Wednesday, August 5th 2020
Korean Passive Cooling Company NoFan Reportedly Shuts Down
The Korean NoFan Computer company has released a variety of cooling products that targeted quiet operations such as passive coolers, liquid coolers, and "silent" fans. Their CR-95C series of passive CPU coolers were released in 2012 for the enthusiast market and carried a significant price tag. The NoFan CR-80EH was released in 2013 and brought the technology used in the CR-95C to a cheaper product. The company hasn't released any new passive coolers since and has faced increased competition from the likes of Noctua and SilverStone. A new report from FanlessTech claims the company has ceased operations which is very likely given their site has been taken down and only limited stock remains. If you want a NoFan CR-80EH now might be your last chance as remaining stock sells out.
Source:
FanlessTech
21 Comments on Korean Passive Cooling Company NoFan Reportedly Shuts Down
I bought the 65 Watt version of the No-Fan and have 50-60 idle and 80 full load (Prime95) temps with a i5-9400.
I pair it with a 1050 Ti KalmX Palit that is also fanless.
I do however not use a case -- they are on a streacom open bench, with a Nightjar Silverstone Fanless PSU.
No noise whatsoever -- exactly what I want for my audio monitoring PC.
The larger cooler does work on for the TDP it's designed for but you do need a case that's well ventilated (if you use one) to allow the heat to escape.
So unless you have an open-air test bench, or Streacom case, you can't get away from fans. Best to accept this and find the best ones you can.
Also important to remember that there are other components that will make more noise than a good fan. Water cooling pumps and HDDs are the two major contributors.
My HAF 932 was a great case because of its 200mm fans that only ran at ~500RPM but still moved a ton of air. Silverstone tried something similar with their 180mm fans and I see 200mm are starting to make a comeback. I'd love to see 200mm radiators - the surface area on those would be more than even a 140x280 rad.
My desktop is quieter than my ceiling fan.
The loudest thing I ever had to deal with was a mechanical HDD. Now I'm straight SSD.
For the people who just want a quiet, zero-fan web/media box, there are downclocked passive options using notebook parts.
I guess I'm saying that the venn diagram of "people who need a totally silent PC" and "people who need a high-TDP CPU" does not contain an instersecting set. There is literally no market for this any more. NUC-a-likes using laptop parts from Intel's U series and AMD's Banded kestrel Embedded stuff offers Athlon 200GE/Vega 3 performance at 12 Watts. That'll do your non-gamers just fine; Large, fancy heatsink not required.
The way I see it, human hearing has a natural cutoff, so even in an anechoic chamber, some fans are going to be inaudible. We're talking 3-blade fans at 400rpm here. Even though that sounds like a woefully weak fan, it would successfully move air across a low-density heatsink, and it would still move more air across a high density heatsink than convection alone could manage on a low-density heatsink.
What I'm saying is that it's possible to double or triple the cooling performance of any passive cooler whilst still making it actually silent by human hearing standards. Yes, that fan is generating absolute noise, but the sound of your blood flowing through vessels that supply your cochlea is greater, and the vast bulk of the sound waves from such a slow fan are below the frequency that human hearing even functions.
The sole market for which passive cooling is valid is sealed units that have zero airflow inside. If you need to keep flammable gases or vapours away from anything that could potentially spark (like a DC motor or electrical connection) then you can't have fans and you probably can't have an open design that lets cool air in to replace the warm air.