Nothing gets past Noctua. The Austrian PC cooler and fan brand has undertaken its own research to find out which of its coolers can fit in what mainstream PC cases, and it may have done the entire PC building community a solid in the process. It turns out that if you've built yourself a best gaming PC contender, you may have ended up with less of a cooler than you could have because the clearance space that chassis manufacturers are publishing isn't the most accurate.
"While in many cases, the manufacturer specifications are accurate, we have discovered quite a few cases where they aren’t", Noctua said in a blog post on its website.
"In particular, in many of these cases, the CPU cooler clearance specification given by the manufacturer was less than what we measured, which means that you can actually fit slightly larger coolers than the case manufacturer’s specifications suggest."
In total, Noctua says it's looked into over 100 cases from the biggest brands, and so far, 56 have had "a relevant deviation from the manufacturer’s specifications". Helpfully, this new research has been made readily available through Noctua's new case compatibility databse.
Interestingly, the findings show inaccuracies on both sides of the equation. While some cases like the NZXT H2 Flow, the Thermaltake TR100, and the Corsair 5000D, 4000D, and Frame 4000D all turned out to have more clearance space than was advertised, some cases actually have less, which is arguably worse.
The Asus Prime AP201 and the Lian Li B4-mATX were both found to have less room for CPU coolers than their manufacturers have said. This isn't great, because it means you could have bought a certain tower cooler to use with those chassis and ended up wasting your money on something that isn't compatible.
In instances where manufacturers had advertised less space than their cases actually have, I can maybe understand more. Measurement taking probably isn't consistent across every brand, and with different territories using different methods and measurement scales, I can understand some PC case makers wanting to be on the conservative end of the scale to avoid the aforementioned problems.
I'd rather buy a case that ends up having more room than one that doesn't have enough - better safe than sorry for these case brands who don't want to be on the receiving end of customer complaints and returns.
Noctua's research seems to have come from a desire to clarify that its tower coolers are actually more compatible than you might think, but doing this research is a pretty selfless endeavour because it obviously means other cooling brands could benefit too, even if they aren't listed in the published database. It's nice to see more pro-consumer moves being made by PC cooling brands, as a similar move was taken by Arctic last week after US tariff refunds.
This research might not be massively helpful for folks investing in an AIO cooler, since the clearance you'll need for a pump header is far less than what you'll need for an air cooler. The new database is going to be particularly useful for builders of small form factor systems though, because with each ITX case having so many quirks to it and so little run-off room for components, having a second form of verification for what you can and can't fit inside will be massive.
"With Small Form Factor builds and ITX systems, every millimetre can count", Noctua said in its blog post. "In terms of CPU cooler clearance, it can be make or break in terms of whether a cooler fits snugly or presses against the side panel. This is why we have started going the extra mile taking our own measurements for popular cases, particularly from the SFF space."
This doesn't seem to be a flash in the pan for Noctua, as it closed out its blog post by saying, "We’ll keep doing these measurements on popular cases so that you can select the optimal cooler for your chassis with confidence."
For more on PC building, read up on the best CPU for gaming, the best RAM for gaming, and the best SSD for gaming.
