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Get a load of this thing. This Noctua Thermosiphon prototype cooler has

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boiling coolant inside the CPU block and uses physics magic to circulate said

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coolant around the system without a pump. It's not exactly a new idea.

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Derbauer showed off this phase change cooler prototype 6 years ago, and

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Raentech made enough progress on their pumpless concept that they even sent me

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an early sample to test. Neither of those designs ultimately made it to

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market. But it shows that companies have been hard at work on this for a very

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long time. But why? Well, because every

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pump on Earth has two things in common. One, it makes noise. And two, it will

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eventually die. So, going back almost 20

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years now, the holy grail of silent, reliable PC liquid cooling has been to

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find a way to circulate the coolant with no moving parts. Cool, you might say.

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But why should I get my hopes up this time? Because this time, Noctua says not

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only is it going to happen, but they believe that with some science, they can

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actually achieve performance that is on par with an actively pumped AIO liquid

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cooler. I need to take a closer look at this after this close look at our

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sponsor, Corsair. Their Platform 4

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Elevate is anything but a generic sit-to-stand desk. It stands out, pun

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intended, with its modular T-channel rail system that allows you to mount a

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whole variety of accessories. Check it out using our link down

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below. Right away, Noctua was careful to disclaim that this unit is non-final, so

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they can't give any raw performance numbers. But it's also clear that it

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can't be that bad. Under that boiling fluid is a Ryzen 9 9800 X3D CPU running

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a live gaming demo without overheating.

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I mean, this is not quite the same as running a 100% CPU load in a real case,

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but what it shows is that Noctua has gotten at least as far as anybody else

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in achieving pumpless water cooling, or

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should I say fluid cooling. Noctua is

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collaborating with Calios, the same aerospace cooling company that helped

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design StreCom's passive cooling case that we checked out recently. And while

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Noctua was quick to point out that their implementation is different and

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shouldn't have the uh weird noise issue,

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Calios's specialty is two-phase passive cooling systems where they leverage the

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evaporation of a liquid to transfer heat

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and force coolant to circulate to a heat exchanger or a condenser where fans can

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cool it back to a liquid state before it makes its way back to the heat source.

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So then it all looks great, right? What's holding them back? Well, boiling

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a liquid, it turns out, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it

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dramatically increases the thermal energy that the coolant can capture and

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take away to the condenser. But on the other hand, it creates pockets of gas on

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the copper surface of the cooler that act as an insulator, making it hard for

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the liquid coolant to ever make contact with the heat source. And the hotter the

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heat source, the more vigorous the bubble formation. Adding another layer

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of inconvenience is the fact that CPUs do not heat up uniformly. There are hot

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spots right above the dyes where the most heat is generated. And these are

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the areas where ironically it's also the most important to maintain excellent

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thermal transfer. So you've got this

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more vigorous boiling occurring right where you need your cooling the most.

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Noctua says that if there was a perfect CPU that heated up uniformly, they could

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be finished development on this already. So what can they do? Well, first they

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had to try to fix the uneven distribution of heat coming up through

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the CPU's heat spreader by both trying to speed up thermal transfer in the cool

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spots and slow it down in the hot spots,

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which flies completely in the face of conventional cooling dust practices

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where for forever the goal has been to bring heat pipes and water block fins as

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close to the hot spot as possible. After

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that, the next goal was to improve the effective cooling surface area. Now, in

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a normal water block, this was achieved by using ever thinner surface

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structures, which eventually resulted in coolers that literally created their

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fins by shaving the top of the copper and then folding up the slices in a

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process called sking. The issue with this for this application is that the

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smaller the surface structures, the more little tiny nooks and crannies exist to

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trap bubbles, destroying any hope of efficient thermal transfer. Now, one

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solution to this problem is to use impingement jets that accelerate the

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liquid before it hits the copper surface, which will dislodge any bubbles

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and also increase turbulent flow, which aids heat transfer. that uh small

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problem. You may or may not have noticed this, but there's no pump to provide the

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necessary head pressure. And we don't want a pump because then a we would risk

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accidentally circulating the fluid too fast, which would throw away the

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advantage of evaporative cooling. And also then we'd have a pump, which was

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kind of the whole point, right? Counterintuitively then, the prototype

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thermosiphon is using much, much taller

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copper structures than a typical water block would in an effort to leave enough

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space for the bubbles to escape and then for liquid to be able to penetrate all

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the way to the base of the block. With those challenges out of the way, the

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last big one is to find the optimal shape that maximizes coolant flow. They

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don't need nearly as much flow as a traditional AIO water cooler, but more

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is still generally more better when it comes to heat transfer. There's no word

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on case compatibility or exactly when this thing will launch, but hey, Noctua

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has a mostly pretty good track record for actually launching the things they

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show off. So, uh oh, I guess I'm in the Noctua booth,

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so I should probably talk about the fans on the condenser. Thanks to its high

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torque motor and progressive bend impeller, the A12X25 Gen 2 excels in

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high resistance applications where Noctua found three and a half degree

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better temperatures at the same noise level compared to their last gen or the

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same performance for a 1 to 3 decel difference in noise. Pricing is expected

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to be the same as Gen 1 at $34.90 and

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who the knows US dollars due to the ever evolving tariff situation. I was telling

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Nacha they should get into crystal balls. Then they could give me an answer

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on that. There will be two versions, a slightly faster one and a slightly

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slower one that will help to counteract the undesirable harmonics of having two

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identical speed fans that operate right next to each other or on a pushpull

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cooler. These same fans were present on a variety of products around the booth,

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including Noctua's upcoming AIO liquid

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cooler. I um am not the only one who was

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surprised to see this and for a number of reasons. For starters, Noctua has

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always maintained that a heat pipe air cooler is capable of equal or even

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better performance compared to an AIO. And for another, instead of designing

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their own pump, they actually opted to partner with ASET on a design that uses

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the same Gen 8 platform as other vendors. Like what? You guys literally

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make motors and impellers for a living. But according to Natua, water impellers

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are a lot less similar than you would think to air impellers. And after a year

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of trying to tune the performance and acoustics of the pump, they determined

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that there just wasn't much that they could do to it. Which isn't to say that

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they're just slapping their logo onto a Gen 8 reference design. The special

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sauce is in this cover. Instead of a screen or several screens, Noctua has

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designed a three layer acoustic blocker that acts as a tuned mast damper,

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helping to reduce vibrations, at least in one direction. There isn't really

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much that they can do about any vibrations that will pass through their

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secuer mounting system into the motherboard. But in total, they are

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expecting a few decibel reduction in noise, especially uh compared to

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competitors who have large plastic structures on top of their blocks that

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actually serve to amplify pump noise and vibrations. The last innovation in

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typical Noctua fashion is to put a fan

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on it using guiding fins around the AIO

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cover. This magnetically mounted 80mm fan is designed to cool down your

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motherboard VRM and your system memory. The whole setup comes with a 6-year

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warranty and will be available in 2026. As for pricing, they literally said,

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"Don't worry about that." So, I'm doing the exact opposite and worrying a lot.

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The final element of the Noctua booth is actually probably the most exciting to

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me and it was all of the non Noctua products that they were showing off.

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Noctua has really ramped up their partnerships over the last few years and

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they were showing off everything from the Noctua equipped power supplies that

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we saw over at CIC to a refreshed 50 series Noctua edition GPU to this

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incredible looking Anttech case to a Pulsar gaming mouse that has an

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integrated 40mm cooling fan. I generally

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love Noctua's engineering first approach to product design, and I'm always happy

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to see their unsightly brown and tan fans, making other people's products

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just a little bit cooler and a little bit quieter. I'm also happy to see our

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shop for your next gaming or work setup. With close to 30 locations all over the

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US, they've been dishing out deals and providing excellent customer service,

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until the end of May, they have deep discounts on over 150 desktop PCs. Like

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is set to open any time now. So, use our links in the description to shop

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MicroEnters's May desktop deals and to make sure you get your free flash drive

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when you check out their new Santa Clara location. If you guys enjoyed this

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video, why not check out the time we covered that one infamous product that

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Noctua never managed to bring to market. It really did look really cool. Had

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active noise cancellation on a heat sink. Like what?