This moment has come a long time. Noctua, the creator of many of the best PC fans, is making some more. Specifically, the NF-A14X25G2 is expected to arrive at the end of the 6th month.

Noctua's "next generation" 140mm fans have been released for months, no, years.  Every time it looks like it's getting somewhere, Noctua will kick it in the test and find that something is not right at all. 

Most recently, long-term use has resulted in "a slight risk of significant deformation" and the release was pushed back about 6 months ago. Although it was already pushed back about a year ago to redesign the frame. It has also been in development for nearly a decade now.

The very tight tolerance of the fan between the blade and the frame makes minor movements potentially fatal.

As it turned out, switching frame material wasn't the answer Noctua was looking for. The switch to the proposed lcp (liquid-crystal polymer) material was the same as the one used for fan blades and hubs, and was quite expensive if used anywhere, so that's actually good news for PC builders.

"So I changed the structure of the frame a little bit instead to make it a little more rigid. And there's a fan clip that reduces the stress of the fans," says Jakob Dellinger of Noctua.

And that means it can be committed to making a lot of things.

"We have production in full swing. Ship units."

Dillinger is keen to point out that it's still an estimated delivery date, but it seems like a fairly completed deal.

However, the date varies slightly depending on the later frame. The NF-A14X25G2 with a round frame first appeared on the 6th month, followed by a more traditional square format on the 9th month. This had some separate issues with the mounting pressure of the radiator, which is now being solved, but took a little time to sort it out.

Chromax.The black version will not be finalized until 2025 Q1 — it requires individual verification before getting Goer Head. The traditional brown and beige version will be your best bet for a while.

If all you care about is performance, Noctua should be able to push about 13% more airflow around the case with this fan, depending on the exact case, although it can also trade for noise reduction — perhaps two or three decibels at slower RPM.

Finally, the fan comes with a 120mm version. It's not officially named yet, but I'm going to speculate that it would be called NF-A12X25G2. It is expected to arrive in 2025 Q1.

Not only are individual fans coming our way, Noctua is more focused on the launch of its new air cooler, the NH-D15G2.

The NH-D15G2 is a twin-fan, twin-tower design CPU cooler. Of course, not only the new NF-A14X25G2 2, but also 8 heat pipes (not 6 in the previous version), modified offset design, and 3 different heat paste and shim washers for lga1700.

Three versions of the NH-D15G2 are:

The reason for these options is that Noctua notes that some Cpus tend to deform over time The most prominent are Intel CPUs using Lga1700 sockets. There are ways to prevent this deformation, but if you were not enthusiastic enough to first attach a contact frame or washer to the motherboard, ideally before you socket the chip, the CPU may be slightly distorted.

This warpage can affect thermal performance. In the image below, you can see the performance of 1 Intel and 1 AMD chip and how it shows where the mounting pressure is placed by the cooler.

Ideally, there should be mounting pressure in the middle of the die on the chip — in the middle for Intel, but in the case of AMD it is actually a bit offset. So why does Noctua provide offset mounting brackets for AMD?

Good news for those with bent Intel chips, the NH-D15G2HBC is designed to provide better coverage of these. 

"That's where hpc steps the convexity version of a high base. It conforms to the concave shape of the integral heat spreader with full island pressure just to get better then better performance," says Dellinger.

The standard model should work pretty well with the included sim washer installed. It is also great for modern AMD chips.

"The standard version will be the same base convex as all other cores, so shifting the pressure points on the Ccd using an offset mount will result in excellent tangency on the AM5"

The lbc model provides pretty great performance out of the box on the AM5, but with an offset mount it will not work. The standard model will come out on top. 

If in doubt, go for the standard, then.

The other interesting bite from my time at the Noctua booth promises that this is the last one, but is how I'm trying to avoid excessive noise by running the twin packs of two fans within the NH-D15G2 and the nf-A14X25G2 fans at slightly different speeds.

"A phenomenon called beat frequency that can be perceived as periodic humming if you have two signals very close to each other at a frequency

"So what we're doing is to offset the cooler's fan, but the dual pack also sells at 50rpm. So 1 will be 25 faster and 1 will be 25 slower. And thus, we are creating a beat frequency that's much faster and the faster the frequency, the less perceptible it will be."

I'm once again very impressed by the level of detail that noctua is easily pleased with for its new product. We do not lose information about why this cooler and the next generation fan is good. It would be even better if we (I) got this cooler for testing.