That's for the individual user to decide.
Again, that's for the user to decide.
No, it's designed for massive cooling capacity with passive cooling as a focus, but not exclusive focus.
That statement contradicts known science about propelled airflow dynamics.
Part of the flaw in your postulation is that you assume there is not a great deal of surface area to radiate heat from. Simply looking at the heatsink in question conclusively answers that question.
... sigh. I mean, are you on a bad-faith arguing bender these past weeks? It's obviously for the user to decide. It's for the user to decide if they want to use their TG-covered case as an actual aquarium too. What is possible and what works well are not the same. Saying that isn't an argument for anything at all, which I really expected you to recognize yourself.
And it is designed for massive
passive or semi-passive cooling. It launched alongside a low-rpm, semi-passive version of the NF-A12x25, that stops entirely at 0% pwm. That's what it's meant to be paired with. Will it work with any other fan? Of course. Will it benefit much from a much faster fan? Probably not all that much. Noctua's materials covering it go into great detail on its capabilities in terms of cooling, and they are plenty clear on it
not being able to handle high heat loads and massive boost clocks. For example, they say it's compatible passive with an 11900K -
as long as you're fine with it throttling a bit (below base clock). Their compatibility chart lists it as 1/3 in terms of handling boost clocks for the 11900K when paired with the NF-A12x25 LS-PWM - i.e. that it can handle it, but not its full boost over time, and definitely not overclocked. Passively it will throttle. They go into great detail on which CPUs and APUs they recommend for it, most of which are low(ish) power - because that's the most reasonable use case. On the same scale, the NH-D15 is listed as 3/3 boost handling on every supported CPU. Despite it being 200g lighter without the fans. So, more mass doesn't help you unless you also have the surface area to go with it. To dissipate heat efficiently, you need as much surface area as possible. This cooler is explicitly designed with
less surface area through having fewer fins, which is beneficial for passive cooling but
detrimental to active cooling, as fans would easily overcome the flow impedance from twice as many fins.
So: why do common air coolers benefit a lot from better fans? Because they are dense and restrictive, and need the fans to overcome that restriction to create flow. That's also why more fans are better, as their pressure adds up, while flow velocity does not (unless restricted). The only significant increase in airflow seen from going from one fan to two stems from those fans better overcoming the flow restriction inherent to the system. Which means that for a low restriction system, the benefit from two fans will be far less than in a high restriction system.
And yes, I assume there isn't a lot of surface area. Why?
Because the cooler has thirteen fins. Thirteen. Count them! The D15 on the other hand has 45 fins per tower. Yes, those fins are far, far smaller, but there are nearly seven times as many of them, meaning in sum it has more surface area. Likely quite a lot more. But it's a poor passive cooler due to those fins being stacked tightly. I mean, this really shouldn't be difficult to understand. I never said the NH-P1 didn't have a decent surface area. If it didn't, it wouldn't work at all. But it doesn't have the combination of surface area and flow restriction that benefits from more forced airflow.
