Back at Computex earlier this year, Noctua showed off its upcoming Seasonic-partnered power supply. Featuring all the "shhhh" engineering might Noctua can throw at it, the Seasonic Prime TX-1600 Noctua Edition PSU is now officially set to launch before the year's out.
According to a Noctua product roadmap (via Overclock3d), the Seasonic-Noctua wombo combo should hit the shelves in Q4 2024, and I'm certainly here for it. In short, it should make for a very quiet but still incredibly powerful power supply.
As cool as it will surely be (both literally and figuratively), there's heated disagreement in the virtual halls of PC Gamer's hardware department over its aesthetics. Listen, I love Noctua's cream-and-brown styling, but I don't think it goes quite so well with, well, plain old black metal. (Isn't it fashion rule number one that brown and black don't mix?) That's just me, though, so I'll keep schtum.
What's more important is that this should make for a gloriously quiet power supply. When our (other, better-dressed) Jacob visited Computex back in June, he was told the PSU should run 8-10 dB quieter than the standard Seasonic Prime TX-1600, this achieved in part by preventing the fan blades from ever being parallel to the grill struts.
The Prime TX-1600 runs fanless at up to 50% load, so it's only when game frames start churning that it should spin up. But when it does, don't you want it to do so in nice and unobstructive way? Don't you want that sensual Noctua whisper to soothe you into your late-night sessions?
Noctua's on a roll right now because it also recently introduced its next-gen 140 mm fan, the NF-A14x25 G2. This will succeed the stellar the stellar NF-A14 and NF-A12x25, the latter being our current pick for the best PC fan on the market.
We might, therefore, soon have enough to fully deck our rigs with silent-as-can-be Noctua gear, which would be lovely. This might not be too expensive, either, given we were told the Noctua Edition of this PSU should only be around $30 more than the standard edition. And with 1600 watts behind you, I doubt you'd be needing to upgrade it for quite some time. Noctua sure knows how to pick 'em!
