Noctua

Noctua is an Austrian brand and is fairly new to the CPU cooler business. Their products have made some serious waves right from the start. They are sharing a booth with Coolink at Computex. The NF-S12 cooler is on display with its light and dark brown fan. This color theme is well chosen as is exclusive to the brand and spans the entire product line of Noctua. This CPU cooler utilizes a copper plate with four heatpiples and a very large size, weiging 790g. It is compatible to all major sockets like 775, 754, 939, 940 & AM2. The fan used, rotates at 1200 RPM, pushes 81 qm/h, while being silent at 17 db(A). You can slow the fan down to 800 RPM with the included adapter, at which it only generates 8 db(A) noise.


the NF-R8-1800 is an 8 cm fan which can spin with up to 1800 RPM. It generates 17 db(A) of noise at this level. It can also be slowed down to 800 RPM generating a mere 7 db(A) at this speed. The NF-S12-1200 is a 12 cm fan which has a maximum RPM of - as the name suggests - 1200 RPM. This fan is the same as on the NF-S12 CPU cooler. Noctua also offers a fan which turns at 800 RPM at full voltage. This one is simply called NF-S12-800 and can be slowed to a mere 500 RPM at which it generates an extrapolated 5 db(A). Extrapolated means, that the actual noise could not be measured as it is so silent.


All retail Noctua fans come with four vibration compensators, the U.L.N.A (Ultra Low Noise Adapter to slow the fan down) and standard fan screws. The retail package also keeps with the brown theme so you will always know what to look for.

Coolink

Coolink has the Silentator on display. This CPU cooler has been co-developed with Noctua and features the same characteristics as the NF-S12 but is not quite as large, only has three heatpipes and only weighs 640g, making for a 150g difference. This translates into a slightly worse performance when compared to the NF-S12. The fan Coolink SWiF 120 comes bundled with the heatsink and can run between 900 or 1600 RPM and generates a noise level of 14-24 db(A).


You can get the Coolink fans in 80 mm, 92 mm or 120 mm variants. The retail package ships with a manual fan speed control, PCI mounting bracket for adjustable fan speed knob, 3:4 pin adaptor and fan screws. You can buy the anti-vibration spacers seperate.


You will also find a passive heatsink for mainboards. This has a special shape to increase compatiblity and looks quite similar to the Zalman offering. The SWAP VGA Cooler comes bundles with additional heatsinks and thermal paste. This active cooler should be enough for graphic cards up to the GeForce 6600 (non GT). The Silent Savior utilizes a Coolink fan and an aluminum frame to mount on your hard drive. The 8 cm fan generates between 9 and 16 db(A) noise. As we can only place a single link on top of this article, here the link to Coolink.