Latest news with #Noctua
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
This Gaming Mouse Has the Cure for Your Sweaty Palms
The Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition mouse comes with an actual Noctua fan inside it, and should keep your hands nice and cool when gaming during summer. The mouse is based on the Pulsar Feinman 01 ultralight gaming mouse, features a body made of magnesium, support for 8,000Hz polling, and a super-comfy ergonomic shape. While the Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition looks like the mouse for summer gaming, it will most likely cost north of $200, which is its biggest drawback. As someone who sweats profusely during the summer, the latest collaboration between Noctua and Pulsar piqued my attention. The Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition mouse features a lightweight magnesium body with a Noctua cooler inside it, and looks like the ultimate gaming mouse for summer gaming. If you're looking at this mouse and thinking 'this is a gimmick and nothing else,' I have to say that I respectfully disagree. As someone who owned the legendary Logitech Chillstream gaming controller, I can vouch that the Noctua fan inside the mouse is anything but a gimmick. I got the Logitech Chillstream back in 2007. Almost 20 years later, the Chillstream is still my favorite gaming controller ever, thanks to its unique design that includes a cooling fan at the bottom along with a bunch of vents dotting the shell and letting the cold air blow all around your hands. And the thing worked. It was very effective during summer days, especially because I didn't get air conditioning in my house until a couple of years later. All those sticky summer gaming sessions playing Race Driver: GRID, Colin McRae: DiRT, NFS: Carbon, NFS: ProStreet, and a bunch of Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA were much more pleasant thanks to the tiny fan making my hands as dry as a desert. The Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition should be even better at keeping your palm cool and dry while gaming. It features a proper Noctua (NF-A4x10 PWM) fan with excellent airflow, and the mouse's shell is chock-full of holes for air to move around, meaning your right hand will be as cool as ice. Now, this is just a prototype, so I wouldn't be surprised if Noctua made some changes to the fan before the release—shedding some weight off it and making it thinner, for instance. But still, the fan should blow tons of air right at your hand, keeping it nice and cool during sweaty moments in your favorite multiplayer shooters. The Feinman F01 mouse is a high-end ultralight gaming mouse with a shell made of a magnesium alloy, which allows it to weigh only 46 grams. Its design is based on the Pulsar Xlite V3 mouse, which I actually own. I can say that the Xlite V3 is super comfy and the best gaming mouse I've ever used. It's so good I often use it during work hours instead of my Logitech MX Master 3S. The Feinman F01 provides the same comfort level as the Xlite V3, along with excellent optical switches and side buttons. The Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition should be even better thanks to the Noctua cooling fan found inside it, preventing your right hand from sweating and losing grip when it's hot outside—and inside. The only major disadvantage of the Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition over the regular Pulsar Feinman F01 is its increased weight. I couldn't find how much an individual NF-A4x10 fan weighs, but according to Noctua, a box of 36 units weighs 160 grams, including packaging. So we're looking at about 4 grams of extra weight added to the mouse, which comes down to about 50 grams in total (the Feinman F01 weighs 46 grams), which is great even for an ultralight gaming mouse. As for the level of noise the fan emits, I have good news. According to tests, the tiny NF-A4x10 fan doesn't go above 21dBA at its max RPM (rotations per minute), which is inaudible for all intents and purposes. In other words, you shouldn't hear it working even at its max speed of ~4500RPM. I'd snag this mouse in a jiffy, but I'm doubtful that it will be very affordable. Thanks to its 240mAh battery, the regular Feinman F01 offers about 60 hours of battery life at the 1000Hz polling rate. This is an excellent result for an ultralight mouse, but the addition of a fan, even one as tiny as the Noctua NF-A4x10, which uses only ~0.3W, will negatively affect the battery life. My Pulsar Xlite V3 is rated at 300mA at 5V, which equals a maximum wattage of 1.5W. In other words, adding the Noctua NF-A4x10 fan should lead to about 20% shorter battery life, or about 48 hours of battery life at 1,000Hz polling, which isn't too shabby. On the other hand, if you decide to turn the polling rate up to 8,000Hz, the max polling rate supported by the Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition, the battery life will be atrocious even without the fan, so you'll have to charge it every night either way. The second issue here is the price. The Feinman F01 is already one of the priciest gaming mice on the market, selling for $180. Add a high-end Noctua fan and account for R&D that went into creating the Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition, and I wouldn't be surprised if the thing ends up costing north of $200. Super expensive, but if you want your hands to be dry when gaming during summer, no price is too high, right? Right? Another subjective downside is the design. As expected, the mouse boasts the classic Noctua color scheme, which I find a bit off-putting. On the other hand, if it can keep my right hand dry when gaming during the summer months, I don't care about its color. The Pulsar x Feinman Noctua Edition should release in November 2025. While it may cost as much as a budget gaming GPU, I always like seeing something that breaks the mold. The recent push to make gaming mice as lightweight as possible is cool and all, but adding a cooling fan to a mouse is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction. I hope other mouse brands follow suit, and we get to pick between a few different gaming mice equipped with active cooling that don't cost an arm and a leg sooner or later.
Engadget
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
This gaming mouse has a tiny fan inside to keep sweaty palms at bay
Pulsar's latest competitive gaming mouse will literally help you keep your cool during intense matches. The gaming gear company joined forces with Noctua, known for its quiet fans in its signature earthy-brown tones, for a remix of its lightweight Feinmann mouse. The two brands wanted a solution for gamers whose hands get especially sweaty, leading them to jam a 4x4 cm Noctua fan inside a Pulsar mouse. It's not the first time we've seen a computer fan inside a gaming mouse, but it will be the first one to house Noctua's premium fans that keep noise to a minimum. Looking at the updated Feinmann mouse's design, it's a match made in heaven. Pulsar's mouse already has large gaps in its shell to make for a lightweight build, but also a perfect opening for Noctua to squeeze its fans inside. Buying this mouse won't magically boost you to Radiant in Valorant , but it won't be sweaty hands holding you back. Don't forget this is a mouse made for competitive gaming, so it will share the specs from the original Feinmann that has a 32,00 DPI sensor and an ultra-fast 8,000 Hz polling rate. Considering the extra element, the Noctua collaboration will be heavier than the original at 65 grams and have a battery life of 10 to 11 hours, according to Pulsar. The mouse is still a prototype that was available to demo at Computex 2025, but it's expected to hit the market later this year. With the Feinmann retailing for $179.95, don't be surprised if the Noctua collab is more expensive than that.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Yahoo
This adorable Noctua cooler completely transformed my gaming PC
About a year ago, I challenged myself. I wanted to know how small I could make a PC while packing in the highest-end gaming hardware money can buy, and that's sent me on a bit of a journey. I've made tweaks here and there, swapped out hardware, and endlessly fiddled with my fan curves. But finally, after many months and lot of money down the drain, it feels like my PC has reached its final form. And it all happened because I invested about $60 in a tiny Noctua cooler that's completely changed my relationship with my small form factor (SFF) PC. OK, enough preamble. This mystery Noctua cooler is the NH-L9x65. It's available in both Noctua's color option, as well as silver with one of Noctua's iconic beige and brown fans. I chose the latter because I love the look — we exist — but it's what this cooler has going on under the hood that stands out. It's a low-profile cooler, clocking in at just 65mm tall, and that's a requirement given that my PC is built inside of a Fractal Terra mini-ITX case — the best mini-ITX case you can buy, thank you very much. I wasn't able to use a cooler this tall previously, as I tried cramming in an RTX 4090 and was only left with about 55mm of clearance for a CPU cooler. But a lot has changed since then. Notably, Nvidia released the RTX 5090. This is a proper two-slot graphics card — at least for the Founder's Edition model — freeing up a ton of extra space for a CPU cooler. Previously, I was using an ID-Cooling IS-55, which was just barely enough to keep the Ryzen 7 9700X in my PC cool. Jumping from the RTX 4090 to the RTX 5090 opened up more room, allowing me to get a taller cooler, and in turn, pack in a more powerful CPU (more on that in a moment). The NH-L9x65 is a taller cooler, but it's not a bigger cooler, and that's why I love it so much. Instead of a standard 120mm fan, the NH-L9x65 uses one of Noctua's slim 92mm NF-A9x14 fans. If you've worked with mini-ITX motherboards before, you know that's a big deal. With Noctua's cooler, I don't have to fight with my case or the heatsinks built onto the motherboard, and that made properly installing it a breeze. Due to how small mini-ITX motherboards are, you're given a limited footprint for a cooler. In the case of something like the IS-55 I was using previously, the cooler actually had a portion of the heatsink clipped out to make room either for the RAM or the motherboard's heatsinks. Not a problem on the L9x65. The cooler doesn't protrude too far beyond the CPU socket, making the installation far easier. The difference-maker is the performance, however. The NH-L9x65, despite its petite size, is one hell of a CPU cooler, and it's completely changed my SFF rig. I settled for the Ryzen 7 9700X in the previous iteration of my PC. I intended to use the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but given the space and cooler constraints, I decided to ditch the 3D V-Cache chip for a standard 8-core offering. The NH-L9x65 made AMD's best gaming CPU a possibility, though, and the performance has been fantastic. Here's a taste. Below, you can see my temperatures with Noctua's cooler, and the results are great. For a small form factor PC with a high-end gaming CPU known to run hot, I'll take idle temperatures under 50 degrees Celsius. And although the temperature ramped up with an all-core Cinebench R24 load, it's still well within safe operating temperatures. The chip also maintained its maximum boost clock of 5.2GHz across all cores during the run, which is mighty impressive. Idle (30 minutes on Windows desktop) 44.1 degrees Celsius Daily use (10 Chrome tabs, Discord, and Steam) 63.8 degrees Celsius Cinebench R24 all-core 86.7 degrees Celsius These might seem a little warm if you're accustomed to a full-sized desktop, but for a case as tiny as the Fractal Terra — and packing some power-hungry hardware — this is exceptional performance. I've seen the CPU break 90 degrees before, but only for a brief moment, and while I'm playing games, it rarely goes above 70 degrees. Temperatures are great, but given the size of the NH-L9x65, I assumed it would make trade-offs in noise. This is a 92mm fan, after all, and the smaller you go on the fan, the more loud and annoying the whine is when the fan ramps up. But no. The NH-L9x65 is cool, but it's also remarkably quiet given the hardware it has to cool. 0% fan speed 42.2 decibels 50% fan speed 45.2 decibels 100% fan speed 59.1 decibels Decibel measurements need a bit of context. On a noise scale, 40 decibels is considered the average noise inside a house, so my measurement at 0% fan speed represents the ambient noise in my office. Even ramping up to 50% fan speed, the noise is barely audible over the sound of a normal room. For my use, the fan speed hovers between 50% and 70% while I'm working with a dozen or so Chrome tabs open, as well as Discord and Steam running in the background. In practical use, that means I barely hear my PC while I'm working. That's great. When you push the fan hard — and it will get pushed hard while playing games — the noise ramps up quite a bit. Still, 59.1 decibels isn't bad. On the decibel scale, this would be just below the noise of a normal conversation (no shouting) and just above the idle hum of a refrigerator. Basically, it doesn't sound like a jet engine, even when the fan speed is spinning at its maximum RPM and the cores are fully loaded. I'll take that any day of the week. In my previous build, I was constantly fighting noise and temperatures, regardless of how much I tweaked my fan curve, and while using a weaker CPU. Now, I'm able to get better performance without worrying that my PC is going to take flight with how fast the fan is spinning. And that largely comes down to spending $60 on a new CPU cooler. Buy at Amazon
