Finished Looks

Noctuas NH-D15 is one hell of a behemoth, even for a dual-tower cooler. It makes the standard ATX motherboard I used in my test system seem rather small by comparison.


As with any Noctua cooler, the colors clash with the motherboard's color scheme, but who cares? This is a product of topnotch quality, and, well, I only care a little about its awkward combination of colors. It's rather hard to make Noctua's coolers fit an overall theme, but such quality trumps looks.


With such a large cooler, clearance does suffer a bit around the socket, but users should have no real issues connecting their EPS12V cable.


Like most coolers of late, the Noctua NH-D15 blocks the first expansion slot on the test system's MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming motherboard. This is due to the NH-D15's 150 mm width. Memory clearance in single-fan mode is great, but users will want to stick to standard-height memory with two fans to keep the cooler at a height of 165 mm. Taller memory modules may require you to move the fan upward, which may very well cause the NH-D15 not to fit into a good number of cases, so keep that in mind.