Noctua's latest roadmap shows delays for several new products, including black heatsinks and white fans

Noctua, the Austrian PC cooling specialists, maintain a roadmap on their website showing all their upcoming products. We were first alerted to the updated list when Fanless Tech noticed that Noctua’s large 120 W – 180 W (depending on case configuration) fanless heatsink was delayed from late 2020 into Q1 2021. This delay was the second for this heatsink, with the initial comments at Computex 2019 indicating that it could arrive in H1 2020.

However, the roadmap also shows several other changes in product arrival dates compared to those previously communicated by Noctua. The highly anticipated white fans moved from between Q2 and Q4 2020 into Q1 2021. The black version of the NF-A12x25 went from late Q2 or early Q3 2020 back to Q1 2021. The black version of the NF-U12A and associated heatsink covers both moved from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021.

We don’t have an initial release timeline for the 8-way fan hub or the 24 V to 12 V voltage converter, but since they were also both announced at Computex 2019, they too may be arriving later than expected.

With no accompanying press release from Noctua, we can’t be sure of the cause for the delays. However, since prototypes of these products were available at Computex 2019, we suspect that the COVID-19 situation probably explains the reason. For example, it could be to do with current difficulties in managing a global supply chain, or due to a reluctance to incur the expenses required to retool production lines over the downturn of the last few months.