ahem* test this? 

[TetraSky]

This is one monstrous beast that gives the D15 a run for its money (in terms of size).

I personally wouldn't trust this thing in a vertical case. I'd be too scared of the motherboard destroying itself from the weight of it if I needed to move the PC. Even with my D15, my motherboard is set horizontally in my case, to make sure nothing can happen to it if I need to move it or something.

 

Can't wait to see reviews and whether it's possible to add a quiet noctua fan to it, just for added cooling if passive doesn't do a good enough job.

[RejZoR]

Press X for doubt that anything passive can cool 9900K or 3950X. There is just no way when most coolers struggle when you have high performance fans slammed on them.

[Moonzy]

If it can tame the 3950x without a fan, then why tf does nh-d15 still exist

 

Gonna wait for reviews, I reckon it'll hardly be able to cool a 3600 at stock settings, maybe it won't throttle but definitely run warm, but please surprise me

[atxcyclist]

8 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Press X for doubt that anything passive can cool 9900K or 3950X. There is just no way when most coolers struggle when you have high performance fans slammed on them.

I look at the 105W rating on my 2700X and am very curious to see if that can be passively cooled. If this cooler is legit, I'd love to set up a completely passive HTPC (or really one with maybe one low-speed fan) that's essentially silent. 

[Random_Person1234]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

I look at the 105W rating on my 2700X and am very curious to see if that can be passively cooled. If this cooler is legit, I'd love to set up a completely passive HTPC (or really one with maybe one low-speed fan) that's essentially silent. 

The Newegg product page does say specifically the 2700X will work on it. However, it will be very dependent on how good your case airflow is. Also, we'll need to see independent reviews to be able to verify these claims.

[Bitter]

5 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

I look at the 105W rating on my 2700X and am very curious to see if that can be passively cooled. If this cooler is legit, I'd love to set up a completely passive HTPC (or really one with maybe one low-speed fan) that's essentially silent. 

It's not 105W, not unless you exactly follow AMD specs and time limit PBO and disable XFR. My slightly tuned 2700X is a 170W CPU at 4.1ghz all core and 4.3 single core.

[porina]

Be interesting to see how it actually performs, but the comments on this thread are giving me a headache. Laws of physics are well understood. We need a lot of environmental information to estimate how this might perform and consequentially what it might support.

 

Similar to other passive designs, it has much wider fin spacing than coolers designed for forced airflow, to give the air a chance to move itself through it. Even a little forced airflow (e.g. from case fans) will help a lot with performance, although its ultimate performance with fans might not be as good as those designed for such.

 

28 minutes ago, Bitter said:

It's not 105W, not unless you exactly follow AMD specs and time limit PBO and disable XFR.

Stock AMD 105W TDP CPUs run up to 142W PPT limit. If you use a cooler rated at exactly 105W expect to throttle back to base clocks and kiss turbo goodbye.

[Stahlmann]

A passive cooler doesn't really make any sense at all in Noctua's case imo. If you take the NH-D15 and set the fans to run at 400-500RPM they are completely inaudible. You literally cannot hear anything, not even the moving air. And even with the argument of a longer life span: While the passive cooler doesn't have any parts that can fail, Noctua's fans are already rated for >150.000 hours of operation, which comes to over 17 YEARS of continuous operation. I have no idea why they thought that a passive cooler was a necessary addition to their lineup.

[n0stalghia]

9 hours ago, Arika S said:

It's not really passive though, is it. You still have case fans that will move air through the fins

The cooler is always passive, as long as you don't add a fan to it. What you're describing is a non-passive cooling solution of the entire system using active components and a passive cooler.

 

To answer your question "You still have case fans that will move air through the fins": Yes, buying this cooler will not render it illegal/impossible/send Noctuas employees to your house that will make sure you don't install any active cooling in your system.

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, Arika S said:

It's not really passive though, is it. You still have case fans that will move air through the fins

Depends on what you're cooling. If you have a relatively low TDP chip you might be able to use this with no case fans at all. I would have a hard time picking this over a cheaper solution with fans on it (even from Noctua themselves) because the noise is minimal even for large coolers nowadays. The main reason I can see for buying this is if you're using it in a very dusty environment where pulling air in with a fan would cake the system in dirt, or maybe for a high reliability system where you want as few moving parts as possible to minimize maintenance requirements. I'm not sure why you would want a custom build for the latter but who knows?

[TVwazhere]

Quote

Noctua's NH-P1 is already available for purchase on Newegg for $100. The manufacturer backs the cooler with a limited six-year warranty.

Wait, a Six year warranty? This seems kinda weird, as in, it seems kinda short. 

 

Considering there are no moving parts, how often do things like heat pipes break? Or do things like new mounting brackets fall under warranty as well (For things like the upcoming AM5 and LGA1200 sockets)?

[Bitter]

7 hours ago, porina said:

Be interesting to see how it actually performs, but the comments on this thread are giving me a headache. Laws of physics are well understood. We need a lot of environmental information to estimate how this might perform and consequentially what it might support.

 

Similar to other passive designs, it has much wider fin spacing than coolers designed for forced airflow, to give the air a chance to move itself through it. Even a little forced airflow (e.g. from case fans) will help a lot with performance, although its ultimate performance with fans might not be as good as those designed for such.

 

Stock AMD 105W TDP CPUs run up to 142W PPT limit. If you use a cooler rated at exactly 105W expect to throttle back to base clocks and kiss turbo goodbye.

Yeah, and that 142W goes out the window with XFR which is why I'm yanking like 172W from the board through mine. PBO scalars and undervolt are kind of fun to play around with to get the boost to really ramp up and hold clocks. 65W parts can pull 88W I think, and even with XFR they should be under the 105W TDP of the passive cooler and work kind of good. 

[porina]

Just went official:

https://noctua.at/en/noctua-introduces-nh-p1-passive-cpu-cooler-and-ls-pwm-fan-for-semi-fanless-systems

https://noctua.at/en/nh-p1

[RejZoR]

I wonder how effective this could be if you just put regular (not the "low speed") fans on it in push pull. If it has so much cooling capacity in passive, giving it proper wind through the fins should dramatically improve that. And since fins are wide apart, noise should be better because you don't really need much pressure to move air through...

[da na]

This cooler paired with literally 1 case fan would be fine...