The noctua cpu fans are quieter and as good as liquid cooling because of the pump.
That said, I think liquid cooling has reached critical mass. AIOs are commonplace.
I think it would be (uh) cool to have a extra huge external reservoir and fan (think motorcycle or car radiator plus maybe a tank) that could be nearly silent and cool the cpu and gpu.
IMO, Noctua coolers are overpriced these days. You can get nearly identical thermal performance to their $150 NH-D15 G2 from a $40 Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 or 140.
I am sure that they are overpriced, but the reason is because they can get away with this.
Despite the fact that I think that it is very likely that a $40 cooler like the one mentioned by you would work well enough, when I will build a new computer with a top model AMD Ryzen CPU, which dissipates up to 200 W in steady state conditions, I will certainly buy a Noctua cooler for it. A computer with an Intel Arrow Lake S CPU would be even more demanding, as those can dissipate much more than 250 W in steady state conditions.
The reason is that by now I have the experience with many Noctua coolers that have been working for 10 years or more, even 24/7, with perfect reliability and ensuring low noise and low temperatures.
I am not willing to take the risk of experimenting with a replacement, so for my peace of mind I prefer the proven solutions, both for coolers and for power supply units (for the latter I use Seasonic).
Noctua knows that many customers think like this, so they charge accordingly.
I think the reason they mentioned both those specific air coolers is because Noctua made a state-of-the-art cooler for the time, then rested on their laurels, and are now outgunned by a very specific brand (Thermal right) and their stand-out product, the Peerless Assassin. Not just any $40 cooler these days will do the trick.
There are lots of cheap buzzy coolers. Many CPUs came with one.
But the noctua fans are reliable, but really quiet.
Your ears are worth it.
> but really quiet
It’s still gonna be louder than a water cooler if that’s your primary concerns. Otherwise other air coolers are only marginally less silent and just as effective at half (if not less) the price.
In my experience every single (AIO) water cooler I've tried has been significantly worse in terms of noise than a decent air cooler.
Specifically the pumps. Those things have an obnoxious high-pitched whine that I personally find unbearable, especially during low/idle workloads.
It's possible that the actal dB level is lower, but the frequency and sound characteristics matters. A lot.
This was my understanding as well, which is pretty much unshaken from the replies I've received.