Noctua Announces $150 Flagship NH-D15 G2 CPU Coolers and NF-A14x25r G2 140mm Fans

[mechtech]

Can I get the cooler for $80, and you can keep the fans Noctua??

 

[Crackong]

I just want to know if the new fans worth the trouble.
I need 9 of those for the radiator

 

[sLowEnd]

620W heat dissipation
13900k (250W) at 49-55C max
7950X (180W) at 44-49C max

holy moly

The graphs are delta ambient, not actual core temps. Tack on about 20 degrees if you live in a typical room.

 

[#22]

Sorry I can view potential outcomes from more than a single viewpoint without having to resort personal attacks with no substance?

There was no personal attack, but your points being that bad and showing you lacking ability to value mentioned viewpoints. I'll explain:

For those that are less tech inclined/literate, and will rely on recommendations from more in the know sites/youtubers/etc…, more options when it comes to such a minute difference suddenly becomes 6-8c difference with wrong/opposite base type, with the potential to perform worse than coolers less than half the cost. Sub-models only serve to increase manf. costs, muddy buying decisions, incease returns, and leave a publicity hole for the “gamers-nexus minded” consumer to socially slam Noctua any chance they get.

Cooler in the first place is about performance and Noctua offers option to increase it with two alternative versions. You points were just trying hard to find something against it and going that low to use assumptions. People buying wrong versions and it resulting in worse performance or returns, so people not knowing what they are doing. Increasing manufacturing cost by you for sure know how much. Ending with total garbage of what, people complaning to GN? Now get how bad are your points, but it looks you are this kind of debater who even proven wrong wouldn't admit it, but would tell whatever trying hard to make it look like he isn't. Only stupid people do it and don't see it

You’ve already emphatically stated you think people trying to get the last few degrees for cooling is something to “laugh at”, seems you need to make up your mind on whether this is really a necessary segmentation.

Of course - such people make me laugh from them and there's nothing bad with it. Or maybe it's this awesome way of thinking when you shouldn't laugh from anything, because you may offend somebody?

Merely pointing out multiple base types can cause problems down the line, obsoleting a cooler if your one to chase those last few degrees. Or that retooling manf. equipment for subtle changes doesn’t add to cost saddled by the end user for potential pointless differences. And so on. Spend some time outside of your box.

Don't even use assumptions as a point, because it suggest that you're not too smart.

 

[Broken Processor]

I think they over shot on the price for everything that isn't a furnace you can use a 40 quid assassin cooler or some of the other new cooler's coming out. If I've the choice between this and an artic freezer 3 I'll go the 3. Not releasing a chromax at launch is dumb because tastes have changed and it's definitely the minority who like the puke brown now. I'm sure the loyal fanbase will buy plenty and can be assured they are getting a quality product, better be at that money.

 

[Vayra86]

£150?!?!?! Too much when so many air coolers perform great for a third of the price.

This is clearly the fools and money parted tax right here. This can't be branding related anymore.

Noctua has been relegated to my shitlist now. They weren't favorites already because frankly they offer nothing for their premium since the last half decade and longer. They got surpassed on all fronts, they're no longer special and shouldn't even command their OLD premium anymore.

It was nice knowing ya, Noctua. Find some other fools to sell to, I don't take kindly to being taken for a fool like this. 150 is a straight up insult to common sense for a block of alu and a few shit colored fans.

Fans have a tolerance of +-10% which makes things difficult to judge. Noctua's own graphs show only a 3ºC difference while pushing 250W (what intel rates the 14900k at) through the cooler, I see no need to upgrade at all as long as noctua keeps providing mounting hardware for future sockets.

It's a nice update if you're trying to min max your build, but I rather min max my wallet

I don't think there's any measurable min-maxing going on here, we're well into the margin of error territory already with the vast majority of double tower air cooling.

Like several other things, air cooling is done, innovation wise, there is merely further refinement which mostly results in side grades rather than upgrades. Noctua already needs heavily tweaked graphs to exaggerate their supposed advantages. I'm detecting a counter-intuitive move on their part. If anything, a refined product should be cheaper. Not more expensive. Or it should be better at the same price. How is it otherwise a better product?! What are they actually selling at that point? 'Better looks'? BeQuiet did a similar thing with their DRP. And with that, they immediately disqualified themselves as reasonable purchases. We're still buying a samey block of alu pierced with some heatpipes and with a fan stuck to it. You really need a LOT of cognitive dissonance at this point to pay more than $50,- for anything like that.

 

[freeagent]

I hope this thing survives the hype train..

 

[Upgrayedd]

I just want to know if the new fans worth the trouble.
I need 9 of those for the radiator

Get the 3000RPM 140mm Noctuas.

This is clearly the fools and money parted tax right here. This can't be branding related anymore.

Noctua has been relegated to my shitlist now. They weren't favorites already because frankly they offer nothing for their premium since the last half decade and longer. They got surpassed on all fronts, they're no longer special and shouldn't even command their OLD premium anymore.

It was nice knowing ya, Noctua. Find some other fools to sell to, I don't take kindly to being taken for a fool like this. 150 is a straight up insult to common sense for a block of alu and a few shit colored fans.


I don't think there's any measurable min-maxing going on here, we're well into the margin of error territory already with the vast majority of double tower air cooling.

Like several other things, air cooling is done, innovation wise, there is merely further refinement which mostly results in side grades rather than upgrades. Noctua already needs heavily tweaked graphs to exaggerate their supposed advantages. I'm detecting a counter-intuitive move on their part. If anything, a refined product should be cheaper. Not more expensive. Or it should be better at the same price. How is it otherwise a better product?! What are they actually selling at that point? 'Better looks'? BeQuiet did a similar thing with their DRP. And with that, they immediately disqualified themselves as reasonable purchases. We're still buying a samey block of alu pierced with some heatpipes and with a fan stuck to it. You really need a LOT of cognitive dissonance at this point to pay more than $50,- for anything like that.

You seen anything going for the same price it did 5 years ago? I definitely wasn't expecting the SAME price. $150 is rather high
I would like to see a fanless or single fan version come out that you can put your own fans on and save a few bucks.

Also the old D15 runs like 9db quieter than the Thermalright.

 

[#22]

I hope this thing survives the hype train..

It's not likely for few reasons:

CPU cooling market got different than it was when pioneer dual tower D14 launched or one we had when D15 landed. Thanks to popularization and refining of compact dual fan coolers, biggest such ones lost much of their edge and their domination got pushed into territory of highest loads where their mass starts to matter more. On the other hand loads where air coolers are no match for water.

It's hard to judge basing only on Noctua's performance data comparing it with D15, but to me it looks like G2 is gonna more make up noise efficiency lacks of outdated here D15 than getting obviously expected edge over all competition. Relatively slow fans (1500 rpm) won't help too, but I always stand for sensible approach here. Promising is slide where they compare both in hard to imagine temperature normalized scenario and G2 is able to keep the same temp with handling 160W more.

My bet is at best G2 winning with them all on some stupid high for air cooling loads (250W+). On the other hand it's exactly what man should expect from a heavy weight dual tower, but also typically their edge grows the lower we go with fan noise. In the end the price will make it product only for ones likely to pay that premium for what Noctua does better than any competition. Simply the strongest cooler in their offer.

 

[R0H1T]

For all the Noctua fans, no pun intended, all of a sudden it looks like one of the most important factors doesn't matter anymore? Ambient temps ~ the reason liquid cooling is obviously so much better is because "H2O" & why investing in a better "case" with much better airflow would yield arguably vastly superior results! I'd rather get a $50~60 cooler & spend the rest on a bigger/better case than feed Noctua their brand value

The part about air cooling being safer & almost ever lasting would still apply though.

 

[fevgatos]

For all the Noctua fans, no pun intended, all of a sudden it looks like one of the most important factors doesn't matter anymore? Ambient temps ~ the reason liquid cooling is obviously so much better is because "H2O" & why investing in a better "case" with much better airflow would yield arguably vastly superior results! I'd rather get a $50~60 cooler & spend the rest on a bigger/better case than feed Noctua their brand value

The part about air cooling being safer & almost ever lasting would still apply though.

Why not both? Get a good airflow cooler and a high end air cooler, boom

 

[Wasteland]

The usual over-long, excruciatingly detailed, and frankly somewhat self-indulgent GN review--but I appreciate the effort that went into it, even so. The gist is that the cooler is underwhelming. That's my judgment, not GN's. It performs well, but not so much better than near competitors, including its own predecessor, to justify the price premium. Also I find the whole pick-your-cold-plate's-convexity scheme needlessly fussy, but YMMV.

 

[wolar]

The usual over-long, excruciatingly detailed, and frankly somewhat self-indulgent GN review--but I appreciate the effort that went into it, even so. The gist is that the cooler is underwhelming. That's my judgment, not GN's. It performs well, but not so much better than near competitors, including its own predecessor, to justify the price premium. Also I find the whole pick-your-cold-plate's-convexity scheme needlessly fussy, but YMMV.

For the ones that do not believe what i said (@dirtyferret ) , go to 15:00 and look at the overwhelming benefit an AIO has, while being 40% cheaper.
You don't care about the money? put that 40% into better fans, the AIO utterly destroys ANY air cooler.

 

[Vayra86]

Okay, okay its not entirely worthless this upgrade. Still, knock a good 70 dollars off okay Noctua?

 

[rv8000]

I may be wrong here but I thought it was known Intel would be making their chips so the die or dies would be in a rectangular fashion under the heat spreader? And they'd be sticking to the single lever ILM, which would continue with the convex design. Which is how the long standing D15 has always been shaped for, it isn't flat.

Entirely possible, yes. It’s more if you change platforms/brands, or regularly have other pc’s you'd move the cooler to while benching/testing. Definitely a potential downside if you pick one of the specialized base plate models.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Had a full custom loop previously, just not a fan of AIO's, its poor mans water cooling. Either custom loop or air cooler imo. Agree with me or not, don't care, it's my opinion. I now prefer air cooling, simple, nothing to go wrong apart from maybe a fan failing. Even after having super low temps with my custom loop, i am not bothered if my stuff runs a bit hotter, as long as it's within throttle temp, what does it matter.

 

[Wasteland]

The usual over-long, excruciatingly detailed, and frankly somewhat self-indulgent GN review--but I appreciate the effort that went into it, even so. The gist is that the cooler is underwhelming. That's my judgment, not GN's. It performs well, but not so much better than near competitors, including its own predecessor, to justify the price premium. Also I find the whole pick-your-cold-plate's-convexity scheme needlessly fussy, but YMMV.

Worth mentioning that Steve hasn't yet tested the Phantom Spirit, which may tie this new Noctua cooler.

The charitable inference is that Noctua painted itself into a corner with the pricing on the NH-D15 G2, because it includes two of their new super-duper premium fans, which they expect to sell for ~$40 apiece. Thus, the new fans alone almost account for the price difference between the old NH-D15 and the new one, but the old one was already arguably overpriced--and I say that as someone who owns one and likes it. Overall, and to echo Vayra86, I'm very bearish on Noctua lately. Their business model was always slanted towards brand-name recognition, customer service, and build quality, and that was fine as long as they could also boast tangible advantages, but their tangibles have taken major hits from competitors in recent years. In response, it seems Noctua's doubled down on boutique appeal, maneuvering towards Apple-esque aspirational/lifestyle branding. Their recent foray into ludicrously overpriced office fans is confirmation enough. That campaign honestly read to me as self-parody.

But hey, at least now Noctua finally has a legit top-tier 140mm fan, to go along with their world class A12x25. The question is how much the new fans' advantages actually matter. At the end of the day, and above a certain relatively low performance threshold, fans just aren't that interesting. Even if we stipulate that the new best-in-class Noctua fans are worth every penny, Noctua's been selling, and presumably will continue to sell, deeply mediocre products in the tier just below them. That's probably my main beef, ATM. Fair enough if the cutting edge $35+ Noctua models are only 10-15% better than a bargain basement Arctic fan; that's life in the tech lane, reliability factors, etc--but meanwhile, the ~$20 Noctua offerings are simply worse in every measurable way than fans that cost half as much.

 

[dgianstefani]

For the ones that do not believe what i said (@dirtyferret ) , go to 15:00 and look at the overwhelming benefit an AIO has, while being 40% cheaper.
You don't care about the money? put that 40% into better fans, the AIO utterly destroys ANY air cooler.

Air competes against air, custom liquid competes against custom liquid, AIOs compete against other AIOs (for those willing to accept a ~3-6 year useful lifespan). Gradually you suffer increased noise, decreased thermal performance, and the pump eventually dying, since continual permeation of the liquid even within sealed systems is a simple fact of physics, and these systems are not designed to be refilled. Even if you did refill them, pumps are cooled by the actual coolant and typically underpowered, so those will go, eventually. Manufacturers see fit to give 1-6 year warranties, depending, because most users will not intensely use their system, an hour or two of gaming every day and your AIO should be fine for at least three years, maybe even five or longer, this is a calculated estimate.

Servers use air, immersion or custom liquid, with powerful pumps. Consoles use air cooling too, and even the PS5 which uses a liquid metal application that most would deem rather enthusiast, still sticks to air cooling.

There are also good reasons why enterprise, experienced or professional users use air or custom loops, not AIOs. You eventually get burned.

Something something there's no such thing as a free lunch. The compromise you're making with an AIO is lifespan (and noise from the pump working close to 100%).

 

[fevgatos]

Air competes against air, custom liquid competes against custom liquid, AIOs compete against other AIOs (for those willing to accept a ~3-6 year useful lifespan). Gradually you suffer increased noise, decreased thermal performance, and the pump eventually dying, since continual permeation of the liquid even within sealed systems is a simple fact of physics, and these systems are not designed to be refilled. Even if you did refill them, pumps are cooled by the actual coolant and typically underpowered, so those will go, eventually. Manufacturers see fit to give 1-6 year warranties, depending, because most users will not intensely use their system, an hour or two of gaming every day and your AIO should be fine for at least three years, maybe even five or longer, this is a calculated estimate.

Servers use air, immersion or custom liquid, with powerful pumps. Consoles use air cooling too, and even the PS5 which uses a liquid metal application that most would deem rather enthusiast, still sticks to air cooling.

There are also good reasons why enterprise, experienced or professional users use air or custom loops, not AIOs. You eventually get burned.

Something something there's no such thing as a free lunch. The compromise you're making with an AIO is lifespan (and noise from the pump working close to 100%).

I went from an aio to an air cooler for non of the reasons you mentioned. There is another major issue with aios that nobody pays attention to. Goddamn airflow. A huge radiator that blocks either your intake our your outtake. It will work fine when you have a moderate card, but with the 3090 I was using at the time an aio was just not an option. I had to choose between my cpu cooking or my gpu cooking. Switched to a U12A and lo and behold, the whole system was running much, much, much cooler during gaming.

Unless you put both your cpu and gpu on water, aio is just meh

 

[FoulOnWhite]

I went from an aio to an air cooler for non of the reasons you mentioned. There is another major issue with aios that nobody pays attention to. Goddamn airflow. A huge radiator that blocks either your intake our your outtake. It will work fine when you have a moderate card, but with the 3090 I was using at the time an aio was just not an option. I had to choose between my cpu cooking or my gpu cooking. Switched to a U12A and lo and behold, the whole system was running much, much, much cooler during gaming.

Unless you put both your cpu and gpu on water, aio is just meh

For best cooling of both GPU and CPU a custom loop is best hands down. Neither my GPU or CPU went over 45c gaming, nothing is gonna beat that. Just cba with the hassle and risk anymore having killed a board and 1080ti in the past. I like the fact i can leave my PC on and go out knowing it's gonna be ok. Can't guarentee that with either a custom loop or AIO, so i will now stick with air.

Having looked at Steves review of the G2, i thinks my G15s black is still good enough for me for now, not speding £127 for 3 degrees lower. I do think it is a good cooler and according to the review, is the best air cooler, just not for the price.

 

[dirtyferret]

For the ones that do not believe what i said (@dirtyferret ) , go to 15:00 and look at the overwhelming benefit an AIO has, while being 40% cheaper.
You don't care about the money? put that 40% into better fans, the AIO utterly destroys ANY air cooler.

You are creating a discussion no one here has started. @dgianstefani already answered your points so I'm not going to rephrase what he just said but I will repeat myself

The U12A is designed for cases that can't fit an air cooler over 160mm, not to compete with AIO 360 but interesting your one experience (based on false understanding of the product on your part) covers the industry.

 

[fevgatos]

For best cooling of both GPU and CPU a custom loop is best hands down. Neither my GPU or CPU went over 45c gaming, nothing is gonna beat that. Just cba with the hassle and risk anymore having killed a board and 1080ti in the past. I like the fact i can leave my PC on and go out knowing it's gonna be ok. Can't guarentee that with either a custom loop or AIO, so i will now stick with air.

Having looked at Steves review of the G2, i thinks my G15s black is still good enough for me for now, not speding £127 for 3 degrees lower. I do think it is a good cooler and according to the review, is the best air cooler, just not for the price.

Yeah, when I had both cpu and gpu on water, everything was perfect. As soon as I got my 3090 it was running on air in an o11 case. And oh boy, I started noticing some crazy cpu temps while gaming. 85c+. I tried pinpointing the problem and then it hit me, all the freaking hot air from the 3090 is getting exhausted from the cpu AIO. Swapped to the U12A and the cpu was back down to 60c. Best 110$ I've ever spent

 

[R0H1T]

When you're talking about compromises you do that everywhere ~ with a D14, D15 or D15s you risk cracking the mobo PCB with that kind of a weight. Even if it survives, with proper handling, you're still putting a massive amount of stress on the PCB. Space is also an issue, even with this mild monstrosity I can't use every big tower cooler out there! Then of course temps, with AIO your entire system would generally run cooler & probably last longer. Less Si degradation & what not. There's a reason people, like me, switched from massive bulky air coolers to AIO. I went from Deepcool air to XPG AIO.

Why not both? Get a good airflow cooler and a high end air cooler, boom

Or save something for your wallet? Noctua's probably done a great job, as always, but not $50~100 worth of it IMO & like most users out there I would chase better VFM. Slightly disappointed they haven't tried to bring down the prices of their best products over the years. Sure you can expect higher prices at the start with having to recoup R&D, labour costs et al but they've only grown more & more expensive here!

 

[fevgatos]

When you're talking about compromises you do that everywhere ~ with a D14, D15 or D15s you risk cracking the mobo PCB with that kind of a weight. Even if it survives, with proper handling, you're still putting a massive amount of stress on the PCB. Space is also an issue, even with this mild monstrosity I can't use every big tower cooler out there! Then of course temps, with AIO your entire system would generally run cooler & probably last longer. Less Si degradation & what not. There's a reason people, like me, switched from massive bulky air coolers to AIO. I went from Deepcool air to XPG AIO.

Or save something for your wallet? Noctua's probably done a great job, as always, but not $50~100 worth of it IMO & like most users out there I would chase better VFM. Slightly disappointed they haven't tried to bring down the prices of their best products over the years. Sure you can expect higher prices at the start with having to recoup R&D, labour costs et al but they've only grown more & more expensive here!

Well, the d15 g2 costs what it does because noctua actually tried to bring the costs down. The original plan was for the whole fan to be made of lcp. To translate it to $, you'd probably be looking at 60$ per fan, 120 in total without the heatsink, lol.

 

[R0H1T]

noctua actually tried to bring the costs down.

Which is not good enough in this economy & if you want to flaunt the $$$$ like you did last time go ahead.