Noctua developed a custom 120mm fan grill for the Seasonic Prime TX-1600 Noctua Edition built for silence, and now anyone can get it for free. The company posted on its X (formerly Twitter) account that it’s sharing the high-efficiency fan grill on Printables, allowing anyone with a 3D printer or laser cutter to make one of their own.
According to Noctua, the fan grill “ensures smooth pressure gradients as the fan blades pass the radial struts,” which results in higher airflow and a noise reduction of about 2dB(A) versus the stock power supply grill found on the Seasonic power supply.
The high-efficiency Noctua 120mm fan grill, as the company calls it on the 3D model database, is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). That means you can remix it and share it anywhere you like if you attribute its original creator, do it for non-commercial purposes, and your creation should have the same license as the original (i.e., CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
This isn’t the first thing that Noctua and Seasonic have for free in recent weeks. The two collaborated on a keychain merch giveaway that’s up for grabs for users who commented on the Seasonic Prime TX-1600 Noctua Edition post on the Chinese video-sharing site BiliBili. These events seem to celebrate the successful launch of the PSU, an improvement of Seasonic’s flagship power supply. This ultra-quiet version retains the exact excellent specifications and performance but reduces the noise generated by replacing its cooling fan with Noctua’s 120mm NF-A12x25 fan and this unique fan grill.
Seasonic and Noctua might also have no problems releasing this fan grill for free, especially with the price that this high-performance PSU demands. The vanilla Seasonic Prime TX-1600 has a retail price of $539.99 on Amazon, while you have to pay a $30 premium to get the Noctua Edition. Nevertheless, you’re getting a good power supply for the price, with the TX-1600 being one of our recommended options in our best PSUs of 2024 list. So, if you need that much power and have grown tired of the cacophony of multiple noisy fans, this ultra-quiet PSU might just be exactly what you need for a quieter workspace.
Noctua has also shared several other 3D designs you can download, like the NV-AA1-12 Airflow Amplifier, which will turn your 120mm Noctua fan into the $100 NV-FS1 desk fa (without the stand), the NA-FD1 Fan Duct, designed to improve the performance of Noctua fans with SFF cases that has a significant gap, and the NA-FMA1 120mm/140mm Adaptor for Noctua 120mm fans. Aside from its excellent fan designs (and controversial color choices), this tendency to share some of its designs for free is one of the reasons why Noctua is loved by its fans love Noctua.
