Today I'm pleased to announce the 2026 refresh of the most popular system we've ever made: Nocturne.
What began as a simple idea, combining wood, brass, and leather into a single machine, has gone further than we ever expected. Nocturne has been featured in Bloomberg, won building competitions, and was named the highest-rated system of 2024 on PCPartPicker. It has come a long way, and we're determined to let it keep growing alongside us. This year's refresh is the largest set of changes it has ever seen.
Starting with what's leaving
We'll start with what's leaving. We're removing the faux leather back panel. It has become too difficult to support over time; the earliest Nocturnes have already needed a handful of re-wraps, and rather than keep shipping something we can't stand behind for the long run, we're shelving the idea until we can deliver it properly. The leather isn't the only vinyl on its way out, either. The wood texture vinyl that has defined Nocturne's side panel from the start is being retired as well.
A panel made entirely of real hardwood, finished by hand with pure beeswax, so the grain glows with the light coming from inside the system.
In its place is something we've wanted to build for a long time: a panel made entirely of real hardwood. Each one is laser cut, etched with the Optimist emblem, reinforced with an acrylic backing, stained, and finished by hand with pure beeswax, which gives the grain a warm glow that moves with the light coming from inside the system. It's the change we're proudest of in this refresh, and the one you'll notice first.
The rest of the update follows that same direction, warming up the materials wherever we could. The top-tier motherboard option is now the Gigabyte X870E AERO X3D DARK WOOD, whose wood-toned finish sits naturally against the new panel and whose X3D overclocking suits our lineup, which runs X3D processors exclusively. We've also replaced the gold anodized thumbscrews with solid brass. Brass holds heat, so after the system has been running a while, the screws you actually put your hands on turn faintly warm, the kind of small detail we tend to obsess over when we relaunch something this important to us.
Two changes round it out. We've moved to a new Lian Li riser cable that runs PCIe 5 natively and carries a small light bar, bringing a little of Nocturne's warm glow down to the bottom of the case, which has always sat darker than the rest. And we're standardizing on Corsair LX120 fans across every Nocturne. We'd used Lian Li SL-INF fans for years, but between the cooler, the memory, and the motherboard, owners were being asked to run too many pieces of software at once, and consolidating the fans makes the system easier to set up and live with. Corsair's RGB diffusion has never let us down, either.
Nocturne is the most popular system we've ever built, and we've treated this relaunch with the care that deserves. Thank you to everyone who owns one. It's not going anywhere.
