Noctua NH-D15 G2

[umeng2002]

"Coolers 1/3 the price offer 98% of the performance"

That says it all, unfortunately.

 

[sLowEnd]

Noctua have never been about value. This is the best air cooler you can buy and the graphs confirm it. You can't use more than 1 cooler on a CPU, so the amount of coolers you can get for this is somewhat irrelevant. This cooler was never going to be about value, it was about Noctua engineering the very best air cooler, and they achieved that.

You're paying for the engineering that has gone into making this the best air cooler you can buy(R&D isn't cheap). You're also paying for top notch customer support, and if the past is anything to go by, future socket support at no-cost. That being said, this costs a bit too much with how close to the competition it is. I think a more reasonable price would be $100-130, and I think it'll get down to that ~$130 within the year.

In the early days at least, Noctua wasn't a huge amount more expensive than competing products.

The NH-U12P for example, was priced in line with coolers like the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and the Prolimatech Megahalems

 

[Lesha]

@crazyeyesreaper The offset mount results for an AMD cpu would be great, that should bring the temperature down a couple of degrees.

 

[ymdhis]

Don't care much for this, it's simply too big and expensive. But then it is a flagship product where you pay 3x the price for 2% more performance. Most of the cost is in the great fans and Noctua's support anyhow.

I'm more interested in getting the standalone fan, it's not in stock locally right now and I'm not ordering it from fucking Amazon. The old A14 G1 fans were pretty bad (the A12s outperformed them), but according to the tests at hardware busters, the A14 G2 is the best in every metric except maybe having too high power usage.
Also, when will they release the A12 G2? I'm hoping for that one to be a killer too.

If I had to get an all new cooling setup, I'd go for the ID-Cooling SE-207 XT SLIM and see if it's possible to mate it with the round frame A12x25r... it's only 135mm tall that way, great for SFF builds, and from the reviews I've seen it trades blows with the U12A which is insane. Noctua has no 135mm max height offering that uses 120mm fans...

 

[sLowEnd]

If I had to get an all new cooling setup, I'd go for the ID-Cooling SE-207 XT SLIM and see if it's possible to mate it with the round frame A12x25r... it's only 135mm tall that way, great for SFF builds, and from the reviews I've seen it trades blows with the U12A which is insane. Noctua has no 135mm max height offering that uses 120mm fans...

The cooler is pretty small, but you could feasibly use standard 120mm fans on an NH-L12S. If you don't mind 140mm fans, the NH-C14S is 115mm tall if you mount the fan on the underside.

 

[Chaitanya]

What exactly do you like in Deepcool, so that you didn't mention Arctic, for instance?

Comparing Apples to Apples(Deepcool tower cooler) and not Apples to Oranges(AIOs)

 

[ymdhis]

The cooler is pretty small, but you could feasibly use standard 120mm fans on an NH-L12S. If you don't mind 140mm fans, the NH-C14S is 115mm tall if you mount the fan on the underside.

I'm aware of those options, thanks, but they are all for lower profiles, they are all top-down coolers, and they all have significantly weaker performance. At 135mm max, Noctua only has "tower coolers" that use 90mm fans. Their smallest profile tower cooler with 120mm fans is the D12L and that's already 145mm, won't fit in cases where the maximum size is 135mm.
The SE-207 XT SLIM uses a 120mm fan, has a TDP of ~220W and according to the Tweaktown review, it's within single percentages of the U12A and even the D15 G1. And that's with the stock fan, let alone a A12x25 or even the upcoming A12x25 G2 that they showed off on Computex. This may be a niche category but Noctua has nothing to offer there, other than fan upgrades.

Actually, I'd love to see this Slim cooler reviewed by Techpowerup. The only available review so far is from Tweaktown.

 

[Launcestonian]

It certainly is an interesting product for enthusiasts while most will be better served with Deepcool and Thermalright.

Yes, I see space problems with certain motherboards & their VRM heatsinks getting in the way. I know my Asrock X670E Steel Legend could have issues with this cooler.

 

[ARF]

Comparing Apples to Apples(Deepcool tower cooler) and not Apples to Oranges(AIOs)

At least, DeepCool is a Chinese company, and my TLR PS 120 EVO is also made in China.

 

[Camm]

Whilst I can certainly appreciate everything that went into this, honestly this just reinforces how insane Thermalright is right now

 

[Minus Infinity]

Since I bought my original DH-15 for about 10 years ago, prices have basically tripled to G2 in Australia. I get gains on air cooling are now limited barring some radical new material science developments, but this is a bit silly. It's like $50000 speakers, sure you can, but why would you.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

Noctua has today no real technical advantage in cooling and their products face a huge competition from air coolers and AIO water coolers. If they decide to go the route of increasing the prices and pretending that their Taiwan made products are something special, they will gradually shrink and then cease to exist.

I personally would take an AIO over the huge and motherboard breaking air cooler goliath any time.

 

[Icon Charlie]

We need vapour chambers and elongated heat pipes with S-form, in order to increase to cooling capacity up to 400-500 watts.
This cooler here is only capable of max 250 watts (in AMD's case), and max 325 watts (in intel's case).

I understand this part and have cut into a few of them (not just recently) just because but the medium to cause the actual "vapor aspect" have probably changed over the years. So yes I agree with you on that aspect of tech improvement.

My second oldest PC part is Case Cooler Master HAF XB my third is sound card Asus Xonar DX

Excellent components.

 

[_JP_]

I'd like to see a test with the old d15 fans on the new G2 and the new fans on the old d15 just to see where exactly the most improvement was made. I'd also love to see a 3000rpm ippc fan test with the cooler.

This. Especially the ippc fans, where as one is already coughing-up the dough for extra-performance metal, going for fans that really take advantage of the dissipation ought to bring those thermal limits way up.

 

[MaMoo]

I have the G1 and it was much much cheaper than the G2. I think I will look elsewhere when I need another cooler.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

@crazyeyesreaper The offset mount results for an AMD cpu would be great, that should bring the temperature down a couple of degrees.

The offset mounting option is the default option and specifically mentioned in the installation manual. As such the model was tested as specified in said manual. The review has been updated to reflect that.

installation page has a photo from the manual detailing the offset: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/noctua-nh-d15-g2-cpu-cooler/4.html


The conclusion was also updated to make that clear.

 

[OneWithMisery]

Torx is a good thing in my opinion, harder to fuck them up like Phillips head screws.

 

[Knight47]

Is this like the D15S? I cant seem to find measurements

 

[rv8000]

Is this like the D15S? I cant seem to find measurements

 

[systemBuilder]

My first three cooler purchases were Noctua U14S's (for my son's computers). Back in those days 2016- 2020 there was nothing like it! But since that time a range of RGB coolers has become very very competitive and they run very quietly! My most recent purchase was the thermal right phantom Spirit 120 in RGB for $41. I installed it on my 5950 system which was running at average CPU benchmark speeds with ID cooling SE-224 and the system instantly ran 6% faster!

I'm afraid that noctua has lost its way! Their double coolers are priced for an era when there were no serious competitors! Today there are so many alternatives I don't think that noctua can charge more than twice the price of the phantom spirit cooler!

Perhaps they should rename "Noctua" as "Coastua"?

 

[Han44]

„Rattlegate” problem for 150 euro

 

[Case39]

Any plans to review the Corsair A115?

 

[BoggledBeagle]

„Rattlegate” problem for 150 euro

Beside the fin buzzing I also noticed another problem, whole body of the cooler with both fans running starts vibrating - this vibratory ringing has peaks a few times per second:

.... I also noticed a buzzing sound coming from one of the fins with high fan speeds. With both fans running (not with either fan running alone) there was also a mechanichal ringing (2 or 3 times per second) coming from the cooler body, not acoustical.

I thought that the loose fin may be a problem of just my sample, but the body vibrations is probably a fundamental problem caused by the heatpipe stiffness. Both finstacks are just weights on heatpipe springs. While excited by both fans in the same time, they start vibrating.

 

[Vario]

Noctua: Poop color $ premium.

 

[Knight47]

View attachment 355586

I meant this

Is it moved 8mm to one side for more gpu backplate clearance?