Silverstone Noble Breeze NB05 Notebook Cooler Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The Silverstone Noble Breeze NB05 can be found at Overclockers.co.uk offering it for £44.99 + shipping here in the UK. This is expensive but with it having excellent cooling, a USB hub and the networking capability I do think that it’s worth it.

Overview
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this sample, I have never needed a notebook cooler so it’s not a product that I would get excited about as a rule. Having said that, I can now see why Silverstone have created this product and can see that they have put a lot of thought into it.

The USB 3 hub gives you some excellent expansion, however, using certain USB 3 devices may require an external DC-adapter that isn’t included with the product. I think that if the USB hub needs to be powered then it should come with a plug included with it. Not everyone will need to power the hub, but for those that do, they would appreciate the ability to do so.

The RJ-45 socket was somewhat strange to me at first due to all of my devices having one or more sockets. However, once I thought about it I realised that Ultrabooks, such as the ACER Aspire P3-171, have USB ports but no Ethernet port. This means that the device is dependent on Wi-Fi. Silverstone combat this with the NB05 and it’s an excellent idea.

Most importantly is the cooling from this product, although a little lackluster when the notebook is at idle, when put under heavy load it does perform well, particularly when using GPU heavy benchmarks.

Pros

• Virtually silent performance
• Great build quality
• Smart aesthetics
• Cools well, particularly under heavy load
• USB3 hub and RJ-45 socket is great for Ultrabooks

Cons

• External power source is needed for power hungry USB 3.0 devices. This has to be bought separately

“Silverstone are a brand renowned for quality, innovation style and performance. These are not something I would usually associate with a notebook cooler but with the NB05 they have done everything right. It’s sleek, it’s modern, it expands the usability of the notebook, and most importantly, does it all whilst performing. “

Thank you Silverstone for providing us with this sample.