Conclusion
Performance
The NH-D15 cooler performs up to Noctua's promises, delivering top performance in most cases even against water coolers without the noise normally associated with high performance air coolers. It does falter a bit when running the cooler fans with the LNA cables in conjunction with an overclocked Haswell processor. However, the system remained stable even under those conditions with some minor CPU throttling evident only.
Pricing
As of September 14, the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler was available at Newegg.com for $99.99, as well as Amazon.com for $93.99 with Prime shipping.
Conclusion
With the NH-D15 cooler, Noctua took the design of their popular NH-D14 cooler and tweaked it for high performance and better board compatibility. The build quality and design of the NH-D15 is excellent, as we've come to expect from Noctua, with all copper surfaces nickel-plated for corrosion and scratch resistance. Further, the nickel-plating gives the cooler a chromed appearance, consistent with its shiny aluminum twin radiators. In implementing the NH-D15, Noctua cut cross-sections out of the lower outside of both cooling towers, giving the unit better compatibility with most board designs including the LGA2011 boards with DIMM slots on both sides of the CPU socket. They compensated for this surface area loss in the radiator by pairing the unit with two if its AF-15 140mm fans. There mounting system remains one of the easiest to use as well, so no complaints there.
As I've stated in previous reviews of Noctua units, the one down side of this unit is the price. For the premium price you pay for this unit, you could purchase an equivalent liquid-based all-in-one cooler. However, you do not have to worry about leaking coolant with the Noctua, and its premium price is more than justified by its performance and build quality.
Strengths
- Performance under all operating CPU and fan conditions
- Build and machining quality of the cooler
- Size compatibility with most motherboard configurations
- Fan noise in all tested configuration
- Manual quality
Weaknesses
- Price
Haswell results are
Haswell results are suprising; the D15 is (slightly) outperformed by the U14, which is basically half of D14. Maybe some kind of mounting issue?
Pricing is not really much of a weakness when it outperforms more expensive AIOs.
I would like to see how it performs with a higher power CPU like LGA2011 or AMD.
The following is probably
The following is probably splitting hairs, but for a cooler on the upper end of performance and price, every detail is worth consideration. For example, there is some evidence that shows heat pipes work more efficiently in vertical versus horizontal orientations. For this cooler, I like that (when used with an Intel CPU, not sure about AMD) the orientation of the heat pipes allow the length of the actual CPU core located beneath the IHS to sit perpendicular to the axis of the heat pipes that pass through the base plate while also directing air flow in the typical front to back pattern. The IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader), lid, cap, slug, or w/e you want to call it is pretty much square, but the actual Intel CPU package hiding underneath it is an elongated rectangle. This relative perpendicular arrangement allows the CPU core to conduct heat more directly and evenly to all 6 of those heat pipes instead of mainly just the middle 2.
The Hyper212 EVO is not in the same league, but is a solid performer because it has direct contact heat pipes which also span most of the width of it’s base. However, it unfortunately has the heat pipes aligned parallel to the actual CPU core when installed in the typical front to back air flow orientation. This is why I eventually rotated mine 90 degrees so now the CPU core spans under all 4 heat pipes. The tradeoff is that it moves air vertically like a chimney and exhausts out of the top of my tower case.
Of course relative performance all depends on the particular case, fans, installed cards, and their orientations. Anecdotally, I can say it performs maybe a degree better like this despite a hot GPU being uncomfortably close to the Hyper212’s intake. But hey, it is essentially a chance for free performance. I should also add that my case has bottom and front intake fans with top and rear exhaust fans so there is a fairly coherent vertical component to air flow in my case already.