Noctua Revealed a Prototype CPU Cooler with Active Noise-Cancellation

Status
Not open for further replies.
Becouse it will make cooler prices jump up, their size will increase, and their performance will be lower, not to mention the added power consumption required.

It quite simply might not be profitable.
 

killeeeeer

Distinguished
Sep 1, 2011
12
0
18,510
The guy at the booth said that this is possible by omitting sound wave that is the opposite of the one generated by the cooler thus canceling it and if the sound wave misses by little bit it well generate more noise so it requires a lot of testing.
 

hannibal

Distinguished
Same problem as with noice cancellation headphones. The best are guite good, but even they produce worse sound than real highend headphones because it is so damn hard to cancell just the right sounds. They work wery nicely, but it is not easy task to get it right!
This is interesting product. What I am waiting is noice cancelling GPU cooler, or cooler block from Nochua. My CPU is allready guite quiet, but the GPU... The turbine airplane would be a shame beside it...
 
that is just cool. Having done some fun noise cancellation tests in college I wonder how/if they managed to make this effective at all. The thing with noise cancellation headphones is that it is canceling the noise at a choke point (your ear canal) which is an environment relatively easy to control. The issue we found with more general noise cancellation is that in an open environment you have to try and match the position of the source of the noise, or place it in a spot where there is a standing wave. If you put it anywhere else then you end up with what is essentially a moire pattern of hot and dead spots in the room.
The big issue I see is that every case is different, the size and layout of the hardware inside the case is different, the airflow through the case is different, and the room and location in the room that the box sits in is going to be different. Not saying it is impossible... just that it would be very difficult to come up with a design that can negate that many variables, and more difficult to believe that it would silence the CPU block further than what their already nearly silent fans do.
 


because its not practical, computers don't need to be silent, it will be expensive, will probably provide less cooling which can be done with a low rpm fan inexpensively, its a low volume market, should I go on?
 


Have you ever used a Noctua product before? They are extremely expensive, and typically do not work that much better than other coolers that are 1/4th the cost, and they have a design aesthetic that matches absolutely nothing that is popular... and yet they sell just fine because people are more than willing to spend an arm and a leg to have a powerful machine that is nearly silent, and that is what they do best.
Personally, I just took a cheap Hyper 212Evo and slapped some high-end quiet fans on it. Looks better, performs better, and it was much cheaper. But to each their own.
 

warezme

Distinguished
Dec 18, 2006
2,450
56
19,890
There's lots of naysayers but in a practical sense, it would be more efficient to place an array of noise cancelling mics around your entire computer box and an array of speakers to cancel out the sum of your computer noise not just the air cooler. It shouldn't be as elaborate or expensive as noise cancelling headphones since you are only cancelling a very small range of internal sounds as opposed to the full range sounds from outside sources on a headphones. The hardware can be larger and cheaper since it doesn't have to be miniaturized to fit in the example of headphones, the cup of the ear.
 

osamabinrobot

Honorable
Apr 10, 2012
242
0
10,710
COOL. i dont care if it works perfectly, this is cool. good going, noctua, its great to see someone doing something new rather than just moar h33t pipes or whatever
 

rantoc

Distinguished
Dec 17, 2009
1,859
1
19,780
Actually making active noise cancellation that does alright isn't that hard (accept when its a lot of bass sound involved which isn't the case here). Have a mic before the speaker that produces the pressure waves that cancels the noise (invert what the mic gets and then subtract the following cancellation wave and a directed microphone isn't even needed, just some clever engineering and there is not even need to work with echos ect).

This concept if made properly should make near inaudible results even with pretty good cfm / pressure fan(s). I like the idea!
 

yorich

Honorable
Mar 20, 2013
18
0
10,510


I see what you did there...

 
Love the concept, question the utility. I've got 2 120mm Noctuas mounted push/pull to my Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme. this system is so quiet (all noctua fans) i can't hear it when it's on. Never had a system like that. good airflow too.

got to give it up to corsair and antec too... the corsair psu is too quiet to hear, and the antec case came with a 200mm fan on the top that's dead silent too. (not to mention this 900 2 case has the best airflow I've ever had for a pc case).

the basic point is that i can't hear this system turn on in a dead quiet room with no noise in it. This isn't a noise blocking cpu case either. Now i'm not gonna claim i have the best ears in the world, but it does beg the question how quiet is "quiet enough"?
 


exactly
 


I am not rebuilding my computer for another 2-3 years, but by the time I do I expect passive cooling options to be available for mid to high end processors and GPUs. No fans, No HDDs, and no noise at all. Once my wife stops nagging me about the cost of all of that, then my system will be quiet enough.
 

gadgety

Distinguished
Dec 3, 2011
69
0
18,630
The basic tech was shown by Noctua on YouTube one year ago. I would really need this tech for my external radiator, which uses 18 fans... But Noctua have not launched these fans yet... And makes no promises for the future either.
 


already available.

CPU Cooler: Nofan cr-95c
-I have seen it work on an overclocked i5-2500k (4.8ghz) running a prime95 burn for 3 hours, the cpu never broke 90C... I would put it in a case like this antec ninehundred two where there is some amazing and nearly perfectly silent case cooling... maybe mate it with one of the "energy efficient" haswell i7s... those have a low TDP

match it with that passively cooled HD 7850, and a passively cooled seasonic psu set the case up with some noctua fans, and connect them to a good digital fan controller on the front pannel of the case. one of those automated ones like the bitfenix commander, which has temp probes and can be controlled through software in your OS... i'm pretty sure you'll never hear a system like that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.