Noctua Announces $150 Flagship NH-D15 G2 CPU Coolers and NF-A14x25r G2 140mm Fans

[freeagent]

It’s the prestige, the quality, and the feeling that you are paying for.

Eagerly awaiting reviews..

 

[JustBenching]

I helpfully highlighted it in bold for your convenience if you want to scroll up.

I never said the D15 G2 was "good value", even if it arguably is, depending on your requirements and how long you keep your hardware.

You're exclusively looking at the "value" argument in a very two dimensional way, then responding to people talking about other angles with more "but value". This is not conducive to good discussion.

If argue it's cheap. I know it sounds silly, but noctua basically spent almost a decade tinkering and fidgeting with the cooler and fans to provide the best possible experience, quality and longevity. That has to be paid. For those that don't care about their fans lasting for 10 years there is thermalright for cheap. Expecting noctua quality with thermalright pricing is not possible.

 

[R0H1T]

Ah yes $50 more for the prestige! Pretty cheap price to pay as compared to anything Nvidia right now

 

[Kn0xxPT]

Honestly, Noctua crown are in the Fans...
buy a Peerless Assassin and slap Noctua fans on it ... mount and forget ...
best of both world ...case close

 

[JustBenching]

Ah yes $50 more for the prestige! Pretty cheap price to pay as compared to anything Nvidia right now

Noctua revised the d15 g2 15 different times (alongside the fans) before releasing the final perfected product. Thermaltight just keeps releasing their "work in progress" coolers. Surely that has to cost something, no?

 

[FoulOnWhite]

The new Noctua D15 G2 released today. Can't wait to see the TPU review of this.

https://noctua.at/en/noctua-release...gship-model-cpu-cooler-and-nf-a14x25r-g2-fans

 

[Dirt Chip]

Noctua products are good for 10+ years and thay also future support you on new sockets that still don't even exist, so factor this when you look at 55$ AIO. Those won't last half of that time, probably will lack on future sockets and have greater chance to damage the system if the cooler itself brake (well, water...).

Also, this is a flagship top end product with a lot of extra small parts (whether you need it or not..) and targets the no-compromise consumer that don't want AIO.

It will be interesting to see how many AIO'o it will outperform

 

[Eliad Buchnik]

Noctua revised the d15 g2 15 different times (alongside the fans) before releasing the final perfected product. Thermaltight just keeps releasing their "work in progress" coolers. Surely that has to cost something, no?

You buy cooler by their performance and price mostly, one can argue for things like looks, build quality, platform longevity, warranty etc. which are fine but they are minor considerations.
Why a consumer should care if company released 10 coolers in the last 4 years or 2 coolers? as long the cooler he wants to buy gives the performance requirement and is priced well, it's what matters.
even if you compare the NH-D15G2 to other premium coolers like Be Quiet! dark rock elite - it's still extremely overpriced. Should the customer pay for the company attempts for "perfection"?
IMO, not at all it's not his job to amortize the company failures. I personally help people daily with builds and hardware recommendations - I seriously doubt I can recommend for anyone that needs a cooler or is building a PC the NH-D15G2 at MSRP of 150$ unless he requests very specific things.

 

[freeagent]

Lol I was just trying to be nice..

 

[JustBenching]

You buy cooler by their performance and price mostly, one can argue for things like looks, build quality, platform longevity, warranty etc. which are fine but they are minor considerations.
Why a consumer should care if company released 10 coolers in the last 4 years or 2 coolers? as long the cooler he wants to buy gives the performance requirement and is priced well, it's what matters.
even if you compare the NH-D15G2 to other premium coolers like Be Quiet! dark rock elite - it's still extremely overpriced. Should the customer pay for the company attempts for "perfection"?
IMO, not at all it's not his job to amortize the company failures. I personally help people daily with builds and hardware recommendations - I seriously doubt I can recommend for anyone that needs a cooler or is building a PC the NH-D15G2 at MSRP of 150$ unless he requests very specific things.

Yes, the customer should pay for the company's attempts for perfection. Who else would? That's the whole point of noctua, delivering a flawless product. Noctua is a company that still provides, free of charge, new kits for 10 or even 20 year old coolers. You can literally grab your noctua cooler from the early 2000, request a mounting bracket (free of charge btw) and use it on your brand new CPU. And chances are the fans on it will still be fully functional.

If you don't want to pay for that, I get it, you don't have to. But there are people that appreciate what's on offer here.

 

[KillSwitx]

The only way i could spend 150 on an aircooler, was to try out the upcoming deepcool with vapor chamber that, by their words, will be 3ºC lower than their current top of the line offering. And even then ... i don't need it ...
These prices are too hard to understand tbh, but in my particular use case.

There will be others that want it due to the brand itself, the small upgrades and just to have a reliable product.

 

[Onasi]

I understand the arguments of people here in this thread who defend the pricing on the grounds of “perfection” and “prestige”. I really do. I just hope that those same people are consistent in their takes and also would never, ever berate NVidias pricing. Or ask why the Zaunkoenig mice cost insane money. Or why high-end headphones are eye-wateringly expensive. You know, small things. After all, being a selective fanboy for a single company just because they have clout would be hypocritical, no?

 

[JustBenching]

I understand the arguments of people here in this thread who defend the pricing on the grounds of “perfection” and “prestige”. I really do. I just hope that those same people are consistent in their takes and also would never, ever berate NVidias pricing. Or ask why the Zaunkoenig mice cost insane money. Or why high-end headphones are eye-wateringly expensive. You know, small things. After all, being a selective fanboy for a single company just because they have clout would be hypocritical, no?

I've never said anything about nvidias pricing but these 2 aren't comparable. Nvidia GPUs aren't particularly high quality. Quite the contrary. Due to the thin margins nvidia imposes on AIBs, their products are really cutting corners. AMD gpus are much better in this regard.

High end headphones, I have hifiman aryas. Not going to complain about those either.

 

[TheDeeGee]

I'm mostly interested in the comment section.

 

[Dirt Chip]

Do note that you pay extra to be entitled to have the 'most expensive, over the shelf, air cooler ever'.

This title don't come free of charge...

 

[Onasi]

Nvidia GPUs aren't particularly high quality.

The GPUs themselves are the best in the business. Full stop, arguing otherwise is silly. The best features and the best ecosystem, if you want things other than “play games” you go to NV.
What you are talking about are cards themselves. And while sure, you can bag on AIBs and NV for those models, FEs are beautifully built cards. Pretty much same feeling of premium as ye old Noctua products.
That’s what I meant that people should be consistent. I have Noctua fans in my rig and a D15S on my CPU. I, however, am not trying to convince anyone that they are good value - they aren’t, and especially not in the current market.

 

[Eliad Buchnik]

Yes, the customer should pay for the company's attempts for perfection. Who else would? That's the whole point of noctua, delivering a flawless product. Noctua is a company that still provides, free of charge, new kits for 10 or even 20 year old coolers. You can literally grab your noctua cooler from the early 2000, request a mounting bracket (free of charge btw) and use it on your brand new CPU. And chances are the fans on it will still be fully functional.

If you don't want to pay for that, I get it, you don't have to. But there are people that appreciate what's on offer here.

Who else ? They should, if they can't financially manage their expanding they should take the L for it. As I said the customer should pay performance, if it took them a lot of money
to get to the point the achieved slightly better performance and as result they have to sell it for such high price, why bother? And yes I'm well aware I can get new mounting hardware for old Noctua coolers, like my old NH-D14, will I want to do that? hello no, it's obsolete at this point and doesn't worth effort for it wont perform well on modern CPUs. In true honesty while their products are very good, and perform quite well they are not "Flawless" or "perfect", if something was perfect - you could not improve it anymore (which is not the case as we see). There are some noctua products that might be worth their price like the fans if they are remarkable and you already building very high end system with expensive water-cooling parts, but for the regular user that wants cooler that performs well - I would strongly suggest looking elsewhere.

 

[R0H1T]

It's a mistake to price out their products for about 50% of the market, & that's a generous number IMO. If Noctua wants to do Rolls Royce they're free to charge whatever they want.

 

[Dristun]

I understand the arguments of people here in this thread who defend the pricing on the grounds of “perfection” and “prestige”. I really do. I just hope that those same people are consistent in their takes and also would never, ever berate NVidias pricing. Or ask why the Zaunkoenig mice cost insane money. Or why high-end headphones are eye-wateringly expensive. You know, small things. After all, being a selective fanboy for a single company just because they have clout would be hypocritical, no?

Yeah, I don't mind any of that. Or expensive clothes, furniture, you name it. There's a premium option for almost anything one could enjoy and if someone wants to throw their cash at it - sure, whatever tickles your pickle!
I would add though, that there are instances where it's absolutely legitimate to berate expensive things. Audeze's headphones literally fall apart with normal usage. JLR's cars had absolutely unholy reliability and their dealers suck at repairing them on time. Noctua's stuff is expensive - but it keeps on trucking and the support is outstanding. And yeah, it's *for the cool kids* who also happen to like brown, sure.

 

[Dirt Chip]

Who else ? They should, if they can't financially manage their expanding they should take the L for it. As I said the customer should pay performance, if it took them a lot of money
to get to the point the achieved slightly better performance and as result they have to sell it for such high price, why bother? And yes I'm well aware I can get new mounting hardware for old Noctua coolers, like my old NH-D14, will I want to do that? hello no, it's obsolete at this point and doesn't worth effort for it wont perform well on modern CPUs. In true honesty while their products are very good, and perform quite well they are not "Flawless" or "perfect", if something was perfect - you could not improve it anymore (which is not the case as we see). There are some noctua products that might be worth their price like the fans if they are remarkable and you already building very high end system with expensive water-cooling parts, but for the regular user that wants cooler that performs well - I would strongly suggest looking elsewhere.

Nop.
The consumer, if he chooses so, pay the bill.
That's very basic.

If it's not worth to you, simply don't pay. Very basic. There's planty of other, very good, choice's out there.

Isn't it?

 

[R0H1T]

That's not exactly how you have to recoup or recover your margins ~ sell directly, why go through Amazon, Newegg, BestBuy or eBay? That's at least 10-20% gross margins right there!

Not saying they should close that avenue completely but there are other places where they can sell more/charge less albeit probably with a lot more to do at their end.

 

[freeagent]

The only thing I can smack talk right now is that there is 3 of them, each having a different task.

8x 6mm pipes reminds me of the old Archon. I would have been more impressed with 8mm pipes and a refined cold plate to match it. Ahh well. I guess we shall see how it does soon enough.

 

[unwind-protect]

I would have been willing to pay that during my overclocking days.

But today you can't squeeze anything significant out of CPUs, so what's the point?

 

[Franzen4Real]

I am wondering if a portion of the higher price is from losing some economy of scale due to the tooling and manufacturing costs of offering three different base plate versions.

 

[The Terrible Puddle]

I think people are forgetting how silent this is going to be?

Even the fans themselves are quite expensive with LCP blades.