Noctua Innovations - Computex

[Ghost]

 

There are two things in this video that I found interesting. Firstly; the new composite material they are using for their base plates.

 

I wonder whether he told us the full story when saying why this is finally coming to the market. I mean, its true that the technology is fairly new but something similar could have been done a while ago.

 

The main reason why I think they are pushing this technology out is because of the new advances in CPUs, specifically Haswell and future CPUs in general. As the actual chip inside the CPU is getting smaller the same amount of power (or even more in the case of Haswell) is being created in a smaller area. This means that the actual heat is coming from a small point and having to spread out. They need this new technology to be able to spread the heat out more effectively across the base plates and get that heat to the heat pipes.

 

This is good news in terms of water blocks. With new materials like these the actual water block can get wider and therefore have more surface area contact with the coolant passing it. I actually think this technology is more important in water-blocks because its important for the heat to be able to get to all the water channels within the block. This of course will make the water-block more effective at taking away heat from the CPU.

 

The second thing I found interesting was the active noise cancellation. I do not see this being released soon at all. The "Spring 2014" he predicted was probably for a controlled environment as shown in the CPU cooler in the video. But the concept itself would mean that in the next few years we can expect higher fans speeds with reduced fan noise which would make a massive difference for thicker radiators where higher fan speeds still produce big differences in heat dissipation.

[Hyydrah]

I'd love to see Noctua get in to the watercooling market more, and to offer more color choices on their fans and heatsinks (black heatsinks, maybe?). Their booth at Computex is one of the most appealing to me so far, and it's great that they're starting to cater to people that are on more of a budget as well.

[Puppet]

Yeah the new base plate material and active noise cancellation looks amazing but....

 

Black Noctua Fans? :o

 

As I was watching the video, a pig literally flew passed my window, winked and gave me a thumbs up. I am still unsure what was real and what I imagined.

[Hazy125]

I don't think that the heatsinks made from this diamond/copper composite materials are likely to come to the market very soon. Not just from the manufacturing cost driving the purchasing of the product up, but the actual material itself... Diamond. Even when it does become mainstream I think that the pricing of something like this would be immense and only people with the most premium rigs would even consider something like this, especially as raw material such as diamond become more and more expensive every minute

[Ghost]

I don't think that the heatsinks made from this diamond/copper composite materials are likely to come to the market very soon. Not just from the manufacturing cost driving the purchasing of the product up, but the actual material itself... Diamond. Even when it does become mainstream I think that the pricing of something like this would be immense and only people with the most premium rigs would even consider something like this, especially as raw material such as diamond become more and more expensive every minute

What you haven't taken into consideration is that this is not made from "jewelry" grade diamond (as in its optical properties, the thing that typically gives value to a diamond, are unimportant). This is most likely synthetically grown diamond. I assume you have heard of diamond coated tools. All of these things use synthetically grown diamond which is relatively cheap and available.

 

Right now the main issue is more of the need for factories to me made to make this composite material. As soon as the factories are made for this to become cheap we will see every heat sink using this technology.

 

We will first see it used by Noctua because they made it. Then we will see it cross over to water blocks because they are expensive anyway and so slightly increased costs can be justified. Especially with the massive performance increase we will see with the introduction of these blocks.

 

Some issues with the water-block include nickel plating. I have no idea how effective electrolytic plating will be with this. High voltage for example may decompose the diamonds inside.

 

After it becomes a standard with water blocks it will slowly start filtering through to high end air coolers and then low end air coolers.

[Ghost]

Black Noctua Fans? :o

 

As I was watching the video, a pig literally flew passed my window, winked and gave me a thumbs up. I am still unsure what was real and what I imagined.

 

Why is that impressive? Those fans are not for general consumers. They are intended to be run at 2000RPM and are made for industrial purposes. People will buy them (or rather they are intended to be bought) for their lifetime and reliability rather than their colour.

[Puppet]

Why is that impressive? Those fans are not for general consumers. They are intended to be run at 2000RPM and are made for industrial purposes. People will buy them (or rather they are intended to be bought) for their lifetime and reliability rather than their colour.

Ah right, only skimmed through the video, was watching on my phone.

 

To be honest that doesn't really make much sense to me, why offer black fans to the industrial customers? I imagine they would be the last people to care about colour.

 

I am actually one of the people that doesn't mind the traditional colour scheme, but they obviously know most others want blacks? I don't get it, surely they would get more sales that way.

[Ghost]

I imagine they would be the last people to care about colour.

That's exactly why they didn't bother putting noctua colours on industrial fans. You have to remember black isn't a colour. The plastic they used probably comes black.

[Puppet]

That's exactly why they didn't bother putting noctua colours on industrial fans. You have to remember black isn't a colour. The plastic they used probably comes black.

Black definitely is a colour in terms of a pigment anyway. Most GRP would come out a white/grey colour without any additives...

 

Anyway going with your theory it would be much easier to produce black fans for consumers which again would further increase their profits.

 

Edit: If you watch the start of the video again you can see that the CNC mock-ups are yellow, I assume that this is the natural colour of the plastic with the poperty altering additives that they use minus the pigment.

 

Something like GRN which is naturally black would be fairly hard if not impossible to dye a lighter colour like the cream that they use in the usual colour scheme.

 

Face it Noctua are slightly weird :p

[Ghost]

Anyway going with your theory it would be much easier to produce black fans for consumers which again would further increase their profits.

They want their consumer fans to have colour. It's branding for them and free advertising.

 

Consider this; on forums someone recommends a completely new person a Noctua fan. The new person says "I think that looks ugly". The person that recommended them then has to go ahead and explain the benefits of Noctua fans and convince the new person to buy them. This happens every day. Even now we are talking about it. Think how much free marketing they get. Even if someone decides to dye a Noctua fan think how many people talk about it.

 

Think of the ratio of posts about the NF-F12 compared to any other 120mm fan out there. I would wager that there are more posts about it then all the other out there fans put together.

[Puppet]

I'm not saying get rid of the traditional colour scheme just introduce the black that everyone has been asking for, it shouldn't affect their recommendation on forums, well not negatively anyway.

 

People don't recommend them because they are ugly, they recommend them because of performance I don't think that is going to change if they offer black fans to consumers, at this stage anyway.

[Ghost]

I'm not saying get rid of the traditional colour scheme just introduce the black that everyone has been asking for, it shouldn't affect their recommendation on forums, well not negatively anyway.

 

People don't recommend them because they are ugly, they recommend them because of performance I don't think that is going to change if they offer black fans to consumers, at this stage anyway.

However; it would stop people defending and debating them. It would just become an overpriced fan to someone who didn't know anything about computers when given the choice between it and another fan.

 

The difference between saying "It's worth the price because its good" and saying "It's worth it even if it looks bad and costs the money because its that good" probably convinces a lot of people. And just because someone doesn't buy the fan doesn't mean they won't carry on recommending it to others. And its more profitable to gain a seller than a buyer for a company.

[Puppet]

However; it would stop people defending and debating them. It would just become an overpriced fan to someone who didn't know anything about computers when given the choice between it and another fan.

 

The difference between saying "It's worth the price because its good" and saying "It's worth it even if it looks bad and costs the money because its that good" probably convinces a lot of people. And just because someone doesn't buy the fan doesn't mean they won't carry on recommending it to others. And its more profitable to gain a seller than a buyer for a company.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree then, I believe most people choosing high performance fans either know the market or can read benchmarks.

 

I know quite a few people that have gone with something like Spectres' or SP120's over Noctuas because of this colour thing these days. What you are saying is that Noctua would lose money producing black fans for consumers and I am arguing the exact opposite, can't say much else apart from that :)