Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler Review

If you are CPU cooler shopping, you'll want to read this review of the Noctua NH-D15 at Legit Reviews today. You can see our evaluation here.

Noctua’s premium products are aimed at those who seek reliable coolers that provide extreme and quiet performance, so the cooler that we’re going to review today has some high expectations. Designed off of the highly successful NH-D14 cooler, the NH-D15 was born and tweaked for improved performance.

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I just installed the NH-D15 to replace an aging Thermalright Ultra-120 with the upgraded 115x mounting kit and the NH-D15 dropped my prime95 tests (yes, I am set in my ways, I'll try realbench later) 7c-9c.

I am loving my D15 as well. Don't have to deal with tubing of AiO's and is actually quieter and I still cut my temps in half from a Hyper 212. Granted, I did remove the noobshield and go direct-die:



With a slight mod to the D15 mount:



It was not able to run 4.7GHz stable with the Hyper 212 @ 1.225v but I am now testing OK at 4.8GHz Only path from this heatsink is a custom loop and I just can't bring myself to spend the dough.... yet.

^^^ Yeah, you have more balls and money then I do to chance doing that with my 4790k. Reason I got the Devils Canyon was of the better thermal compound. And I utterly hate Noctua's fan color, I don't care how good they are

You do have to be willing to face a broken chip as a result of a mistake but it's not hard at all. OTOH I have removed every noobshield since the Celeron Tualatin. The "Integrated Heat Spreader" is a hunk of copper that is often misshapen and never, ever outperforms bare die even with solder as the TIM. Case in point, I had spent hours lapping my Q6600 G0 to a mirror fully copper finish, flat as science can measure. While it did drop temps a few degrees, I decided because I was not hitting my goal of 3600MHz (topped out at 3554), I'd go for broke and used the blowtorch method to remove the soldered noobshield. The result was much larger temperature drops with my lapped TRUE120 and I was not only able to run 3600 fine (it would even boot Windows at 3733), it ran it at lower voltage than 3554 with the noobshield. The only reason I even ran with it at first this time was because of the Hyper 212 being an HDT, needed contact with the entire noobshield otherwise it would have only had maybe one heatpipe on the bare die. Lower temps, lower voltages, higher clocks. That is why I chose the D15, the solid base and quiet fans. I don't look into my case all day, I actually use the PC so color schemes don't matter to me.

BlueSaber80 said:

^^^ Yeah, you have more balls and money then I do to chance doing that with my 4790k. Reason I got the Devils Canyon was of the better thermal compound. And I utterly hate Noctua's fan color, I don't care how good they are

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There is really nothing wrong with their fan color, it sets them apart, it's much better than the flashy colors of others. Anyway the last time I saw the color of the fans in my case is when I put the case together over a year ago. So I don't find this a valid reason to hate on noctua.

I tried the NH-D15 with my EVGA X79 Dark board and it didn't fit. The first GPU slot completely covered, RAM too tall, etc. Looked around a bunch and saw that there was a NH-D15S coming out, but the only places that had them wanted way, way too much.

I finally found something just as good - the Phanteks PH-TC14PE. It's keeping my 3930K (4.3Ghz at 1.3V) under 79C where my failing water loop (built in the reservoir pump was dying) couldn't keep it below 85C. The only problem with the Phanteks (edit: and an EVGA X79 Dark) is that if you have a backplate on your video card, it probably will interfere - you can have the card bend in the slot a couple of degrees, but that is a bit scary.

PliotronX said:

With a slight mod to the D15 mount:

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Hey there, sorry to resurrect this thread but i'm really interested in this mod. Does it just consist of putting a plastic (metal good too?) washer between the spring and the screw head? If so, the thickness of the washer has to be equal to the thickness of the (removed) IHS as measured from the inside cavity?