Stefan Mileschin

A star attraction at Noctua's Computex booth was a prototype CPU air cooler featuring an active noise-cancellation technology co-developed by RotoSub. Pictured below, this aluminum monstrosity looks like a huge fanless cubical fin-stack, but in reality, is a D-type (twin-tower) heatsink with a large fan between its two stacks, equipped with active noise cancellation device. It works much in the same way as noise-cancellation in premium headphones and smartphones. A mic inputs noise from the cooler, speakers give out the same noise with a phase difference, this causes destructive interference between noise coming from the speakers and the cooler, and noise is reduced. The speakers are positioned along each of the two fin-stacks. The mics are just as discrete. Noctua stuck a mic into the test chamber with the cooler running, and visitors couldn't hear a thing, at least nothing that's louder than the morning crowds at Nangang, after the event has been opened up to the general public. The technology 'sounds' promising.

http://www.techpowerup.com/185219/no...cellation.html