The Future of Cooling: An Exclusive Interview with Noctua's Mike and Jacob

In a recent visit to OCT, we had the opportunity to sit down with Mike and Jacob from Noctua, one of the leading manufacturers of high-performance cooling solutions. The conversation was filled with excitement and anticipation as they discussed their latest projects, including new air coolers, sealed liquid loop systems, and more.

The conversation began with the new D15 G2 cooler, which is set to revolutionize the air cooler market with its cutting-edge design and improved performance. "We're finally getting the new D15 G2," Mike said with a smile. "This cooler has been in development for over a year now, and we're confident that it will mop the floor with all of those very budget-focused solutions." The D15 G2 is expected to bring significant improvements over its predecessor, including a more efficient design, improved heat transfer, and a sleeker aesthetic.

But that's not all - Noctua is also working on a 120mm cooler that promises to be even better. "We're eventually going to get a 120mm cooler," Jacob chimed in, "and we're confident that it will exceed the performance of our current air coolers." The new 120mm cooler is expected to build upon the success of Noctua's existing air coolers, with improved heat transfer, reduced noise levels, and a more efficient design.

One of the most exciting developments from Noctua is their work on sealed liquid loop systems. "We're working on a thermos prototype that uses a two-phase thermosiphon," Mike explained. "It's a highly innovative approach to cooling that eliminates the need for pumps or other moving parts." The system uses a phase-change material to absorb heat from the CPU, which is then cooled by a separate loop. This design offers several advantages over traditional liquid cooling systems, including reduced noise levels, increased reliability, and easier maintenance.

The thermos prototype is still in its early stages of development, but Noctua is confident that it will deliver AI-level performance at an AO level price point. "We're targeting AIO-level performance without the need for a pump," Jacob said. "This means that we can offer a highly efficient and reliable cooling solution without the drawbacks associated with traditional liquid cooling systems." The prototype is still in its early stages, but Noctua is optimistic about its potential.

Another exciting development from Noctua is their work on new socket designs. With the advent of new socket technologies, manufacturers like Intel and AMD are exploring innovative solutions to improve cooling performance. Noctua is also jumping into this fray, with a focus on expanding their product profile beyond air coolers. "We're not just limited to air coolers anymore," Mike said. "We're exploring all sorts of new ways to expand our product portfolio."

The conversation touched on the challenges that come with developing new cooling technologies. "One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that we can stick to our announced schedule," Jacob said. "It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new project and overpromise what we can deliver." But Noctua has been working hard to iron out the kinks and ensure that their products meet the highest standards of quality and performance.

The interview ended with a mention of potential future developments, including more liquid cooling solutions and possibly even a new type of cooler that uses liquid. "We're always looking for ways to innovate and improve," Mike said. "And we're excited to see what the future holds." With Noctua's commitment to innovation and quality, it's clear that their products will continue to be highly sought after by enthusiasts and professionals alike.

In conclusion, our conversation with Mike and Jacob from Noctua was a fascinating glimpse into the world of high-performance cooling. From the new D15 G2 cooler to sealed liquid loop systems and more, Noctua is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the world of cooling. With their commitment to innovation and quality, it's clear that their products will continue to be highly sought after by enthusiasts and professionals alike.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso everybody it seems like every single computex we're here at noctua and there's a new update about their next Generation cooler that everybody's been waiting for little bit of a uh a change here it is not called the D15 everybody thought it was going to be called the D15 I have Jacob next to me he is the master of noct of all things nocta so he's going to address what the new name new name is what it's prices and when we can see it I think what you meant to say was D16 D A lot of people assumed it's going to be called D16 um but uh in our naming scheme the number um usually refers to the size so if it was called D16 it would be 16 uh CM wide which is not the case and the official name is going to be uh D15 G2 G2 okay so what are we looking at for the price price is going to be 149 uh both Euro and USD and uh yeah the good news that we can bring this year is that uh sadly it took us a little bit longer than we uh expected at last year's computex when we lost talked uh but we have units uh in production uh production is in full swing basically units are shipping already um and we're targeting a late June release date so there's another thing that we noticed that ordering one of these is going to be a little bit more complicated for one main reason and that's because noctua has realized that in order to get even more performance out of the D15 G2 than they were initially targeting we have different surface contact plates now because we have actually been talking about this quite a bit about how surface contact is it's being more and more emphasized by manufacturers because there's such a departure in the different types of CPU IHSS it you don't need a flat base a one siiz fits-all necessary solution in order to get the best performance you need to tailor make your base plate per solution so can you talk a little bit more about that absolutely so the best of it all is that you're not only getting a single D15 G2 you're actually getting three of them I will start with the very simple message first and that is uh it's not as complicated as it may seem at first because there's going to be the standard version that's just going to be called nhd15 G2 that's going to be uh the all around Solution that's going to work best for the vast majority of customers so if you don't bother with all of the stuff we're going to talk about now just go with this one you're going to be happy and not only that it's because they're going a different route for Intel and AMD that sort of middle solution allows you to either go with a different platform in the future or stick with that same platform that you're on right now instead of saying okay look you're going with an Intel Centric design or an AMD Cent yes totally um we really uh did everything we could to make that standard version as versatile as possible um so we're including the offset mounting for AMD you're already familiar with and this way you can get uh state-ofthe-art results on AMD um but we're also including shim washers you have some of them lying here um to put underneath your LGA 1700 um ilm to reduce uh ilm def um excuse me CPU deformation due to ilm pressure and this way you can get perfect results on Factory new LGA 1700 CPUs as well so I think we need to talk a little bit more about that factory new versus used but the other thing that I wanted to talk about very very quickly is the fact that that all of this Hardware you get in all of the versions so think about these ilm washers as I guess that contact plate that you see from some manufacturers right it's in order to regulate the ilm pressure of your cooler correct sir uh yeah it just uh reduces the amount of pressure the internal loading mechanism puts onto the CPU and thereby you will get less deformation exactly so let's talk a little bit about why and how you accomplish this in basically that that dual path approach with one path going Intel and another path going AMD especially when it comes not necessarily to older CPUs but we're talking about the current generation and moving forward as chiplet designs become more and more prevalent in the market so I mean the the the basic problem we're dealing with is that uh both uh the contact surface situation but also the hotspot location situation is uh drastically different between am5 and LGA 1700 so am 5 CPUs stay relatively flat um they have a slight deformation when you close the socket activation mechanism as it's called with AMD um but the information you can see it up there uh on this uh on this flatness can here is mainly limited to the outer areas where the Sam presses onto the CPU but the main contact area remains relatively flat and this is why we can generally get very good results with flat um uh CPU bases on AMD whereas with Intel uh with full ilm pressure we have a massive amount of deformation due to that ilm pressure warping the CPU so we're dealing with different scenarios and with AMD we also have the CCD shifted towards the south side of the socket so with AMD the situation in the end is that uh you can either go with a um relatively flat cooler so that would be the low base convexity version of the uh nhd15 G2 this will give you a nice uniform contact patch good pressure over the ccds good pre pressure over the iodi um so you're also going to have a good iodide temperatures or the go the other way um using for example a mid convexity heat syn so uh that's basically uh uh the same as all our existing multi-socket coolers and the same as the standard version of the nhd15 G2 use the offset mounting shift the pressure pattern over the ccds and you will have excellent results there so so in Intel is a a a very different approach right now they haven't necessarily moved to a chiplet design with their their current CPUs but it's why we're seeing our own testing vary so differently from AMD to Intel on one hand you've got a cooler that does very good on Intel that might not do as good at least in competitive analysis testing on AMD and vice versa the charts are very very different so explain where we are now with an Intel Centric cooler and why you might not want to use that AMD Focus cooler on Intel yeah I think uh the the precious cans uh make this very obvious because we already talked about the nice contact we get with a low base convexity heat sink on AMD and if we put the same heat sink on Intel with full ilm pressure we can see that there's some contact on the North and the South side of the IHS but no contact whatsoever over the die where it really matters and even if you use uh washers or a contact frame to reduce Alm pressure uh you'll still have centralized pressure in the North and South Region so even then we have the performance data down there a low base convexity heating heating is simply not going uh to do great on Intel so you need the high base convexity yes exactly that's where the high base convexity version steps in with full eyland pressure uh and a relatively fresh CPU so we have to talk about deformation over time as well in a minute um you will have very nice centralized pressure um where it matters the most over the Hotpot location of the CPU now if you combine that um High base convexity with a washer mod or with uh with a contact frame uh you would actually end up with a little bit too centralized uh contact patch but um with the formation over time if you have an Intel CPU that's been running for months and months with full ilm pressure you may actually want to combine the high base convexity version with washers to get the best possible contact just because the deformation can be kind can become so massive so I I know that this is a a lot to unpack especially for people who just want to mount the cooler and not worry about things but there's two ways to look at this number one is you can buy the Standard Version and be assured that you're going to get amazing temperatures regardless or if you're somebody who wants to experiment a bit especially on the Intel side with the ilm washers to get different types of mounting pressure at different points you can do that as well and just find the solution that matches what you need because not all CPUs end up the same way after a couple of months you have some which bow a little bit more some which which don't and we've actually seen that before too because we actually tested some of these contact frames that were claimed to reduce temperatures on some people's CPUs by multiple degrees whereas on our processors they hardly worked at all that that's precisely the problem with deformation over time so if you happen to have a CPU that has become uh permanently deformed because part of the deformation is going to be plastic it's not like they're going to spring back to their original shape once you take them out of the socket then applying a contact frame or a waser mod may have limited effect there should usually always be a little bit of improvement but if it's enough to really substantially drop your temperatures uh is hard to predict because it depends on factors like the actual amount of pressure you get from the ilm and there are quite significant tolerances on that it will depend on factors like mounting pressure from the heat syn back plate stability uh all that kind of stuff but the bottom line is if you have uh been running a Intel CPU without washer mod or contact frames for several months then you're probably better off going with a high baseed convexity cooler yeah and the other thing that we have to mention is this washer Mount these washers do not Mount to your standard cooler mounts these washer mounts are under the ilm yes exactly then that's that adds a little bit more complication but it's really no more complic then a standard contact frame gives you where you have to physically remove the island so you've got three different types of coolers all of which have the same Hardware but Each of which is very specifically targeted Intel AMD and a a very more allinone solution and also maybe before we get into the temperatures why is it maybe a a bad idea to be focusing just on the flattest base possible we often hear comments like uh the the base is not flat what what's wrong with your cooler yes I foged up 100 for a cooler and it's not flat what's going on uh flat is not good as we can see here even even for am5 uh there's a there's a reason why we're pushing out a low base convexity version and not a flat version and that's for a couple of reasons one is that even the am5 CPUs are uh slightly concave so a totally flat cooler would not have good contact and the other reason is manufacturing tolerances um there is a certain uh variability to the exact uh convexity or flatness you can produce so if you aim for just flat you will end up having some outliers that are slightly concave and if you have a concave cooler that's usually not going to give you very good result so okay let's let's talk about where we are now with perform yeah so the the biggest improvements um from the optimiz socket specific optimization are obviously when you don't use uh these mods uh we we uh include to uh improve contact so that's would be without offset mounting on am5 and without a washer mod on Intel uh and in this case we can see that we have around the the the green one is the the standard medium based convexity version and then we have uh a little bit more than 1 and A2 degree Improvement by going from uh the regular medium based convexity to a low based convexity version um to some people a degree and a half may not sound much but uh in high-end heat sink squeezing out the degree or even half a degree requires a lot of work so if we see something like a 1 and a half degree Improvement this is massive for us and this is exactly the reason why we uh decided to go into all this uh admittedly cumbersome differentiation between three different versions uh because we spend so much time optimizing this cooler that it would be uh yeah just a shame to waste a degree or more um just due to uh nonoptimized surface contact but I think it puts that 1.5 degree uh Improvement uh into perspective a little bit because we've been working so hard creating new fans adding extra heat pipes optimizing the fin stack for a um like contact neutral uh to to 2 and a half degree Improvement and then wasting 1 and 1/2 de for po contact would feel terrible it's a it's really a holistic approach to to heat SN design but it also shows why you can't just slap any fans onto any heat snc they have to be designed together totally So speaking of the fans I want to talk also about sort of where all these realizations have brought you into a new generation of 120 mm fans oh yeah this is uh news we're breaking here this year at computex um we've been talking about the war 40mm version for a long time but we've uh applied the same design principles the same design approach to a 120 mm unit as well there we have this uh yes and we have the we have the Standalone fan as well okay so you can see it has uh the same uh Progressive Bend impella design that we have on the 140 mm version the same centrifugal turbulator Hub we talked through all the features last year um so I'm going to not going to bore you with them again the bottom line is that we're seeing uh a nice extra improvement over the existing um award winning a12 fan we have some uh some graphs over there so we're seeing around 10 to 12% more flow through a heat sink or through a radiator so that's quite a substantial Improvement for and that's just that's not just your raw CFM that's restricted CFM which is even more impressive that's measured on the application uh noise normalized so we're really apples to apples are not giving you some free air figures that don't mean anything at all so what are you what are you targeting because I also noticed that you're not doing a lot of things here that a lot of other manufacturers are doing with their 120 mm fence which is adding to the thickness how do you compensate it because of course the thickness does help with with static pressure and things like that so have you compensated for that without increasing the thickness without getting into that hey you might have some issues with Moun um basically it's uh the similar blade design tuning measures uh that we have done for the 14 cm so it's the Progressive Progressive bent impellers Fugal turbulator hop you can also see that it's got the those small winglets that we introduced for the 140 cm version so it's just a newer generation of play design with optimized profile optimized feature Set uh that enables us to perform a little bit better than the the existing a12 and now when we're when we're looking at this just for the the fan itself because we're going to talk about a a new cooler 120 mm cooler very soon what are we looking at for potential uh roll out of this or is this one of these things like you know halflife three it'll be done when it's done um knock on wood we want to have it out in in q1 I mean it's uh with D15 G2 like it's being packed and chipped so nothing should go wrong at at this point uh with this one we're still finalizing some stuff but I I'm I'm pretty confident that we're going to have it out in q1 next year and then we have a new dual Tower 120 mm cooler that's coming out based around this fan do you have a name for this yet it doesn't have a name yet um um so there's really no just internal working titles um but the idea is very similar as with D15 G2 that we want to make use of that nice new fan we have so we have uh better uh PQ PQ characteristics on the fan that enable us to optimize the H fit stack for it uh fine-tune it uh to work with the increased pressure level we can get for the fan we've also increased the heat pipe count from 6 to 8 like we did for D15 G2 and uh the net benefit for the customer is going to be uh that this one is going to deliver roughly D15 G1 level performance but in a 120 mm pH Factory so and you would be planning all the same advances that you've made with a D15 G2 like for example very customized Mount per socket etc etc or you really planning on keeping those features for your your Flagship honestly this is something where we will also have to wait and see a bit how the market reacts to that how customers react to that um if there's too much customer confusion um or if the feedback is very positive then it's something uh that we can gladly roll out to to more coolers um and uh of course we'll also have to see how the the general platform situation will develop with a new socket arriving uh from one of the major players um so yeah yeah that it's it's going to be interesting to see what he's actually talking about what AOL Lake s brings to the table a little bit later this year because if if rumors are correct Intel is also going with a chiplet design and if Intel's going with chip and if AMD is going with chiplets it it's going to be a nightmare for cooler manufacturers who might not be sort of using all of these realizations that noctua has had over the last year plus plus plus so the other thing that I just wanted to mention very very quickly is that a little birdie tells me that you might have uh a different type of cooler here that might be more based off of uh liquid absolutely there's uh liquid cooling here at the booth we are showing a thermos prototype um it's actually a two-phase thermos siphon so um I guess most of the viewers will be familiar with the basic uh principle of thermal siphons where you heat a working fluid and create circulation due to density uh differences in the work working fluid and uh with a two-phase thermosyphon um there's a um phase transfer involved in the process so in our case we have the fluid uh going over the CPU uh evaporating Vapor stream going up through tube we have the um um prototype of display over there um up into the top mounted uh radiator or condenser as it's uh better called in this case uh where the fluid uh cools off condenses and then returns uh through the liquid flow line back to the evaporator to uh evaporate again and this way we have a fluid cycle um without any moving parts so there's no pump involved um but we're still targeting AI level performance and we're targeting AO level look and feel so it looks very similar to an AO it will install very similar to an AO it won't take up uh a lot of space around your CPU socket it won't limit your ra Ram compatibility but the other thing that we have to remember it might be AO level performance but it's without a pump exactly so it's very very quiet especially considering it's paired up with with noo fans so there's still a lot of work to do and that's why we uh don't give an ETA at this stage we also don't give a pricing at uh prediction at this stage it's a development project and we've heard your feedback we're trying not to put things on the road map where we're not very confident that we can uh stick to the stick to the announced schedule yeah because I was actually talking to Jacob a little bit on the side just saying some of the concerns that we've had with with calos and and noctua understands all those which is why this is purely a developmental vehicle this is not at this point in time a final product this is using their experience to create something that's very very unique and something that nocta can use to expand their product profile beyond the air coolers that you see here and to me that's so exciting I I I absolutely think that the the idea of having um the convenience and uh the clean looks of aios the performance level of aios without all the drawbacks it should be a compelling uh offer I mean you you don't have to worry about pump failure you don't have to worry about vibrations you don't have to worry about pump noise so um yeah I'm very confident that this is a highly interesting path to pursue so a a lot of interesting stuff at OCT we're we're finally getting the new D15 G2 we're eventually going to get a 120 mm cooler that hopefully will mop the floor with all of these very very budget focused Solutions of course there's always place for those budget Solutions in every single Market but if you want the best of the best and you want the warranty and the support going into the future for future sockets you've got what's in front of us and what might be coming on the sealed liquid Loop side so anyways I'm Mike with har Canuck Jacob thank you so much wait until what we see next year it's always a pleasure having you all right take care guys have a good oneso everybody it seems like every single computex we're here at noctua and there's a new update about their next Generation cooler that everybody's been waiting for little bit of a uh a change here it is not called the D15 everybody thought it was going to be called the D15 I have Jacob next to me he is the master of noct of all things nocta so he's going to address what the new name new name is what it's prices and when we can see it I think what you meant to say was D16 D A lot of people assumed it's going to be called D16 um but uh in our naming scheme the number um usually refers to the size so if it was called D16 it would be 16 uh CM wide which is not the case and the official name is going to be uh D15 G2 G2 okay so what are we looking at for the price price is going to be 149 uh both Euro and USD and uh yeah the good news that we can bring this year is that uh sadly it took us a little bit longer than we uh expected at last year's computex when we lost talked uh but we have units uh in production uh production is in full swing basically units are shipping already um and we're targeting a late June release date so there's another thing that we noticed that ordering one of these is going to be a little bit more complicated for one main reason and that's because noctua has realized that in order to get even more performance out of the D15 G2 than they were initially targeting we have different surface contact plates now because we have actually been talking about this quite a bit about how surface contact is it's being more and more emphasized by manufacturers because there's such a departure in the different types of CPU IHSS it you don't need a flat base a one siiz fits-all necessary solution in order to get the best performance you need to tailor make your base plate per solution so can you talk a little bit more about that absolutely so the best of it all is that you're not only getting a single D15 G2 you're actually getting three of them I will start with the very simple message first and that is uh it's not as complicated as it may seem at first because there's going to be the standard version that's just going to be called nhd15 G2 that's going to be uh the all around Solution that's going to work best for the vast majority of customers so if you don't bother with all of the stuff we're going to talk about now just go with this one you're going to be happy and not only that it's because they're going a different route for Intel and AMD that sort of middle solution allows you to either go with a different platform in the future or stick with that same platform that you're on right now instead of saying okay look you're going with an Intel Centric design or an AMD Cent yes totally um we really uh did everything we could to make that standard version as versatile as possible um so we're including the offset mounting for AMD you're already familiar with and this way you can get uh state-ofthe-art results on AMD um but we're also including shim washers you have some of them lying here um to put underneath your LGA 1700 um ilm to reduce uh ilm def um excuse me CPU deformation due to ilm pressure and this way you can get perfect results on Factory new LGA 1700 CPUs as well so I think we need to talk a little bit more about that factory new versus used but the other thing that I wanted to talk about very very quickly is the fact that that all of this Hardware you get in all of the versions so think about these ilm washers as I guess that contact plate that you see from some manufacturers right it's in order to regulate the ilm pressure of your cooler correct sir uh yeah it just uh reduces the amount of pressure the internal loading mechanism puts onto the CPU and thereby you will get less deformation exactly so let's talk a little bit about why and how you accomplish this in basically that that dual path approach with one path going Intel and another path going AMD especially when it comes not necessarily to older CPUs but we're talking about the current generation and moving forward as chiplet designs become more and more prevalent in the market so I mean the the the basic problem we're dealing with is that uh both uh the contact surface situation but also the hotspot location situation is uh drastically different between am5 and LGA 1700 so am 5 CPUs stay relatively flat um they have a slight deformation when you close the socket activation mechanism as it's called with AMD um but the information you can see it up there uh on this uh on this flatness can here is mainly limited to the outer areas where the Sam presses onto the CPU but the main contact area remains relatively flat and this is why we can generally get very good results with flat um uh CPU bases on AMD whereas with Intel uh with full ilm pressure we have a massive amount of deformation due to that ilm pressure warping the CPU so we're dealing with different scenarios and with AMD we also have the CCD shifted towards the south side of the socket so with AMD the situation in the end is that uh you can either go with a um relatively flat cooler so that would be the low base convexity version of the uh nhd15 G2 this will give you a nice uniform contact patch good pressure over the ccds good pre pressure over the iodi um so you're also going to have a good iodide temperatures or the go the other way um using for example a mid convexity heat syn so uh that's basically uh uh the same as all our existing multi-socket coolers and the same as the standard version of the nhd15 G2 use the offset mounting shift the pressure pattern over the ccds and you will have excellent results there so so in Intel is a a a very different approach right now they haven't necessarily moved to a chiplet design with their their current CPUs but it's why we're seeing our own testing vary so differently from AMD to Intel on one hand you've got a cooler that does very good on Intel that might not do as good at least in competitive analysis testing on AMD and vice versa the charts are very very different so explain where we are now with an Intel Centric cooler and why you might not want to use that AMD Focus cooler on Intel yeah I think uh the the precious cans uh make this very obvious because we already talked about the nice contact we get with a low base convexity heat sink on AMD and if we put the same heat sink on Intel with full ilm pressure we can see that there's some contact on the North and the South side of the IHS but no contact whatsoever over the die where it really matters and even if you use uh washers or a contact frame to reduce Alm pressure uh you'll still have centralized pressure in the North and South Region so even then we have the performance data down there a low base convexity heating heating is simply not going uh to do great on Intel so you need the high base convexity yes exactly that's where the high base convexity version steps in with full eyland pressure uh and a relatively fresh CPU so we have to talk about deformation over time as well in a minute um you will have very nice centralized pressure um where it matters the most over the Hotpot location of the CPU now if you combine that um High base convexity with a washer mod or with uh with a contact frame uh you would actually end up with a little bit too centralized uh contact patch but um with the formation over time if you have an Intel CPU that's been running for months and months with full ilm pressure you may actually want to combine the high base convexity version with washers to get the best possible contact just because the deformation can be kind can become so massive so I I know that this is a a lot to unpack especially for people who just want to mount the cooler and not worry about things but there's two ways to look at this number one is you can buy the Standard Version and be assured that you're going to get amazing temperatures regardless or if you're somebody who wants to experiment a bit especially on the Intel side with the ilm washers to get different types of mounting pressure at different points you can do that as well and just find the solution that matches what you need because not all CPUs end up the same way after a couple of months you have some which bow a little bit more some which which don't and we've actually seen that before too because we actually tested some of these contact frames that were claimed to reduce temperatures on some people's CPUs by multiple degrees whereas on our processors they hardly worked at all that that's precisely the problem with deformation over time so if you happen to have a CPU that has become uh permanently deformed because part of the deformation is going to be plastic it's not like they're going to spring back to their original shape once you take them out of the socket then applying a contact frame or a waser mod may have limited effect there should usually always be a little bit of improvement but if it's enough to really substantially drop your temperatures uh is hard to predict because it depends on factors like the actual amount of pressure you get from the ilm and there are quite significant tolerances on that it will depend on factors like mounting pressure from the heat syn back plate stability uh all that kind of stuff but the bottom line is if you have uh been running a Intel CPU without washer mod or contact frames for several months then you're probably better off going with a high baseed convexity cooler yeah and the other thing that we have to mention is this washer Mount these washers do not Mount to your standard cooler mounts these washer mounts are under the ilm yes exactly then that's that adds a little bit more complication but it's really no more complic then a standard contact frame gives you where you have to physically remove the island so you've got three different types of coolers all of which have the same Hardware but Each of which is very specifically targeted Intel AMD and a a very more allinone solution and also maybe before we get into the temperatures why is it maybe a a bad idea to be focusing just on the flattest base possible we often hear comments like uh the the base is not flat what what's wrong with your cooler yes I foged up 100 for a cooler and it's not flat what's going on uh flat is not good as we can see here even even for am5 uh there's a there's a reason why we're pushing out a low base convexity version and not a flat version and that's for a couple of reasons one is that even the am5 CPUs are uh slightly concave so a totally flat cooler would not have good contact and the other reason is manufacturing tolerances um there is a certain uh variability to the exact uh convexity or flatness you can produce so if you aim for just flat you will end up having some outliers that are slightly concave and if you have a concave cooler that's usually not going to give you very good result so okay let's let's talk about where we are now with perform yeah so the the biggest improvements um from the optimiz socket specific optimization are obviously when you don't use uh these mods uh we we uh include to uh improve contact so that's would be without offset mounting on am5 and without a washer mod on Intel uh and in this case we can see that we have around the the the green one is the the standard medium based convexity version and then we have uh a little bit more than 1 and A2 degree Improvement by going from uh the regular medium based convexity to a low based convexity version um to some people a degree and a half may not sound much but uh in high-end heat sink squeezing out the degree or even half a degree requires a lot of work so if we see something like a 1 and a half degree Improvement this is massive for us and this is exactly the reason why we uh decided to go into all this uh admittedly cumbersome differentiation between three different versions uh because we spend so much time optimizing this cooler that it would be uh yeah just a shame to waste a degree or more um just due to uh nonoptimized surface contact but I think it puts that 1.5 degree uh Improvement uh into perspective a little bit because we've been working so hard creating new fans adding extra heat pipes optimizing the fin stack for a um like contact neutral uh to to 2 and a half degree Improvement and then wasting 1 and 1/2 de for po contact would feel terrible it's a it's really a holistic approach to to heat SN design but it also shows why you can't just slap any fans onto any heat snc they have to be designed together totally So speaking of the fans I want to talk also about sort of where all these realizations have brought you into a new generation of 120 mm fans oh yeah this is uh news we're breaking here this year at computex um we've been talking about the war 40mm version for a long time but we've uh applied the same design principles the same design approach to a 120 mm unit as well there we have this uh yes and we have the we have the Standalone fan as well okay so you can see it has uh the same uh Progressive Bend impella design that we have on the 140 mm version the same centrifugal turbulator Hub we talked through all the features last year um so I'm going to not going to bore you with them again the bottom line is that we're seeing uh a nice extra improvement over the existing um award winning a12 fan we have some uh some graphs over there so we're seeing around 10 to 12% more flow through a heat sink or through a radiator so that's quite a substantial Improvement for and that's just that's not just your raw CFM that's restricted CFM which is even more impressive that's measured on the application uh noise normalized so we're really apples to apples are not giving you some free air figures that don't mean anything at all so what are you what are you targeting because I also noticed that you're not doing a lot of things here that a lot of other manufacturers are doing with their 120 mm fence which is adding to the thickness how do you compensate it because of course the thickness does help with with static pressure and things like that so have you compensated for that without increasing the thickness without getting into that hey you might have some issues with Moun um basically it's uh the similar blade design tuning measures uh that we have done for the 14 cm so it's the Progressive Progressive bent impellers Fugal turbulator hop you can also see that it's got the those small winglets that we introduced for the 140 cm version so it's just a newer generation of play design with optimized profile optimized feature Set uh that enables us to perform a little bit better than the the existing a12 and now when we're when we're looking at this just for the the fan itself because we're going to talk about a a new cooler 120 mm cooler very soon what are we looking at for potential uh roll out of this or is this one of these things like you know halflife three it'll be done when it's done um knock on wood we want to have it out in in q1 I mean it's uh with D15 G2 like it's being packed and chipped so nothing should go wrong at at this point uh with this one we're still finalizing some stuff but I I'm I'm pretty confident that we're going to have it out in q1 next year and then we have a new dual Tower 120 mm cooler that's coming out based around this fan do you have a name for this yet it doesn't have a name yet um um so there's really no just internal working titles um but the idea is very similar as with D15 G2 that we want to make use of that nice new fan we have so we have uh better uh PQ PQ characteristics on the fan that enable us to optimize the H fit stack for it uh fine-tune it uh to work with the increased pressure level we can get for the fan we've also increased the heat pipe count from 6 to 8 like we did for D15 G2 and uh the net benefit for the customer is going to be uh that this one is going to deliver roughly D15 G1 level performance but in a 120 mm pH Factory so and you would be planning all the same advances that you've made with a D15 G2 like for example very customized Mount per socket etc etc or you really planning on keeping those features for your your Flagship honestly this is something where we will also have to wait and see a bit how the market reacts to that how customers react to that um if there's too much customer confusion um or if the feedback is very positive then it's something uh that we can gladly roll out to to more coolers um and uh of course we'll also have to see how the the general platform situation will develop with a new socket arriving uh from one of the major players um so yeah yeah that it's it's going to be interesting to see what he's actually talking about what AOL Lake s brings to the table a little bit later this year because if if rumors are correct Intel is also going with a chiplet design and if Intel's going with chip and if AMD is going with chiplets it it's going to be a nightmare for cooler manufacturers who might not be sort of using all of these realizations that noctua has had over the last year plus plus plus so the other thing that I just wanted to mention very very quickly is that a little birdie tells me that you might have uh a different type of cooler here that might be more based off of uh liquid absolutely there's uh liquid cooling here at the booth we are showing a thermos prototype um it's actually a two-phase thermos siphon so um I guess most of the viewers will be familiar with the basic uh principle of thermal siphons where you heat a working fluid and create circulation due to density uh differences in the work working fluid and uh with a two-phase thermosyphon um there's a um phase transfer involved in the process so in our case we have the fluid uh going over the CPU uh evaporating Vapor stream going up through tube we have the um um prototype of display over there um up into the top mounted uh radiator or condenser as it's uh better called in this case uh where the fluid uh cools off condenses and then returns uh through the liquid flow line back to the evaporator to uh evaporate again and this way we have a fluid cycle um without any moving parts so there's no pump involved um but we're still targeting AI level performance and we're targeting AO level look and feel so it looks very similar to an AO it will install very similar to an AO it won't take up uh a lot of space around your CPU socket it won't limit your ra Ram compatibility but the other thing that we have to remember it might be AO level performance but it's without a pump exactly so it's very very quiet especially considering it's paired up with with noo fans so there's still a lot of work to do and that's why we uh don't give an ETA at this stage we also don't give a pricing at uh prediction at this stage it's a development project and we've heard your feedback we're trying not to put things on the road map where we're not very confident that we can uh stick to the stick to the announced schedule yeah because I was actually talking to Jacob a little bit on the side just saying some of the concerns that we've had with with calos and and noctua understands all those which is why this is purely a developmental vehicle this is not at this point in time a final product this is using their experience to create something that's very very unique and something that nocta can use to expand their product profile beyond the air coolers that you see here and to me that's so exciting I I I absolutely think that the the idea of having um the convenience and uh the clean looks of aios the performance level of aios without all the drawbacks it should be a compelling uh offer I mean you you don't have to worry about pump failure you don't have to worry about vibrations you don't have to worry about pump noise so um yeah I'm very confident that this is a highly interesting path to pursue so a a lot of interesting stuff at OCT we're we're finally getting the new D15 G2 we're eventually going to get a 120 mm cooler that hopefully will mop the floor with all of these very very budget focused Solutions of course there's always place for those budget Solutions in every single Market but if you want the best of the best and you want the warranty and the support going into the future for future sockets you've got what's in front of us and what might be coming on the sealed liquid Loop side so anyways I'm Mike with har Canuck Jacob thank you so much wait until what we see next year it's always a pleasure having you all right take care guys have a good one\n"