Final Thoughts
If you have not heard of Noctua by now you really should. In my opinion they have the best air coolers on the market, period! Not only in terms of performance, but when it comes to ease of installation, quality and extras they provide. If anyone is in the market for a new air cooler they first thing I tell them is get a Noctua you won’t be disappointed.
As I said in this review this is a massive cooler! It has two large aluminum heatsink stacks paired with six copper heatpipes and dual Noctua NF-A15 140 mm fans. This combination gives it some of the best performance that we have seen from an air cooler, more than likely even better than some all-in-one watercooling systems. Of course with a large CPU cooler like this you are going to want to make sure that it will actually fit in your system.
You would think that with such a large cooler like this installation would be a complete pain in the ass, but it really is not. Noctua uses their patented SecuFirm2 mounting system that they have used on previous coolers in the past and it only took a few minutes to get this cooler installed. More than likely you can install this cooler with your motherboard inside of your case. I was actually concerned that the installation on this cooler would take me forever, but when I saw how easy it was I was relieved.
The only real issue with this cooler is that you might run into clearance issues. First when it comes to your memory. I had the second fan sitting right on top of my memory, which uses normal-sized heatspreaders. Keep in mind you can actually use the NH-D15 with only the center fan installed and you have the option to install the second fan either on the back or front of the cooler. You can also add a third cooling fan for even more performance. Also it will block your first PCI-Express slot, normally a PCI-Express x1 slot, not a graphics card slot.
Right now the NH-D15 can be had for $94.99 at my favorite online retailer, making it one expensive air cooler. You can get some watercooling systems for that much, but they do offer the same performance or even less and they actually can be louder. Keep in mind the fans with the NH-D15 also come with low-noise adapters.
At the end of the day the NH-D15 sets the bar for air coolers in terms of performance and ease of use. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award.
Pros:
– Amazing cooling performance
– Easy installation
– Quality made
– Fan can be installed in the front or back
– Quite quiet for a large cooler
Cons:
– Could run into RAM clearance issues
– Blocks the first PCI-Express slot
– Price
