Noctua’s roadmap, 10/2022
Noctua has announced a new release schedule for its products. And within it, the main question was this – Did the new generation of 140mm fans stay in the fourth quarter of 2022? It did. Given the more advanced time (towards the end of the year), it is thus likely that 140mm fans made from improved LCP from sterrox are right around the corner. Noctua also needs them for the successor to the NH-D15 cooler, which is due out just after them.
New plan, old dates. Noctua’s most anticipated products remained on the October roadmap as they were on the previous one (from July). For Q4/2022, Noctua has symbolically added already released stuff with the “NA-TPG1”, i.e. a set of cleaning wipes with this guard (NA-STPG1) and its combination with NT-H1 or NT-H2 thermal pastes. This is something that Noctua has responded to operationally according to the relatively new situation around the Ryzen 7000 processors and the AMD AM5 platform in general.
Preparations for the new generation of 140 mm fans are taking much longer. From time to time we check in from Noctua to see what the status is, and it’s a safe bet that they are imminent. Still, there is still a question mark hanging over whether or not they will roll over into next year. It doesn’t change the fact that even at this point Noctua sees them being released by the end of the year. It wants to make it in time, but we have information that nothing can be guaranteed.
This year’s release may eventually fail due to Noctua simply not being able to produce in the quantities they deem sufficient in the time required. Although the technological development is already complete, a limited amount to shortage of raw materials and a deteriorated situation around production capacities compared to the past also enter the chain. Nevertheless, the vision to make it to the end of December is still there. These fans will probably be subsequently used on the new twin-tower cooler, which will outperform the NH-D15.
So there is pressure from several sides. For the most successful sales, Noctua definitely wants to intervene in the choice of cooler for the most powerful Ryzen 7000 processors (Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X) and Core i9 Raptor Lake. The Core i9-13900K in particular will probably be a tough nut to crack for all current tower coolers, and also for the vast majority of AIO liquid solutions.
In Q1/2023 Noctua is also planning a variant of the NH-L9a cooler for the AMD AM5 platform (NH-L9a AM4 is on the unsupported list, as it installs via a custom backplate that clashes with the built-in one on AM5 boards). Grilles, which were announced for an earlier period but postponed due to design flaws found in the prototypes, could also be released around the same time. We do not know exactly what the flaws were. The schedule of other Noctua products can be found in the table above. There will be an 8-channel fan hub, a voltage regulator from 24 V to 12 C, a new generation of coolers for Intel Xeon processors, but there will also be small 40–60mm fans or white variants of larger fans, for example. These have also been worked on extensively over a long period of time, presumably so that after changing colour/composition we don’t see similar deterioration as with the Corsair AF120 fans.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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- Noctua’s roadmap, 10/2022