A community for PC Master Race.
Rules:
Basically just the CPU fan, case, and PSU (if you're lucky). If someone can figure out how to get Doom running on just those 3 things, young people will be able to ascend.
Noctua was never cheap. They are gloriously overbuilt in a world of rifle bearing, built-to-fail bullshit at end of warranty schlock. Pay now or pay later.
I'm a fan
Big fan
Quiet fan.
Only fan
Maybe thats because anything from Noctua has always had stupidly high prices.
I have seen more expensice stuff.
They are pricey but not overly.
Yeah this, there's cpu coolers for half the price that cool better now.
You may know this already. The reason Noctua fans are so much quieter is because they spin more slowly and blow less air, so even low priced, entry level fans are more effective. They literally sell a lower performing, if well engineered, fan for a premium price mostly because of hype and brand recognition.
They sell a range of fans, not all are quiet.
Well....sure but there's people who reviee coolers with a decibel reader so they can equalize noise level when testing.
Imo though air cooling is still louder than water cooling. I have both and while i appreciate thaf air colling is great too today and probably peace of mind, but a nice rgb liquid aio is also not expensive these days....specially compared to what the other PC parts cost now...
They spin what they are ordered to do by the PWM?
At this point I'm expecting doom to run on ball on string attached to cup
Shut the fuck up you little fuck. They’re gonna be upping the price to $90/ fan blade and also firing all the people who make the damn blades if this gets out.
I just had to buy a replacement 9800X3D yesterday because the previous one from early 2025 fried Saturday night. I paid $10 less for the new one, was very surprising. This post caught my attention because I had to remove and reinstall my Noctua cooler.
Noctua coolers are already pretty expensive and not the pinnacle of cooling tech any more. If they went up in price, I think people would just go with a different brand. Like Thermalright, which "borrows" from Noctua's designs but are a fraction of the cost. You can even get them in that ugly brown and off white color scheme.
Getting Doom to run on just 3 coolers would be pretty awesome, tho.
i mean, lets face it.
Unless you are overclocking, a Hyper212 will do almost the same same job, for 20-30 dollars, that a 120-190 dollar Noctua HSF will do. and the couple of degrees of difference you might have sure as fuck aint worth the 6x price increase.
and lets be real, if you are overclocking..why keep it always on? the CPU probably already boosts to those overclocked speeds under load anyway, so why add the extra stress and shortened life?
20 years ago I would understand why. 20 years ago I overclocked as well, because you got actual, legitimately, daily use improvement out of it.. But with modern CPUs auto-overclocking themselves with boost (And it being under warranty to boot), I just don't see the point anymore for everyday use.
Cases are a bargain these days because no one has a use for them
They are also heavy and large, so expensive to move around and store.
Don't jinx it! /s
Also, I'll jump on the Noctua fan train, love their stuff. I also recommend Be Quiet fans.
Be Quiet fans have been great for me. Six years of silent cooling, and given prices, a few more to go.
i bought it when the falcon guide told me to in 2012, thought it didn't work, bought another, got BOTH to work, and my setups have been cool ever since.
I mean many modern cases have circuitry in them, such as RGB controllers or PWM fan hubs.
Let me remind you the requirements for DOOM modders to get DOOM running:
I vaguely remember reading that they have literal ARM cortex chips in some of the most modern case RGB controllers
If we can get to an SPI and connect some kind of display, it's conceivable that we could run DOOM, right?
People have been doing that already, on those LED fan displays, for example
Yeah because I could never afford a Noctua fan in the first place.
They're also close to buyitforlife territory. Mine is >15 years old (1st gen i5!). The AM4 mount would've been free if I had the original receipt. But alas, I had to fork out $10 cause I was too dumb to have taken a photo of it back then.
All but the cheapest fans these days are buyitforlife material. The only thing really gonna fuck up a modern fan is epic amounts of dust binding up the ball bearings. And many fans these days use a newer magnetic type system where there isn't even any physical contact being made to wear anything down.
I've been using Arctic fans. Are Noctua fans super amazing in comparison?
I built a CR Box fan too using 5 Arc Fans, but seen builds with Noctua fans to make it super silent.
I have been rocking the same noctua fan/cooler fan for +10 years.
If you still have the receipt they send you adapter kits for new processors for free.
I also use Arctic fans, and they're by far the quietest, best-performing fans I've ever used. Equivalent Noctua fans are like 4-8 times more expensive, so unless they can also give handies or something, I can't imagine them actually being worth the price.
I sent an email with a picture to them of the CPU and NH-D14 I got and they sent me AM4 kit for free. I bought the cooler used and use it still to this day.
Noctua was expensive from the start already 😁
Fantastic fans though.
They're expensive, but also the only manufacturer now making high-end 80mm fans with PWM.
I believe Be Quiet! also sells such fans. I've been a fan of their stuff for a while, mostly because it's black (matching my color scheme) and secondly because it's cheaper.
And awesome warranty and customer support. Plus free mounting upgrade kits if you upgrade your CPU
Edit: the upgrade service:
https://www.noctua.at/en/forms/mounting-kit
I used it once, and I received the new mounting hardware without any issues
Okay this will probably sound dumb, but has anyone ever tried to use this in tandem with a liquid cooling system?
What do you mean exactly?
Putting one of these on top of the liquid cooling block on a CPU, I live in a fairly hot area and thought it was a fun idea. Kind of like that guy that made his AC system cool his computer lol.
No idea what he’s on about, but now I’m imagining a loop running to like four NHD-15’s bolted to the top of a case. Like using those with waterblocks mounted to them instead of normal radiators.
Why? Fuck if I know, but it’d be funny
All the hassle and risk of running a complicated custom loop plus all the noise of a fan based cooler?! Sign me up!
I don’t think it would really be any louder than a normal water cooling setup, since you need fans on your radiators anyway. It would just be hideously inefficient compared to radiators, so higher temps. It would be adding like at least 4 thermal transfer boundaries, and heat pipes don’t really work until they get to their operating temperature. So best case scenario, it would probably run a couple degrees warmer than just regular air cooling.
Always a fan.
I am not an actual fan I am a human. But I do like their products !
Not an actual fan? This is not OnlyFans?
It's the only thing keeping me cool.
Also peripherals like DACs, monitors and such.
Thank God the prices of dacs and other audio gear hasn't gone crazy... Yes they're already expensive a lot of the time, but I couldn't bear to pay a 200% premium when upgrading audio gear