Noctua, the Austrian cooling supplier known for its very quiet brown fans, is something of a darling of the PC industry. It’s kind of like the nerdy equivalent of, I dunno, Paddington Bear: solid, reliable, vaguely homey, and shockingly prolific. The brand’s latest crossover is with Pulsar gaming mice. Yup, they put a little bitty fan in a gaming mouse.
Typically, Noctua’s fans are intended to cool components: CPUs, GPUs, radiators, or just PC case interiors. You can use one as a desk fan if you just love those brown hues so much that you want them on your desk. Yet while gaming mice have gotten kind of extreme as of late, the Pulsar Noctua Feinmann FO1 doesn’t actually need active cooling—I’m not aware of any mouse that does.
Instead, the little 40mm angled fan (NF-A4x10, the smallest in Noctua’s catalog) cools off your hand through the mouse’s speed holes. It’s masterfully illustrated here, just in case you needed a visual.
Pulsar
The mouse itself is fairly typical of the excessive design you often see these days. Standard shooter configuration with two thumb buttons, “carbon composite” body, aluminum alloy wheel, optical switches, 42,000 DPI, 8,000Hz polling rate, 70 grams. It lacks dedicated DPI and polling rate buttons, but the wireless receiver has buttons for those.
Pulsar
Frankly, I think it’s ridiculous, even without the fan. But hey, might as well have fun with it. There are some unique features for this design, though. With a combination of button presses and the scroll wheel, you can manually turn the fan on or off, no extra software required.
The mouse costs $180 on Pulsar’s site, a hefty premium over most of its other designs. That’s also typical of Noctua’s branded collaborations.
