Podcast #129: Keeping Your Cool With Noctua

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Brian goes for another live podcast this week featuring Jakob Dellinger, the “air cooling guru” at Noctua. We have featured Noctua fans in a number of our reviews, most notably our recent “Noctua Unveils NH-D15 G2, Thermosiphon, and Next-Gen Fans” and the HomeLab45 update “The HL15 Homelab Server Goes Shhhhh with New Noctua Kit.”

Brian goes for another live podcast this week featuring Jakob Dellinger, the “air cooling guru” at Noctua. We have featured Noctua fans in a number of our reviews, most notably our recent “Noctua Unveils NH-D15 G2, Thermosiphon, and Next-Gen Fans” and the HomeLab45 update “The HL15 Homelab Server Goes Shhhhh with New Noctua Kit.”

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Noctua has taken fan assembly to a higher level with products for everything from laptops to data centers. They pride themselves on innovation and reducing fan noise levels across the spectrum. Based in Austria, Noctua (the Little Owl) was founded in 2005 and quickly became one of the most acclaimed suppliers of premium-quality quiet cooling products that are apparently inspired by, but do not smell like, coffee.

This is another live podcast where our YouTube audience joined the conversation and submitted questions to Jakub and Brian. We are pushing the boundaries on these live podcasts, inviting our audience and guests to have a genuinely interactive conversation on topics that interest them.

After dealing with several hiccups at the show’s beginning, Brian got down to business. His first question was, “Why do people love your products so much?”

00:00 Introduction

• Attention (obsession) to detail
• Quality and Performance
• Started as an OEM
• Focused on quiet, highly efficient, quality components
• Engaged with Taiwanese partner to develop cooling components

05:00 Finding the inspiration

• The CEO hated loud PCs
• Fix it before the machine is powered on
• Recap Vince’s video series for his Home Lab (Unleash the Hush: Noctua Fans and Eaton Sound Proof Rack Combine for a Peaceful Studio)
• Why are Noctua Fans beige and brow?

10:00 Scratch ‘n Sniff

• Brian shares a tidbit from his youth and asks Yakub to create a fan that emits an espresso aroma
• That is on the punch list
• Comments from the audience
• Computex
• Delivering new products
  • Square frame
  • Fan radiator
  • Socket support
  • NVIDIA prototype
  • Yakub goes deep

16:00 Squeezing Enterprise boards into workstations

• Training LLMs
• Edge servers where quiet matters
• Liquid cooling
• There’s a place for air-cooled systems, too

20:00 PC and Workstation case design

• Thermal design
• Not just for workstations
• Getting creative
• Let the users do crazy stuff with the fans
• Heat sinks and heat distribution
• Applying thermal paste
• Potential to lose performance with poorly adhered heat sync

26:00 How to check for performance loss

• Yakub gets into a deep discussion about cooling options
• More than one option for every situation

31:00 Questions from the audience

• Aftermarket contact frame
• Better results from the 1mm washer mod
• More from Computex
  • Noctua power supply

35:00 Showing off new products

• Even in the early development cycle
• Family-owned and run business
• No Shareholders to report to
• Delivering to the customer

40:00 Cooling GPUs

• DIY water cooling
• Voiding the warranty
• Mixed results
• Preconfigured workstations seem so loud
• Consumer-level cards are more advanced today

46:00 More on the HomeLab 15

• Fan design
• Thicker fan materials provide alternative options
• Thicker may not be better
• Fan size does matter

50:00 Wrap up

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