If priced the same, TRUE Spirit 140 Power or NH-D15? Could not find a head 2 head anywhere.

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silkshadow

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One would think this has been answered many times but for the life of me I cannot find one heads up comparison. All I could find was TRUE Spirit 140 Power comparisons to the older NH-D14 or the NH-D15 to earlier revisions of the TRUE (not the newest Power version). Best I could find was one guy on Reddit who made a spreadsheet of Frosty tech's reviews, but the way he was spamming about the TRUE Spirit 140 in r/buildapc made me question motives.

I get that for the money the TRUE Spirit 140 Power might be a better buy (though I have my doubts as I saw a couple posts here saying the Power is not even as good as the original TRUE?), but if money was not a significant issue which is better?

Let me add that I already have a NH-U14, I am looking for an upgrade as sometimes I got redline temps on my Haswell OC when the ambient temps got crazy last year. I live in a hot country that had an abnormally hot period last year and the same is expected for this year.

Thanks!

Edit: U not D
 
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No other Air cooler in the market will offer significant temperature performance increase over a NH-D14. in fact with the same fans, the NH-D14 perform better than the NH-D15..

what "haswell" chip you have? Haswell-DT or Haswell-E?. if you are in Haswell-DT and you haven't yet, then Delid is a must.. if not then your next step is to go with high-end CLC/AIO. your options are to go with Swiftech H220-X (or H240-X if your case allow for it) or the highly recommended Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer 240, (yeah that's a long name), Corsair H110i GT (again if your case support 2x140mm radiator) then you may be able to drop about ~10C of your max overclocked temperature..

what case are you using? what kind of fans and Airflow you have right now?
 
I'm sorry I misstyped, I have a Noctua U14, not D14. I've got a Haswell-E in a Bitfenix Colossus. Airflow is pretty good I've got 2 230mm fans and 2 140mm fans on the case and then 2 120mm fans on the U14. I really don't want to go liquid, I've tried it before and had accidents. Also I have small kids which means accidents are inevitable :).

Thanks!

Edit: Oh but I will be upgrading to an I7 Skylake as soon as I work out all the build issues. So the TRUE 140 Power or the D15 will be for a Skylake system.
 
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oh well.. the U14S is also not so far from the D14 or D15. in fact most of time depending on the case, the U14S according most review tend to perform couple of degrees better than the D14.

So in your case, with a gargantuan power hog like any OC'd Haswell-E your choices are always limited to gargantuan coolers. Are you really tied to TRUE 140 Power and NH-D15?, because at that level of power I could only recommend going with the biggest of the biggest like the Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E/IB-E or Cryorig R1 Ultimate.

But honestly as having couple of Intel Sandy Bridge-E 3930K, Ivy Bridge-E 4960X and Haswell-E 5930K machines, for my Own experience you can go with Air cooling for Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-E when overclocking. but Haswell-E (specially talking about the 5960X) will be seriously limited by even top-end air coolers and 240mm+ AIO/CLC is really required to keep temp downs, I would even venture to say if you want to really overclock high, Custom Loop is not only recommended but absolutely needed, those chips are insanely hot when OC'd, so take it as recommendation if you want to push really the overclock on it don't spend more money buying new air cooler that can improve only as much as ~5C. it will not make your overclock any better or more heat comfortable, Im just saying this because I always try to prevent people from unnecessary waste of money and deceptive buyers remorse, "damn why I spent so serious money on this, it didn't make anything better".

Ah forgot to answer your original question, the TRUE 140 Power have thicker heatpipes so it indeed offer better performance than the Original TRUE 140. but certainly I don't have that cooler, I have the Original TRUE 140 and NH-D15 but sadly can't tell you a certain answer to that, but original TRUE 140 versus NH-D15 the NH-D15 perform better with higher overclocks on socket 2011 chips, but no more than 2C or 3C degrees, I think not enough to warrant an upgrade over a NH-U14S.

So to confirm, for extreme Air coolers my choices stay with Silver Arrow SB-E/IB-E or Cryorig R1 Ultimate, those are in my opinion the kind of coolers able to warrant any upgrade and money spent.

Anyway, here is a guy in the forum named doyll PM him, he is probably the guy with more knowledge in air coolers here, he have large experience and is well known in other forums but I don't want to link other sites, lest stay [H] :p.
 
Thanks man, I really like the looks of that Silver Arrow as well. I really appreciate your advice!
 
No problems man, always glad to help people to make the best choice possible, specially related to cooling as im a fanboy of the lower temps the better =).
 
I have a 5820k at 4.5ghz 4ghz uncore with a NH-D15 and my temps are very acceptable, 70c max temps under p95 (non avx) and slightly lower temps from realbench. Last I tested it was winter though, so I guess add 5c
 
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