Nofan is no more: South Korean passive CPU-cooler manufacturer is history, which once was famous for bringing the legendary massive Modell CR-100A
fanlesstech.com/2020/08/nofan-is-no-more.htmlPosted Aug 4, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC
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Better fan bearings, better fan motors that produce less vibration and more efficient blade designs has pretty effectively killed the passive cooling market for higher (>15w) wattage desktop parts
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No it's not. Fanless systems don't compete with fan systems.
Fanless systems a requirement for situations that require not having maintenance or that have bad air, that's why they are so popular in factories.
If anything fanless systems have been gaining in popularity as they are starting to come down in price and up in availability for the consumer market. The one in this article was just a poor product.
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I think these machines have heatsinks outside of the case. NoFan still requires some sort of air circulation inside the case. Totally different animals
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More expensive/Higher power ones have the heatsinks on the outside of the case. Cheaper/lower power ones have the heatsinks in the case. I think inside the case is much more common, just because more cheaper systems are normally needed. Embedded solutions frequently have a cpu cooler without a fan while the case might have a fan.
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I should have specified that I was talking about the DIY consumer market.
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Yeah, I have 4 NF-A12x25s and unless the rest of the room is completely silent I can barely hear it at idle.
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Even Noctua is working on a fanless solution so I wouldn't call it dead yet. Extremely niche? Oh yeah, for sure.
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So, they made a mini washing machine tub and used it as a CPU cooler. Very interesting.
Edit: Technically that makes it a clothes dryer then. Could definitely be used to quickly dry underwear or something if it could spin.
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I want to see this build HAHA
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The comparison isn't that far off.
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No I mean I want someone to attach a spinning drum to like one of these cooling some Intel monster during stress test and dry clothes. Haha.
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Gasp What if the heatsink is the fan?
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Zalman's probably going to absorb them in some capacity. they're apparently in new management.
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Source?
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I think the improvement to fans killed it. Back then, all fans made a decent amount of noise.
Nowadays you could run a Noctua at low or even medium speed, and hear virtually nothing while having a ton more cooling performance than without the fan.
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Noctua has a silent fanless cooler on its road map for up to 120w chips truly fanless, and 180w with case fans only.
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I think the improvement to fans killed it. Back then, all fans made a decent amount of noise.
C'mon, it was Nofan after all. They were fanless for a reason.
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Yeah. If suddenly gas cars could get 10x more efficient, I think no one would be buying Teslas.
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That and low tdp of modern chips
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I doubt the lower TDP is what killed them, if anything it would have made their no fan designs more useful since even with their size and bulk they were really struggling to cope with the heat of the high-end performance chips.
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What low TDP? CPUs are pushing the limits with turbo clocks. Especially Intel, but even 65W AMD CPUs can be hard to cool passively, because of increased heat density.
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Of course it had to be South Korea to make a fanless cooling device like this.
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Well yeah. Fan death is a scary thing in South Korea. You've got to limit your fans.
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South Korean Government should intervene and save this company. Lives are at stake /s
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All we need is Delta to buy them and the ritual is complete.
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You mean, Delta acting as some cooling for finally making some noise after it has quite silent around Nofan?
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I'm not sure where the article is getting its information from, because as of right now NOFAN's website is still up. They aren't operating right now (summer vacation, closed from 8/1 to 8/5), but there's no sign of them being closed.
Their products are still being sold in Korean markets (both officially by nofan and by a third party), although the purchase links on the official website are broken.
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Hu?!
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When you do go fanless, you still can hear whine and buzz of the components unless they're in a case that lends itself to sound proofing... which usually means there's no airflow because the air is stagnant in there.
I find that quiet fans are quieter than no fans at all as a result.
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Yup, after all it better be quiet!
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Sad, didn't use their products but I love fanless coolers. Noise is one of the things I loathe in builds.
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Noise is one of the things I loathe in builds.
Me too, after all it better just be quiet!
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I guess there will be, nofan(s) coming out of them anymore
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Yeah, I can see that now. It has become quite silent around them …
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I dont see the point of fanless. even a fan set at low rpm that you cant hear massively change the performance
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I was no fan of this product
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You meant Nofan, right?
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I have to say, I was as much of a fan of this thing as it was.
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Take you upvote, chap!
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The 0db people
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It never ends. Reduce the noise floor and suddenly you can hear your GPU whine and your SSD screech. (If you stick your head up against it. Which is what the silent PC people do.)
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Shhhhh... what's that sound
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rowdy electrons migrating between the 3D NAND layers.
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You're not wrong, but there is (was) a market for people who want absolute minimum noise from their PC.
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People who fear Fan Death.
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but it would take away space for you to put the graphics card in the first slot. That's horrendous
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Sad but true. So, Nofan in the end …
Had that very CR-100A, it was a masterpiece and could cool even the most hot-headed rebels, loved that bulky and still well-crafted piece dearly! Their closing is quite sad, if you ask me.
Only manufacturer which had fan-less coolers by principle – and superb ones!
Edith says I forgot to give well-deserved thanks to the anonymous noble-hearted Redditor for the award! So thanks muchly for awarding some everyday's submission here, as I overlooked it over the mess my inbox now represents … Thank you, generous Redditor! ツ
What I've read is that it could not actually cool its claimed TDP loads.
It couldn't at all, but it's a cult classic at this point so people will remember it fondly.
Most coolers, fanless or not, cannot properly cool their claimed TDP loads!
One site did an rather thorough experiment to test the effectiveness of fan versus fanless PC's. The experiment used a completely fanless PC--CPU, GPU (upper lower ranged, I think it was a 1050Ti at the time), and even the power supply. What they did was they did was first run the computer on load with no fans running and took the readings. They would then run the fans at ten percent--record the temps. Twenty percent, log the temps, and so on and so forth. They would also change the number of fans, and swap the processor for ones with either higher or lower TDP's.
What they found was that completely fanless PC's actually get pretty toasty--still within acceptable ranges, but probably doesn't bode will for some of the more temperature-sensitive parts in the long run. But, even just having one fan at a low speed made all the difference from ventilating the warm air, with swift diminishing returns the more fans you have or at a faster speed. They also found that while mid-range PC's really excel when they're built for the purpose of being completely fanless, throwing a CPU with a higher TDP caused that thing to cook.
When you think about this critically, none of this should really be surprising. Place a laptop on the carpet--technically that's fanless? What about when the fan happens to fail on a oversized heatsink cooler--who knows how long you were running your computer with no CPU fan? Both examples of size and ventilation being factors
Edit: On a personal note, I used to fantasize about doing a completely fan-less build--even if it was just for the sake of being able to call it fan-less, until I read that article. Whether its mentioned in the article, or I simply came to my own conclusion, there's little-to-no reason why you can't do a semi-passive build, or even just leave the fans at a low speed, since the tonal changes in sound due to the changes in speed is more disruptive than just keeping them at fixed low speed. And for that matter, any sound you are able to hear is usually drowned out by ambient noise anyways, in the absence of an Anechoic chamber (I just learned a new term!).
I totally agree. I think if you're going fanless, you should really go all-in (e.g. https://www.quietpcusa.com/Streacom-DB4-Fanless-Chassis)
Had a fanless during 950. The psu was very loud, though.
You're completely right in that even one fan for case ventilation can make an all passive cooling build viable. This might seem trivial (just get a regular fan build and run the fans low!) ... But the difference is that you can use a single 200mm fan to do that job, at very low rpms. The large fan is crucial to be able to have good airflow while being completely inaudible.
But how many can't cool stock mid-range processors? One of the differences is you can at least increase the RPM to compensate, or get a larger fan and not add noise. If you're fanless, that's it. Unless you just go fully open and/or hire the neighbor's daughter to fan your heatsink with palm fronds(which technically violates the fanless design).
I always wonder where those ratings come from.
With the exception of heat pipes “drying out” (or I guess a water cooler boiling) other cooler designs don’t suddenly lose effectiveness at a particular power level. If you put more heat into them they’ll dissipate that heat, it will just mean a higher temperature at the CPU side, but it won’t suddenly skyrocket.
So, whether it keeps the CPU cool enough at a certain power level depends on how well that CPU dumps heat into the heat sink (TIM and lid design, die size) and how hot it can safely get. It doesn’t help that CPUs with the same TDP rating use drastically different amounts of power in actual use.
I wish they weren’t so “optimistic” with their arbitrary numbers but it’s not possible for them to give one number that accurately represents whether it will work well, based on the TDP of various CPUs you might use it with.
CPU TDP are averages, cooling is for peak/bursts :')
It was hugely dependent on ambient airflow and orientation.
This review here says other wise though.
HardwareLuxx said back then about the CR95C (Kurztest: NoFan CR-95C – Luxus-Passivkühler);
Translated:
Keep in mind, the CR-950A couldn't be considered matching the CR-100A.
Then again, it wasn't reviewed that often.
To be fair, it had nofan though.