What happened to Noctua?

Alex what happened to noctua? Its not in the configuration anymore. Please don't tell me the shipping companies are now deciding for us what we can get.

Edited by DST4ME - 17 Sep 2016 at 12:52pm

Its a sad day when a company punishes customers due to crappy shipping service.

If the shipping is the problem use a different shipping company.

When it comes to bad shipping we keep telling you guys to complain to ups and instead you say Nah we rather eat the cost ourselves. Looks like now the customer is eating the cost via not having the options.

Sad day Alex, I'm not sure why as a customer I can't get the part I want because you guys dont' want to hold your shipping company responsible for bad shipping, instead you want to make it sound like you are doing me a favor by not offering me a part that is top of the line but the problem is that your shipping company can't do their job right and get it to me.



This makes as much sense to me as my lambo dealer telling me they can't sell me a lambo due to their shipping company not being reliable

I guess now I should call up UPS first and ask them which of your parts they think they can deliver without damage so I can order those parts.

Now if you are in the market for air cooled pc DS is not the place for you. Since there is no decent air cooler offered.

Edited by DST4ME - 17 Sep 2016 at 3:31pm

Originally posted by FrankW Originally posted by Alex We stopped selling it due to the high rate of damage during shipping. It's simply not worth taking the risk for our customers upon new delivery. Hi Alex, I think that not offering the Noctua is a good move. I stopped recommending it sometime ago due to the potential for damage and its size. Digital Storm offers other cooling options that does as good or better than the Noctua. Frank

I'm sorry FW but I will have to disgree, limiting your customers options is never a good idea.

You are making a mistake of thinking all customers are like you and are fine with lc/aio and most are not.

From a business point of view its a bad idea since now customers that are not interested in LC will no longer shop here.

Also please stop blaming a great cooler Noctua because of shipping, I just bought a notcua from the store explain to me what the problem is with it.

The potential problem is the shipping company.

I just don't understand how this makes sense, based on this type of thinking (aka does not do good in shipping) both amazon and newegg should close up shop or just offer a few products that will survive shipping. But they don't, because its foolish to limit your customer because of your shipping, instead amazon will make the shipping company pay for the mistake, here DS does not even complain to UPS.

Edited by DST4ME - 17 Sep 2016 at 4:39pm

Unfortunately Plan B is go somewhere else.

Are you trying to ruin the weekend for me? I still not over the loss of haf and now this

but at least the velox can give us haf like airflow tho.

I just don't understand how it makes sense to not complain to ups and instead tell me that I can't get the noctua anymore because ups can't do its job right, and nobody is ever gonna tell ups that they are doing a crap job.



Edited by DST4ME - 17 Sep 2016 at 5:53pm

Alex says they don't even mention it to ups and eat the cost.

If there is going to be damage due to shipping then its not just gonna damage noctua, shipping damage will damage whatever it can in the pc. sure noctua is heavier so it will give to damage sooner, but its shipping damage its gonna damage whatever you got, its not after your noctua.

Also now I have to open myself up to leaks and pump failures.

Ask yourself this:

Great I skipped noctua due to fear of having to reseat the noctua because of shipping damage, but a year later my corsair aio leaked and damaged my mobo. Now what, its past the 1 year part warranty, so I'm stuck paying for and changing my corsair cooler and my mobo. Well that was a smart choice on my part. Now sure that is not gonna happen every time but that is not the point, the point is that someone that does not want to deal with that at all had an option of going with noctua, getting the same performance and none of the worry of leak and pump failure or other parts getting damaged due to leak, but now these customers can't do that anymore and have to go elsewhere.

And why? not because of noctua, not because something is wrong with noctua, No, because of ups's crappy job of shipping, job so crappy that we are never even gonna tell UPS about it, no sir instead of complaining to ups about bad shipping we are go take away our customer's option of air cooling and not offer them the noctua. That will fix the bad shipping problem from ups.


or even better.

I sell ice cream, you want ice cream, great we are in business, the only problem now is that I can't sell Ice cream because the delivery company I use, does not deliver my ice cream fast enough, so when it gets to you it has melted, therefore I can no longer sell ice cream. I will not change delivery companies and use one that will get it to you on time nor will I complain to my delivery company about slow delivery service either, no sir, the right thing to do here is to stop selling ice cream in order to help my customers.

I said my peace, I guess I wish they would bring it back but somehow I doubt it.

Edited by DST4ME - 17 Sep 2016 at 7:54pm

I was debating whether to go lc , AIO or Lite, next build, just to try it but always came back to Noctua.   I have a 5+ year old A70, small step down from Noctua, and it just works, no pumps, liquid, firmware updates, nothing .     

The Lite , at least from the forums, seems to be more prone to leaks because of the larger reservoir and doesn't really interest me.   Decades of field service says, KISS.

The H series is doable, IMHO. Probably my next route. If it survives shipping, and most do, the chance of a leak is very small.   

Too bad an option wasn't offered to ship the Noctua unmounted, it being so easy to install, but that's from my perspective. Most wouldn't feel comfortable doing it and would prefer a delivery that is plug it in and play.

From a shipping standpoint, this makes perfect sense.

Claims to shipping company, for damage, can drag on for 6 months or better.. and the claim is for the original shipment. In the meantime, the shipper is eating the cost for return shipping both ways, cost for extra and unnecessary customer service hours, the cost of damaging their reputation on social media with people who continue to blame DS for shipping mishaps, etc etc.

Way too much cost involved.

And, yes, while Alex & company can boast of a 2% failure rate (of machines arriving in working order), that 2% is going to add up over time to quite the sizeable amount.

Since you can't change the inherent dangers and pitfalls of shipping (doesn't matter which company, they are all the same, trust me), it would make more sense to do what you CAN do to mitigate the problem.

What did Einstein allegedly say about the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result... Same with this situation...

Anybody know what kind of LC I would have had on my rig from 7 years ago. I don't remember having an option of different kinds back then. Had a resevoir up top that I had to top off every 6 month or so with 30 cc of distilled water. Never had an issue

Edited by Doc - 18 Sep 2016 at 6:49am

We're not going to sell a product that ruins the customer experience. The Noctua is too large and heavy, and there are better options we sell, such as the Corsair all-in-one liquid coolers. The Noctua also blocks access to memory sticks which makes it difficult for customers to service their system.

Here goes DST4ME with his swarmy (I know better then you) smug BS.

You have wrote this same tired argument in so many different threads its ridiculous. Alex or anybody else isn't going to respond to you for the millionth time about the problems with a large air cooler.

Its bulky and heavy and doesn't ship well it also blocks access to the memory. Simple as that. STFU with this bad ram being sold argument its convoluted. People want access to their ram whether its working fine now or not. I may want to upgrade later without removing my cpu cooler and re-pasting it back down.

I'm not sure where the AIO has bad touched you in the past but I'm not sure why you are so hard on getting people to think that their AIO is going to spring a leak and ruin their system at any moment. The things are plenty reliable and the chances of that happening are smaller then the chances that your motherboard comes cracked because the Noctua cooler has got banged around.

So really what it comes down to is preference no matter how delusional you are into thinking everything you prefer is fact. Neither solution is inherently better for all situations. As far as DS discontinuing them, I can understand a bit of disappointment but I think Alex's point is a valid one. The option is not worth it if it means extra risk shipping it.

Edited by EdgeCrusher - 18 Sep 2016 at 11:48am

People commenting about Noctua coolers are putting them on themselves not shipping them installed, big difference. Your stupid charts are out of context as usual.

A large portion of our builds are with the Vortex or Corsair liquid coolers, they are a great solution. This is also why a lot of other companies use them as a default -- just like us.

Such liquid coolers have been around for so many generation refreshes now that the manufacturers have perfected the pumps and assembly of these products. We hardly see any issue with them, which is why we recommend them.

The customer's unboxing experience is very important to us, and this means we must make sure we offer options that will provide our customers with a good overall solution.

Any customers that would like to purchase a system with a Noctua are more than welcome to, however we will have to special order them, and those customers must agree that there is a risk of shipping damage due to the size and weight of the cooler.

Any customers that wish to discuss options are more than welcome to contact me via email "[email protected]".

We don't make such decisions based on small cases, we look at a large scale of data, and simply put, the Noctua has too high of a damage risk upon arrival to the customer, we don't want our customers to deal with those risks.

We pack every PC to be able to withstand a reasonable amount of shipping mishandling. A system with a Noctua can easily arrive with a bent cooler by a small drop which UPS or FedEx consider normal.

We have direct relationships with our shipping vendors, and if there are any issues with shipping, those are usually addressed quite quickly and properly. Something such as this situation, with a Noctua cooler, is not at the fault of UPS or FedEx, it's the cooler itself that is too prone damage from small shipping shocks and vibrations.

I have tried my best to clarify this as much as possible. Moving forward, any customers that would like to still obtain a Noctua knowing the risks can special request it with their build.

Any new customers that would like help with this or have any other questions, feel free to contact me directly via email "[email protected]".

Edited by Alex - 18 Sep 2016 at 4:23pm

   If on the East Coast, I will deliver for $ 5K. What a deal.   

Originally posted by Tidgxor Alternatively you could add a:"Hand Delivery by Alex" option for $10,000.

Heck, I'm 30 minutes from DS... I'll deliver anything to anyone for $10k... within the 50 States. Drive right over, pick it up and be at your door within a week, guaranteed.

Never not a good day for a road trip..

Delivery by Alex: $10,000
Delivery by Snaike: $9,999 [putting a price in his mouth ]
Delivery by bprat22: $5,000

Sounds like an ole' price war.

Looks like we'll have a Noctua after all.