Noctua Announces Its First Fanless CPU Cooler Called NH-P1

Passive CPU coolers aren’t exactly flying off the shelves these days and even if you were looking for such a thing, you wouldn’t have many options to choose from. Fortunately, Noctua — one of the most beloved and revered hardware manufacturers — has decided to enter the fray and offer buyers the mother of all passive coolers: NH-P1!

Now, the reasoning behind passive coolers is quite simple: there are many folks out there who abhor any sort of fan noise. Now, under heavy load some amount of noise is pretty much inevitable, but the more we can subdue it the better. So far there has only been one truly mainstream passive option from ARCTIC, but it was never geared towards power users i e. those who had beastly CPUs — the ones that needed the most cooling.

Enter the NH-P1 from Noctua.

Noctua NH-P1 | A Heatsink to Rule Them All

This massive cooler will be Noctua’s very first forray into this highly specific segment of the market and, needless to say, we’re wondering what took them so long in the first place! A prototype of the NH-P1 was first revealed back at Computex 2019, but numerous design changes had to be implemented which pushed the release date quite a bit. Then, as we all know, the pandemic came out of nowhere and complicated things even further (to say the least).

Now, though, thanks to a leaked listing on Newegg, we know that Noctua is prepping its NH-P1 for launch and that it’s bound to see the light of day in a matter of weeks! With six humongous heat pipes and enough clearance for your RAM modules, the NH-P1 seems to be the perfect option for those looking to build a wholly silent build.

Noctua is touting 100% RAM compatibility on AMD’s AM4 and Intel’s LGA1200/115x sockets, along with future AM5 and LGA 1700 support through free upgrade kits. Based on the list of supported CPUs, it seems that the NH-P1 will support up to 300W of TDP which, in all fairness is quite impressive. This means that it’ll be well-equipped to handle some of the most powerful processors on the market — and it’ll do so without any noise whatsoever.

You can, in fact, attach a “virtually inaudible” NF-A12x25 LS-PWM fan to lower the temperature of this imposing heatsink, just in case you’re sporting some of AMD’s most core-heavy processors.

The best part? It’ll retail for just $100.

Now, this MSRP cannot exactly be considered as a “steal” but given just how effective the NH-P1 is touted to be, it’s definitely an acceptable price tag. Moreover, Noctua’s products have always been top-of-the-line, so getting their craftsmanship and support (both of which are second-to-none) for a hundred dollars is quite palatable!

Passive coolers aren’t exactly the rage these days, but they’re nonetheless fairly sought-after and have risen in popularity over the years. Now if only we could get a passively cooled graphics card that’s more powerful than Palit’s GTX 1650 — that would truly be a dream come true!