Top Tier CPU Air Coolers Q3 2015: 9-Way Roundup Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 6, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Noctua NH-D15
Noctua is one of the world's most renowned cooler manufacturers. The company is especially well known for their high end and specialty products, aimed to those seeking extreme performance and or very low noise solutions. The cooler that the company provided us for this review is no other than the NH-D15, a behemoth based on the highly popular NH-D14.
The NH-D15 is supplied in a large cardboard box with a minimalistic, elegant design. Highlighting the main features of the cooler is the primary focus of the entire artwork. Inside the main box, we found the bundle packed into separate cardboard boxes and the cooler protected within a polyethylene foam construct. The bundle consists of the hardware necessary for the mounting of the cooler, an L type Philips PH2 screwdriver, a fan power cable splitter, two fan speed reducers, a tube of NT-H1 thermal grease, a metallic case badge, four rubber fan mounts and four wire clips for the two cooling fans.
Many people erroneously think that the NH-D15 is just a little larger version of the very popular NH-D14. The NH-D15 is a reverse-symmetric dual tower design based on the NH-D14, but there are numerous improvements. Noctua technically merged the core design of the NH-D14 with the fin design of the NH-U14S, which has the first seven fins of each tower shortened. This way, the NH-D15 can offer much wider compatibility with RAM modules if only the center fan is installed.
The rest of the fins are symmetric, meaning that both their sides are identical, which is mostly straight with a single small triangular notch at the center and a few more similar notches near the sides. In order to install/remove the NH-D15, the center fan needs to be removed. Another interesting point is that the fans can be moved upwards, several centimeters if needed be. Moving the front fan upward can allow the installation of tall RAM modules for a small impact on performance but it also requires a very wide case to do so.
Noctua provides two of their own NF-A15 140 mm fans alongside the NH-D15. Their brown/beige color is Noctua's trademark and unique to Noctua's products (or copies of them). These are very high quality fans, with SSO2 bearings (advanced liquid lubricated metallic bearings with magnetic stabilizers), rubber anti-vibration pads and ridged blades for airflow manipulation. For those that do not want to install the second fan on the cooler, because either they need to retain compatibility with certain RAM modules or they are simply satisfied with the performance of a single fan, Noctua provides rubber mounts for the installation of one NF-A15 as a case fan.
The base of the NH-D15 is relatively small in comparison to that of other coolers, yet obviously large enough to cover the entire surface of current CPUs. Most of the base is made out of copper, with steel parts used for retention, all nickel plated, along with the copper heatpipes as well. There are "only" six 6 mm heatpipes, the same number and size as with the older NH-D14, as Noctua clearly does not believe that enlarging the base and adding more heatpipes would make a notable performance difference. The contact surface is smooth and fairly well polished but not machined down to a perfect mirror finish.
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zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Someone should test for this. It is quite plausible as it will take time to increase the temperature of water/coolant in the system. Yet, for longer and continuous loads, surface area matters to dump heat in the environment which AIO coolers has less to a similarly priced Big Air cooler which shows in benchmarks.Navvie - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Pretty good.It'd be nice if there was a base line (say intel's current stock cooler) and an AIO water cooler to show the difference between a top tier air cooler and what many consider to be the next step.
One point, SPCR always test each cooler with a 'reference' fan, making it easier to compare the heatsink's efficiency. Can't help but feel you didn't complete the task you set out to by levelling the playing field with your simulated CPU heat source.
maximumGPU - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Great roundup! i for one still believe high end air a good alternative to water if you want dead silence.What i still can't understand is how can Nocuta get away with shipping the most expensive air cooler, likely to be used by enthusiasts who care about aesthetics, with the most hideous fan colours?
'nar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua colors are odd, but I think it forces you to consider performance more than aesthetics. They do look nice, but not "cool" - no pun in tended.Dead silence basically depends on how much heat you need to dissipate, temperature of ambient air, surface area of fins/radiator, air flow, and heat transfer capability of the cooler. Or more basically, how easily you can transfer heat from CPU to the air. Water increases the efficiency of heat transfer, so once you reach a certain power level they will overtake HSF's. They will never be as quite as a good HSF, at least not on low-power CPU's that arguably do not need anything but the stock cooler to begin with.
xthetenth - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua gets away with those colors entirely because they're Noctua. Yes they're not pretty colors, but unlike nice bright/garish colors they are an unmistakable sign that they're the best or at least tied for best.piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Your keyboard seems to have a problem, you've typed "hideous" when clearly "fantastic" would be better. Noctua fans are neat.Beaver M. - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Well, serious people are more likely to buy Noctua anyway. And no serious user cares about what the fans look like, and even if they did, they would still take the Noctua, since you can CLEARLY see the extremely high quality they are just by looking at them. Windows in cases and other stupid bling bling is for the PC-ricer gang. They only choose after looks anyway, and dont care if their fans make noises from day one.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Excellent review of what seem to be very good HSFs throughout (but then again, you did ask them to send their best).A comparison with the stock Intel cooler as supplied with something like the 4790K would be nice, as that is what any expense on a third-party cooler must be compared against. How would the stock-cooler compare at 340W? I was very impressed with the degC/W figures for all those coolers; it almost makes 340W seem an amount of heat that can be dealt with, though I'm thinking it's crazy.
As well as the stock-cooler from a highish end CPU, one or two commonly used AIO liquid-coolers needs to be added to provided a second comparison point, as these high-end air-coolers are presumably expected to be near, possibly even better than a liquid AIO.
I love the fact you are using a properly designed heating rig, and your comprehensive review, but I came away thinking: they're good! But I've no idea how much better they are than the stock cooler, or how any of them would compare with the liquid AIOs also available, both in terms of cooling or noise.
Sivar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
This is probably the best CPU cooler article I've read (and I read such articles when Anandtech when it was on Geocities).Excellent writing, useful measurements, and a cogent conclusion. Thank you, Emmanouil!
orangesky - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
SilentPcReview just posted a review of the new Scythe Ninja 4: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1462-page1.ht... The review includes some good comparison tables with many of the popular air & water coolers.Sounds like a pretty decent option, and probably the best Ninja since the original.