In the day and age where AIO liquid coolers are common, it’s easy for one to forget how awesome air-cooling can be. The Noctua NH-D15 is one such cooler that costs practically the price of a high-end AIO cooler but it is able to perform much better as well!
Now before we look at the product, let’s have a look at the packaging. Noctua’s packaging is impressive, with components separated in brown boxes so you don’t get things mixed up.
The heatsink itself is huge, a twin-tower system with dual-140mm fans to push air across the fins and heatpipes.
Here are the details of the heatsink as seen on the official product page.
The NH-D15 comes packaged with 2 units of Noctua NF-A15 PWM fan, it’s a silent fan with rotation speed ranging from 300 RPM to 1500 RPM. At 1500 RPM the fan maxes out at 82.4 CFM.
The NH-D15 comes with pro-grade SecuFirm2â„¢ multi-socket mounting system and Noctua’s proven NT-H1 thermal compound and full 6 years manufacturer’s warranty,
The Benchmarks
The performance was tested on an Intel Core i5-4670K overclocked to 4.3Ghz at 1.25 vcore with room temperature set to 25°C and the system was tested with a 10bit to 8bit video conversion test. Below are the results.
| Cooler | Idle (°C) | Load (°C) |
| Noctua NH-D15 (normal) | 27 | 56 |
| Noctua NH-D15 (low) | 28 | 62 |
| Noctua NH-D15 (high) | 26 | 56 |
| Noctua NH-D15 (fanless) | 29 | 71 |
| CRYORIG R1 Universal | 26 | 64 |
| ID-Cooling FrostFlow 120L | 27 | 60 |
| ThermalTake Water 3.0 Ultimate | 30 | 61 |
| ThermalTake Water 3.0 Performer C | 32 | 60 |
| Stock Cooler | 33 | 79 |
The fan speed was configured via BIOS, the performance was impressive even on normal mode and it easily outperformed all the AIO systems compared. What’s more interesting is that the temperature reading remained the same despite running at highest RPM. This goes to show how good is the heatsink itself.
As if that’s not enough, the NH-D15 could even pass the test fanless – need I say more about the quality of the heatsink? It’s outstanding.
The Verdict
The Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler retails at RM 415, it’s not cheap but what you get is a cooler that puts AIO cooling systems to shame. Sure, it’s huge but there’s no need to worry about maintenance and it fits most casings as you need not worry about radiator placement. It’s so good you can even run it fanless, of course how well it cools depends on your processor and casing airflow.
