Nocuta is a case study in how to make a high quality and luxury product to dominate a seemly small market. In a seemingly commoditized market where fans can be had for $3-$4 Nocuta still demands and get's $30-$40 dollars.
It's a bit more pronounced in CPU cooling towers, they are solid blocks where durability doesn't play a role. Noctua is good but the top performer and market leader is Thermalright which costs a third of Noctua.
Cheap Chinese clones eventually arrive when a successfully company dominates a market.
It does not mean that they no longer dominate.
People were recommending Noctua for long term durability, sure. But seems it's a minority who's willing to pay the premium for that.
Some data would of course be interesting.
Edit: Mindfactory is one of the few that publishes numbers. On a quick glance (didn't sum totals) looks like Arctic leads, followed by be quiet! and Noctua on the third spot. be quiet! is a German brand so that gets somewhat biased.
https://www.mindfactory.de/Hardware/Kuehlung+Luft/Gehaeuselu...
be quiet! 100.060
Arctic 60.850
Noctua 45.290
Noiseblocker 23.840
Xilence 23.050All I had to do was send them the receipt for the cooler.
I don't know how you benchmark a Rolex vs a Seiko for 500 bucks. That is luxury to me. And yet it is perfectly fine to argue a Casio for 10-20 bucks performs just as well.