While companies give us reasons to appreciate the fans that keep our CPUs cool, they’re ultimately a necessary evil that create noise in our systems. Worse still, they need filters to make sure it doesn’t become a dust-ridden nightmare. We shouldn’t be fans of fans. With all this in mind, this ‘Fanless System’ concept by Cooler Master at Computex could be a glimpse at an alternative silent future.
Just take a moment to look how barren the Cooler Master Qube 500 case looks with nary a fan inside it. Even its PSU uses passive cooling, made possible with seriously impressive efficiency and heatsink design. Sure, there’s no graphics card in here, but even thinking about gaming in this kind of build would be fruitless (at least for now). The timing of this concept by Cooler Master is serendipitous, given AMD just reduced the TDP of most of its upcoming Ryzen 9000 series processors while still promising serious performance gains.
Cooler Master highlights that removing fans from PCs increases system reliability too, as its reduces the amount of moving parts prone to fail. Believe me, if you’ve been lucky enough not to experience a fan bearing failure, you absolutely want to keep it that way. That’s a sound you never forget. Heat dissipation is still necessary, of course, but enough ventilation cut-outs and suitably large heatsinks could be enough. After all, it seems Cooler Master is confident that its concept can impressively take the scorching heat of a Core i9 12900K.
With the price of electricity continuing to remain high, manufacturers of processors, graphics cards, and every other watt-guzzling bit of tech need to have efficiency at the heart of their designs. Not only will this help our pockets and the planet, it could lead to true sleeper builds where fan noise is a thing of the past. We’re walking the right path to this greener and quieter future, but there’s still much to do before Cooler Master’s vision can become a reality for many.
For more Computex news, check out our breakdown of new Intel Xeon 6 processors, with Efficient-core models leading the charge ahead of their Performance-core brethren. We’ve also got everything you need to know about AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series, coming to laptops and handhelds soon.