Noctua's making $10 screwdrivers, and yep, they're brown

(Image credit: Noctua)

When it comes to the king of PC fans, Noctua has worn its brown crown proudly. The brand is known for PC fans that do a great job of keeping your rig nice and cool while still being as quiet and long-lasting as possible. That's what makes the Noctua NF-S12B redux-1200 our favourite fan to grace a PC case. Noctua is also known for the colour brown, with basically everything they make bearing the palette of a 1970s car interior, and the new screwdrivers are no different.

When Noctua makes inlet spacers, GPUs, or just about anything else you, can bet that it comes in a nice two-tone shade of brown and browner. It's a trend that many have mocked the brand for, but has become a badge of honour and a sign of quality products. Hopefully that bodes well for the new Noctua-branded tools.

The first in the pair is the Noctua NM-SD1 Torx T20 screwdriver, which comes with its handle in a lovely shade of brown and what is either darker brown, or possibly black. This one is designed specifically to be used with the Noctua CPU coolers that use the SecuFirm2+ mounting system. This makes it a bit of a niche case, but it makes sense to have a purpose-built that'll match whatever it's installing.

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The Noctua NM-SD2 covets a larger audience with a Phillips PH2 screwdriver head. The listing states it's for Noctua heatsinks, but it should work with heaps of different PC parts, and likely other jobs around the house. Due to its higher versatility, it's also no surprise that this one is currently listed as sold out on the Amazon store.

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Both of these look like solid screwdrivers though, having long 150mm shafts for all those hard to reach places deep inside your PC case. They also have magnetic tips, which are great for holding the screws. They let you reach further into the case, without needing the other hand there just holding the screw on. If you've not used magnetic-tipped screwdrivers before, trust me when I say you won't want to go back.

For just under $10 USD each, I'd absolutely be tempted to grab a pair of these, but they don't seem to be available in Australia yet. They're clearly no match for some of the higher-end tools you can come by, but for simple screwdrivers they look really nice, and of course very brown. If not for yourself, these Noctua screwdrivers are sure to make a great gift or stocking stuffer for the PC-fan fan in your life.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding.