For years, Noctua built its reputation on massive beige air coolers and fans that somehow kept embarrassing flashy liquid cooling setups in both noise and thermal performance. At Computex 2026, the Austrian company has finally decided it is the best time to grab a piece of that market cake.
The company used this year’s show to reveal its first proper all-in-one liquid coolers, called the NL-LC1 series. The coolers are built around Asetek’s latest Emma V2 platform, but, as expected from a company like Noctua, this is a heavily modified design with Noctua’s own fans, acoustic tuning, and mounting system. In other words, it is trying to make an AIO that behaves like a Noctua product instead of another one of those AiO coolers on the market that solely rely on Asetek’s design.
Noctua spent a lot of time talking about noise reduction. The pump uses additional dampening layers and vibration isolation designed to cut down the annoying humming that many AIO coolers still suffer from. The new Noctua NL-CL1 series will be available in 240, 360, and 420 mm versions.
While the NL-CL1 series is an actual product, the star of the show was definitely Noctua’s updated thermosiphon cooling prototype. The system works without a traditional pump, using liquid evaporation and condensation to move heat through the loop naturally. It still looks experimental, but the latest version appears much closer to becoming a real product than the demos we saw at earlier shows.
The company also introduced a new thermal pad developed together with Carbice. Instead of thermal paste, the pad uses carbon nanotube material designed to last longer and avoid the usual mess that comes with repasting CPUs. The first version targets AMD’s AM4 and AM5 platforms.
Noctua also had something new for workstation users, showing off a next-generation line of large CPU coolers aimed at upcoming AMD Threadripper platforms as well as Intel’s LGA4710 and LGA4677 sockets. Support for AMD sTR5, TR4, and SP3 is included too, with the company already preparing compatibility for future workstation platforms. The new coolers ditch the older layout in favor of a redesigned dual-tower heatsink with seven heatpipes and a front-to-back airflow setup better suited for modern workstation motherboards with horizontal socket placement. Noctua paired the design with its latest NF-A14x25r G2 and NF-A12x25 G2 fans, promising higher cooling capacity without giving up the low-noise operation the company is known for. These workstation coolers are still some way off, with Noctua currently targeting a Q2 2027 launch window.
Outside of cooling, Noctua also had several unusual collaborations on display. One of them was a gaming mouse fitted with a tiny cooling fan, a new version of the Seasonic PRIME TX-1600 power supply with Noctua’s brown-and-beige color scheme that should come in Q2 2027, Thermal Grizzly Wire View Pro II Noctua Edition, and even a 140mm desk fan.
Overall, Noctua’s Computex presence felt different this year, and in a good way. The company is clearly moving beyond its traditional air-cooling comfort zone and experimenting with new categories, especially as modern CPUs continue getting hotter and AI-focused workloads put even more pressure on thermals.
The first NL-LC1 liquid coolers are expected to launch later this year, while some of the more experimental designs are still works in progress.
