Silverstone Noble Breeze NB05 Notebook Cooler Review

Dave Alcock / 10 years ago

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. “