Cooling

Noctua NH-D15 Premium CPU Cooler Review

Performance

Test setup and Testing Methodology

The system used for testing is listed in the table below. Ambient temperatures were kept at 24 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. The thermal paste used was Cooler Master thermal fusion (for testing consistency). For the overclocked results I upped the voltage to 1.30v and attained a clock speed of 4.2GHz. The cool and quite mode was disabled to prevent the CPU idling at lower voltages to attain accurate temperatures at idle. The fan speed was set to auto. The idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes of idle and max temperatures were recorded after a 5 minute torture test using Prime95. The software used to monitor temperatures was HWMonitor courtesy of CPUID.

 

System

Now that we covered the testing methodology, let us get to the results in the tables below!

 

IdleTemps

 

As you can see the Noctua NH-D15 outperformed the competitor in each test performed. As my personal database increases in size also will the comparables. The NH-D15 showed little increase (at idle) in temperatures when overclocked 1 degree to be exact. The Noctua outperformed the competitor by running four degrees cooler at stock setting and when we turned up the heat it increase that gap to 5 degrees cooler. The NH-D15 performed really well while under the torture test as you can see it once again out performs the competition. The NH-D15 ran at least 4 degrees cooler than the competition in each category.

 

LoadTemp

 

The peak noise levels were recorded while performing the torture test. During the test on stock settings the meter recorded a dB level of 42 with a fan speed of 1049 RPM. During the test with an overclock the meter recorded a dB level of 45 with a fan speed of 1256 RPM.

 

dBs

 

One thing Noctua offers with this cooler is a set of low-noise adapters. The purpose of the low-noise adapter cables are to reduce the voltage sent to the fans, in turn limiting the RPM at which they will spin. The low-noise adapters will prevent the fans from spinning over 1200 RPM. This accessory is a nice added bonus from Noctua. As you can see from the results below we did lose performance in the cooling area but we did achieve dBs at lowers levels.

 

NAIdletemps

 

While testing with the low-noise adapters, the increase in temperatures, were at a mere one-to-two degrees Celsius.

 

NaLoadTemp

 

The peak noise levels were recorded while performing the torture test. During the test on stock settings the meter recorded a dB level of 38 with a fan speed of 874 RPM. During the test with an overclock the meter recorded a dB level of 41 with a fan speed of 1026 RPM. As we can see the low-noise adapters reduced the RPM of the fans around 200-300. The adaptors do quiet the fans a reasonable amount and the loss in cooling performance is very minimal.

 

 

NadBs

 

 

There we have it! The NH-D15 brought to us by Noctua! Let us cover a few final thoughts and conclusion of our review.

 

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