When we started the Printables Brands initiative, we wanted to bridge the gap between the off-the-shelf products you use every day and the 3D printer on your desk. And now we’re back with something new and exciting to share: a direct collaboration with the Austrian cooling experts at Noctua. We’re launching two new filaments – Prusament PLA Noctua Brown and Beige, the exact color matches for Noctua’s signature cooling components! This is the first official brand colored filament supported and promoted by both sides.

About Noctua

Noctua is a legend among PC enthusiasts, builders, and modders. You can find their cooling components nearly everywhere. When there’s a video of someone building a PC, there are usually Noctua fans inside. Why? Because of the silence, effective cooling and long life. Thanks to their signature brown and beige colors, you can recognize them instantly. In fact, these signature colors are so iconic that people tailor-made their whole PCs to match them. Needless to say, we’re HUGE FANS of Noctua. And this is also where it gets interesting for 3D printer owners!

Setting trends

The overall PC design changes, just like fashion. While the black PC cases with black accessories, cold cathode tubes and tasteless UV-reactive addons were popular at the beginning of the millennium, many people nowadays choose more discreet builds that fit with their room decor. Sometimes they even build computers out of wood, with dark or light elements. And that’s where Noctua sets the trend: their brown and beige fans may have looked misplaced in flashy gaming builds, but the muted colors fit perfectly with modern, minimalist builds.

And oh boy, here comes the fun part. With our new Prusaments PLA Noctua, you can build pretty much everything you wish around your computer. A keyboard, mouse, speakers, or even an entire PC case… You name it! And you can be 100% sure that it will fit perfectly with your Noctua fans and accessories. We co-worked on these colors with the Noctua team to get the best color match of 3D-printed components with their products. This is actually something you don’t see every day: A filament manufacturer teaming up with a well-known brand to make a material of exact color available for everyone and easy to recognize. And promoted by both sides.

It’s true that some manufacturers make exact colors on demand, but they don’t usually take the extra step to team up with the brand to make it easily accessible to everyone. Instead, they either make it off-brand or they just make the custom colors on demand for internal use of the companies.

This project with Noctua brings the whole ecosystem together. Their components are staples in the PC building community, their models are available on Printables, and now, with the matching filament, we’re providing the final piece of the puzzle for truly seamless custom builds. It’s a great match – the spirit of making and customization with 3D printers meets the world of cool PC builds and mods.

Noctua-colored projects

Since we’re talking about Noctua-colored custom builds, we also did some extra homework and actually started building a signature brown and beige computer ourselves. We used this Mini ITX PC case by Makerunit. We printed the largest parts with the Prusa XL and CORE One L – the entire PC case body fits the XL heatbed with plenty of room to spare. Then, we actually started assembling our own custom keyboard – fully-featured PCB, Gateron switches, and, of course, signature brown & beige keycaps (these simple keycaps by Filip Křenek).

And the team in Noctua did their part too! They upgraded our MK4S with Noctua-colored parts. How cool is that? 🙂

Of course, we are not the first to make Noctua-colored projects, far from it. But this is a good reminder that videos like this one from Linus Tech Tips exist – and just imagine how cooler their PC build could have been with 3D printed Noctua-colored parts and accessories!

Starting with PLA, more materials to come

PLA was our first choice to start with: it is the easiest filament to print, with a nice satin surface finish; therefore, it’s the number one choice for most users. And the decent brown and beige colors were something we missed in our standard PLA portfolio.

Plenty of PC components and accessories are perfectly suitable to be printed with PLA, including mechanical keyboards, mouse shells (we ran a contest at Printables!), outer PC cases, and more. Bottom line is that such filaments are useful for anyone looking for warm, subtle colors.

4.7L Mini ITX case by eCrowne

However, there is a slight downside. We’re aware that the PLA might not be the best material that would come in direct contact with your glowing red-hot gaming equipment. Its heat resistance is somewhere around 55 °C, which is not enough to withstand long periods of elevated temperatures. Make sure to leave plenty of room for proper airflow around the printed parts and make sure that they won’t come into direct contact with any hot parts. But don’t worry, we already have plans for more advanced materials in the pipeline!

As for electrical insulation, grounding, and ESD safety: there is an entire 3DPPC subreddit where users share their experience with 3D-printed computer cases. With proper precautions, 3D printed cases are safe. Computers nowadays do not emit such strong interference as in the old days, so you don’t need a Faraday cage anymore. As for grounding, make sure to connect the PSU correctly (run a wire between one of the PSU’s screws and the motherboard to be safe) – in general, take some time to study how to make a proper 3D-printed PC case before you commit to building such a PC.

And if you need a filament that is ESD-safe and high-temperature friendly right now, we recommend using Prusament PC Space Grade Black. This black matte Prusament, designed for space applications, fits the Noctua color scheme and offers properties valued in PC electronics. Just imagine a PC build with a black ESD-safe interior and a Noctua-style brown and beige exterior…

Price and weight

And finally, the price and weight remain the same as for the other Prusament PLA. You can get the PLA Noctua Beige 1kg and PLA Noctua Brown 1kg for 32.99 EUR (VAT Incl.) / 32.99 USD (Import duties included) each.

Do you like our new cool colors? The result of this whole color mixing mission makes us really happy. We expanded our color portfolio with two colors, plus they perfectly match the Noctua Brand! That’s a win-win. And we’re not stopping there: The cooperation with Noctua is the first large public project, but we have long experience in creating precise colors, and some additional brand colors are in the pipeline. And we still have the capacity to add more. If you’re interested, we would be happy to hear from you at [email protected].

Happy printing!