DeepCool goes gunning for Noctua. Really?

Almost never spotted in the wild, Noctua engineers have been responsible for some of the finest sandwiches [sorry, coolers - Ed] in human history. If you catch a glimpse of Zardon in the lab, with his 2600k nuts clocked past 5GHz and the breeze from the cooling solution blowing his hair back, then you can be sure it will be a Noctua. But a small outfit from Beijing wants to change all that. Enter the DeepCool.

So far, the Austrians have remained safe. Despite a lot of claims from Taiwanese cooling brands, the Austrian Sandwich has remained alone – leading the world for air cooling. Over at Distree 2012 in Monte Carlo, the extremely friendly Julia Yu was on hand to explain why China was ready to challenge the world.

“We have every solution you could need”, she announced. “From entry level cooler with strong focus on price through to our new prototype coolers which are the best”.

DeepCool wants to take on the world in an air cooling dog fight - but can they win?

We’d need to test the claim in KitGuru Lab, but she seemed happy enough with the statement. We asked Julia which cooler she would put up against Arctic and Thermaltake in the value segment.

“Definitely the Ice Wind Pro, it has a very good price. Very competitive”.

And at the high end, which cooler is Julia expecting to use in order to challenge Noctua’s NH-D14?

“We have new prototype called FrostWin”, she said with a smile. “We will have more information for CeBIT and definitely mass production for Computex”.

The DeepCool FrostWin prototype exposes its soft underbelly to a KitGuru zoom lens, while Hiltson Zhang presents his company's mass-market solution. The products look good, but can they win in such a tough market?

KitGuru says: At the high end, the DeepCool FrostWin will win or lose entirely based on technical merit. Move under the £20/$25 mark and the equation changes completely. Every dollar becomes its own private war zone and system builders in particular need to fight tooth and nail to save each and every dollar. If DeepCool can find a smart way to ship out to the West, without picking up additional margin hikes in Hong Kong or Taiwan, then they could become a force. Tough, but possible.

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