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 CoolerMaster 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.
In the graph below we see the idle temperatures for both stock and overclock. The NH-L9x65 is right in the middle and shows really good cooling capabilities at idle but remember these are idle temperatures and the fan on the Noctua NH-L9x65 is merely spinning 800 rpm and the fan noise is hardly noticeable.
Caution: The NH-L9x65 is a highly-compact low-profile quiet cooler designed for use in small form factor cases and HTPC environments. While it provides first rate performance in its class, it is not suitable for overclocking and should be used with care on CPUs with more than 84W TDP (Thermal Design Power). Please consult our TDP guidelines to find out whether the NH-L9x65 is recommended for your CPU. The caution is direct advice from Noctua. This cooler like most compact coolers there are limitations. I went ahead and clocked my processor and ran the test as usual. Needless to say I stopped the test early on the overclock test. The max temperature I recorded was 63. For such a small cooler the temperatures are definitely respectable but do not expect the L9x65 to handle an overclock.
One thing Noctua offers to help eliminate some of the noise is a low-noise adapter, which basically limits the volts sent to your cooler and limits the RPM at which the fan will spin. As you can see from the results limiting the fans RPM may not be the best idea as the temperatures did get pretty high and we could use all the fan speed we can get.
There we have it! The NH-L9x65 brought to us by Noctua! Let us cover a few final thoughts and conclusion of our review.
