Performance
Performance has been tested on Intel i7 6700K processor and ASRock Z170 OC Formula motherboard. I decided on i7 CPU for tests which has much higher TDP than Noctua NH-L9i has in specification just to check how it works comparing to other coolers and to find out if it also supports higher processors. I assume that all who are interested in this cooler already saw reviews based on lower TDP processors so let’s make something a bit different.
One thing which I wish to add is that Intel reference cooler actually passed 100°C and motherboard was shutting down so actual temperature will be much higher than what you see in the table.
You may think it doesn’t look so good but as I mentioned, for tests has been used i7 6700K CPU which was working at 1.15V. It’s enough for better samples to run at 4.2GHz. Maximum temperature is maybe too high for daily work but i5 series CPUs should work fine on Noctua NH-L9i as their TDP is 65W.
There is one more thing I wish to add. Even though temperature was high, fan was still not so loud as we could expect. Maximum fan speed was slightly above 2500RPM what is already generating some noise. However up to about 1500 RPM fan is quiet. Fan was reaching 1500 RPM at about 70°C. As we can see in the table, even when we were using i7 processor, temperature during mixed load was no more than 64°C and for most of the time even close to 50°C. It’s about what you can expect in games and on lower TDP processors it will be of course less.
Quick conclusion after tests can be that Noctua NH-L9i is offering better performance than 65W TDP processors require to run cool and quiet. At the same time it’s not the best cooler for overclocking. It wasn’t designed for overclocking but if you decide to play with Pentium or i3 on motherboards which let you to overclock these processors then you will probably pass 4GHz without issues keeping low enough temperature and quiet work.
Below one more photo of compact platform which can be used for games.
