Those who thought innovation in air cooling was dead will have to rethink. Noctua has presented a fan with noise reduction developed together with Rotosub that eliminates pretty much all of the fan noise.
The technology used by the Noctua prototype that was shown at Computex was developed by Rotosub and technology in question generates an anti-noise that cancels the noise created by the fan. The fan is based on Noctua NF-F12 with a metal frame around the fan. Behind the heatsink sits a microphone that listens to the noise that is generate and sends the data to a signal processor that process the signal to switch between the magets that is seated on each fan blade.
The technology is a so called active noise and vibration reduction where you pair two sound waves with identical amplitudes, but inverted phases. The result is a sound and an anti-sound that cancel each other. The magnets in Noctua’s prototype makes the fan vibrate 0.1 mm, which generates enough anti-noise to make the fan as good as completely silent.
The video above demonrtates the technology and it at least sounds like the fan is not making as much noise as before, but the sound we hear is the engine. The technology is still very new to Noctua and it estimates another 12 to 18 months of research before it can complete a product for retail. An obvious concern is the microphone and the signal processor that cannot easily be integrated into the fan, even if that’s the long term goal. Noctua intends to solve this by integrating the comonents into its coolers – which means that Noctua’s new fans will not work with heatsinks from other brands. It also hopes to improve the air flow without creating more noise.
Noctua should have the new fan and bundled cooler out on the market by late 2013. The company was not sure about the price of the new fan, but around twice that of NF-F12 – about 40-50€. This sounds like a lot, but for drastically lowering the noice and maintaining a high air flow it could be a product worth its price for some.
Source: The Verge
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