Noctua's long-awaited passive cooler is "coming soon," the company tweeted, and Noctua responded to FanlessTech, the curator of all things passive, confirming that the passive cooler will finally happen after being delayed many times.

I first saw Noctua's passive prototype at Computex 2019. Renowned for its love-it-or-hate-it fan design and excellent performance, the Austrian company promised a passive cooler that could handle many of the top gaming chips at the time; it could handle 120W and run without a case fan; it could also be used as an "inline" cooler, which would allow the cooler to be used with a case fan.

This was quite an attractive offer, and Noctua has since stated that PC builders should "prepare to be amazed" at the high performance of this cooler.

As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait, and we have suffered delays on numerous occasions and had to wait quite a while. Nevertheless, the cooler is expected to go into mass production late last year or early this year and be available by the second quarter.

If you are wondering why a passive cooler is necessary, Jakob Dellinger of Noctua explains in an interview with RelaxedTech:

"The key issue is that for a passive cooler to be truly effective, the fin pitch and fin thickness, and other design parameters must vary considerably," says Dellinger. 'You need a certain pitch to get enough flow resistance to get enough natural convection, and you need a certain fin thickness to get the mass needed to absorb enough thermal energy.' This means that different manufacturing machines, such as more powerful stamping presses, are needed. It was quite a challenge to solve this in a reasonably cost-effective way."

"... There is a certain beauty and simplicity in going completely fanless, rather than just running a low-speed fan.

If any of this sounds good to you, keep an eye out for Noctua's passive cooler over the next few months. I think this time it will really happen!