Test: New and promising performance by innovative Noise Limit CPU cooler

Noise Limit SilentFlux ATX

Noise Limit is interesting for many reasons. Firstly, the company offers a brand new and patented technology that, after what I've seen in this test, could easily knock heat pipes off their throne in the cooler market.

Just as interesting is the fact that the SilentFlux technology, the name that Noise Limit has chosen for its patented solution, seems to work really well despite its light weight and compact cooler design. Hello HTPC!

Lastly, we are talking about a Danish company. And it is fun to cheer on this national manufacturer in the race towards keeping the temperature and noise levels down in our mini power plants.

I hope this teaser hasn't given too much away, but I'd rather whet your appetite than lose your interest merely because the cooler I'm referring to is neither a Zalman nor a Scythe.

Noise Limit is probably unknown to most people but, nonetheless, AMD has seen potential in their ideas and has started a partnership to cool its digital home media center, which among others is being sold through Alienware.

The company was started by a couple of guys from Zealand 3 ½ years ago from an idea that has formed the basis of their patent and their company. One of these guys is Henrik Olsen, or HeO as many users probably remember as the man who started Overclocking.dk, which today is an integrated part of HWT.dk (this Danish hardware test Web site).

However, I won't let this color my judgment of the product, and I must stress that today Henrik Olsen is in NO way involved in HWT.dk, other than perhaps as a regular user himself, which at this moment, I'm not even sure of.

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The Contents of the Package

Noise Limit SilentFlux ATX

Cooler paste from Akasa 455 in a tube

Installation guide

I received the cooler with the mounting kit for socket 775, but the final version will include mounting kits for both K8 and socket 775.

The cooler has a rough finish, as it is primarily built for use inside OEM machines. But the focus will undoubtedly shift to the look of the product once Noise Limit has proved that its technology works and then they can concentrate on a visually more sexy product in future retail versions.

The same cooler can also be used as a passive solution, however here the cooler is only recommended on the lesser power consuming processers, for example, AMD 64 and the X2 series, as well as the Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo models. Passively, we are talking about a weight of only around 200g!

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Specifications

The cooler is RoHS compliant, which means that there are no heavy metals present in the product. The RoHS certification is not unusual, but it can be difficult to get through and requires many hours to become familiar with the process, so it is commendable that the product already has a RoHS certification when the company is still in its early stages.

Aside from that, the specifications speak for themselves.

Some companies have a lenient approach to dB(A) measurements, but Noise Limit's dedication to noiseless products gives me hope that they will have a good approach to this aspect of the specifications. However, I still insist that anything under 20 dB(A) more or less doesn't "exist", unless we are talking about passive solutions.