Noctua Black Fans, Active Noise Canceling Heatsink - Computex 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,414 words · ~12 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
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trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
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is nc.com now we talk about Noctua products
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a lot but they don't really released that many new products all at once for
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the most part but we've got Jacob here from nocta to tell us about a whole
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bunch of crazy stuff that's going on in their Booth so why don't you tell us
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about these yellow fans first yes it's with pleasure first of all uh the yellow
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color is just because they are CNC mockup prototypes uh they will have the
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normal noctur color when they're ready they are new additions to our Aeries
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fans uh we had 140 92 slim 60 and 40 in
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the past and these are going to be 20 cm 92 mm uh with 25 mm thickness and 80 mm
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uh they will have all the features of the a series you already know like flow
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accelerations channels or sso2 bearings
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awesome so basically we're getting updates to a couple sizes that we
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haven't really seen before and that we're kind of doe for an update
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yes exactly now speaking of usual noct to a color schemes who what is this
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these are black fans targeted for industrial customers uh they are made
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from fiberglass reinforced polyamid which is even more rigid than the
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fiberglass reinforced PBT we normally use they will also come with IP class 52
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water and dust protection and a new six pole motor design so why do we need a
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six pole motor design what's the difference between this and the four
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pole here the uh improvements of the six pole motor design are that it offers
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even smoother running even lower vibrations and even lower power consumption all right let's move on to
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heat sinks how did I manage to miss this project Redux this is exclusive if I
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don't get the exclusive thing I'm not even doing my job Jacob why what's
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project Redux yeah this is for all the people whoever wanted a noct fan but
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felt it's just too expensive we'll take some of our most popular models like the
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NFS 12b or NFP 14 streamline the
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packaging and make them available at uh quite a bit more affordable prices very
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cool now being a design and engineering company first and foremost and a
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marketing company second most uh Noctua just calls this prototype dtype CPU
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Cooler uh but what's cool about this is it stays out of the no zones for your
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CPU socket it stays away from high-profile memory heat sinks and it
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also gives you the same cooling surface area and performance as something that
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previously took up a lot more space by simply using their new 92mm fan design
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right down the middle so this will be coming at some undisclosed date because right now it doesn't even have a name
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yet moving right along they've improved compatibility for their low profile
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coolers you check this out so they basically cut away a little piece here
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on the side that allows for things like
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this High capacitors that are next to the PCI Express lot so you can use these
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easily in either an AMD or Intel miniitx
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configuration now it has well kicks out a fair bit of heat so they're also
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adding a higher performance ITX cooling solution that is still low profile
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enough that it sits easily next to a half height PCI Express graphics card
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and doesn't interfere with your full height DDR3 memory modules it also is
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designed to stay out of the way of your four pin connector as well as your SATA
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connectors the last thing that we have to show here is the fact that this is
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not new at all this is the original noock to a CPU Cooler the u12 or
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something like that doesn't matter what it's called anymore you can't buy one but it still has well compatible with
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updated mounting hardware and you can still get a free mounting kit if you are
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KN to a customer and you provide proof of purchase now Jacob I ran through all
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that really quickly because honestly this is going to be the star of the show right here tell me what this guy is
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because it's like check this out this goes back to my NHD 14 unboxing where I
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held it up and I'm like it's the size of my head this is the size of my head
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again yeah it's actually an update uh long expected and awaited update to our
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popular NHD 14 um we've working really
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hard to further improve performance and the way we did it is that we expanded
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the width to 150 mm to fit the new NFA
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15 fan and at the same time we've also increased spacing between the Heat pipes
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so we've now got a better heat distribution over a larger surface area
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and this allowed us to really provide a nice additional performance boost
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compared to the original D14 now the original D14 had some compatibility
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issues from time to time with high-profile memory uh and this if being
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even wider how do you address that yes
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we've H we have these little cutouts here and uh if you drop the front fan
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you can actually install RAM modules with up to 70 mm height so uh if you're
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willing to sacrifice a tiny bit of performance uh this cooler gives you
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actually more flexibility uh as far as high uh RAM heat spreaders are concerned
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than the original NHD 14 so here's a look at the uh the cutouts so those
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cutouts are on both sides meaning you can flip it around you don't have to
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worry too much about oh I I put it on the wrong way so yeah don't worry too
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much about that also help on LGA 2011 where there's RAM on both sides ah when
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there's RAM on both sides sorry I was holding the microphone there so if you have RAM on both sides then you'll be
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able to have clearance on either side now let's move into the Space Age stuff
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that totally doesn't exist yet now my understanding is noct TOA had to take
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possession of one of the largest Austrian diamond mines in order to
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create this new technology tell me what the devil makes this so much more
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special than what we've already seen as base plates for CPU heat sinks I'm going
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to try and show them that sparkle there what makes this base uni is that it has
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a copper Diamond composite insert so uh
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inside the copper base we have an insert made from a composite material that
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features a thermal conductivity of 500 watts per meter Kelvin which is roughly
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25% more than pure copper okay so why uh
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why aren't we doing this already what what does it do well the benefit of it
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it is as we uh sh this uh these simulation outputs here is uh that we
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get a better heat distribution across the base so we get more heat to the
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outer heat pipes and can make and we can make them work more efficiently the
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reason why we haven't uh been doing anything like that so far is that the
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the hot pressing technology needed to make this type of material is brand new
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and it's very expensive so I cannot really say whether we will actually make
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it to the market with this one yet now if you make a base out of powder how is
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that going to even be held together um
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first of all it's uh pressed together by hot pressing so it forms a solid
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material but we also need uh the copper like wrapped around it to make it really
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solid and to allow us to nickelplate it and solo the heat pipes to it like we
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usually do there you go guys performance isn't always about looks as Noctua has
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proven to us time and time again but this my friends if you've
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hungen with us this long is the voodoo magic that's going on a fan with active
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noise cancellation technology so why don't you first explain what ISC the
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basic principle behind a ANC is that you use one Soundwave to cancel out another
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Soundwave by overlapping so this will be a z d CPU Cooler uh well in theory yes
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in practice unfortunately that's not possible the main reason for this is
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that the wave fans emit noise is just so complex they produce rotating pressure
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fields and in order to do active noise cancellation on that you have to exactly
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match these rotating pressure Fields so how do you even get close what are you
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guys doing to make a fan make noise and
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make anti-noise at the same time well the brilliant thing about the rotto sub
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technology that we're using is that we actually employ the fan impeller to
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create the anti-noise signal now the way this works is that we have a coil inside
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the fan frame and a magnet sitting inside the blade tips and when we switch
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on the coil we can pull down the blade tips just ever so slightly and when we
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switch off the coil again they go back up so does this create additional
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vibration when the Fan's spinning that can be transmitted to your case no it
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doesn't because most of the fan vibrations unless the fan is broken uh
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comes from the blades passing over the struts and these are exactly the
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pressure fluctuations we're canceling out with the active noise control as
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well so there's going to be products at some point maybe you know it'll be a
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while in the future but this fan what's the challenge building a radiator fan
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that uh uses this active noise cancellation technology the challenge
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we're facing with radiator fans is that there are just so many types of
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different radiators different frang grills Etc um basically the controller
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we're working with and the logic working inside the controller is designed to be
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self- adaptive and self-learning uh but we're still seeing better results when
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we can somewhat control the environment all right now show us what controls the
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environment better and an entire self-contained Noctua cooler that uses
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this technology and tell us about this cooler yes in this case we have the fan
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sitting in between the fin Stacks it's a similar design as the popular NHD 14 and
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in this case we know exactly uh the distance between the fan and the fin
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stacks and what will occur when the fan will hit the he uh the the the air
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coming from the fan will hit the heat SN fins okay show us your demo here and
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they're going to have to rely on this graph but we've heard it it actually
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works so there's a microphone inside the case this whole thing is toolless so you
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actually Slide the entire assembly with the fan in the middle into place after
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you've already installed the cooler you no longer you said you're able to get
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pretty similar performance to that double stack cooler over there with the
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Shroud and with a single fan instead of two fans making it lower profile and
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check out this that is the microphone that goes into the actual so there's
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actual logic built into your CPU Cooler now which is absolutely fantastic so
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guys we are going to have Jacob press the switch and turn the active noise
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cancellation on and off and we're going to direct your attention to this little graph over here so this is showing
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actually here if I if I tap on the back of the
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case hold on if I yell on the there we go you can see my voice right there if I
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stop
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talking ah okay so you can see the microphone is working now go ahead and
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turn active noise cancellation on and off I'm going to I'm going to stop talking we're going to see if they can
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figure it out
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there's a lot of ambient noise here I guess I'm sorry but you guys are going to have to kind of take my word for it
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what it does is it eliminates that that
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noise it doesn't make the fan completely silent but you know how you often talk
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about different characteristics of fans where a deciel meter doesn't necessarily
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tell the whole story because it just tells you the sound pressure it doesn't
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tell you if it's a low hum or whether it's an annoying kind of noise like that
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so this it works and it's extremely exciting when can we buy one well
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there's uh still a lot of challenges we face in manufacturing because it's uh of
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vital importance to get everything uh lined up very precisely uh because the
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risk with this kind of technology is that if you're just off by 0.1 or 0.2 mm
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if the sound waves don't overlap exactly as you want you will end up creating
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more noise than you originally had so we
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have to make sure that everything is just super precise in manufacture in and
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I think if I think if everything goes very smoothly uh we could have a product
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ready on the market in spring 2014 or
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maybe for next computex wonderful so guys thank you so much to Jacob for
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joining us here it's a pleasure don't miss any of our computex 2013 coverage
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we're powered by Western Digital here at the show as well as Corsair Vengeance
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gaming peripherals and nc.com and as always guys don't forget to subscribe