As the successor to the almighty NH-D14, the NH-D15 has a lot to live up to, and that's exactly what it does. If you're looking for the best air cooler on the market in terms of raw performance this is the one to go for, Noctua's impressive dual tower & dual fan design provide more than enough cooling performance for even the hottest i9 whilst keeping the height low enough to fit in most cases. Much like the U12S, the NH-D15 doesn't look fantastic in it's standard configuration, but come on, it's a Noctua cooler with excellent performance so that really doesn't matter, especially considering the performance numbers.
The fans that come included are very good, not one but two NF-A15 PWM which retail for almost £19, that's a huge £38 on fans on a single CPU cooler. These fans manage to push a lot of air while staying quiet, yes they're brown and a bit ugly but it wouldn't really be a Noctua cooler without them.
One of the main cons of the NH-D15 is the aesthetics, luckily Noctua do offer their Chromax line of addons that can make it look much better. Our review sample didn't have these but it is an option if you don't mind spending a bit more.
Tech Specs
- Height – 165mm
- TDP – 220W+
- Weight – 980g
- Socket Compatibility – Intel LGA2066, LGA2011-0 & LGA2011-3 (Square ILM), LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA1151, LGA1150 & AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, FM2, FM2+ (backplate required), AM4 with NM-AM4
- Included Fan(s) – 2x NF-A15 PWM premium fan
What’s in the box?
- Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler
- 2 x NF-A15 PWM Fan
- 2 x Low-Noise Adaptor
- NT-H1 high-grade thermal compound
- SecuFirm2 Mounting Kit
- Noctua Metal Case-Badge
- Mounting instructions
- Warranty information
Mounting
The mounting of the NH-D15 is actually very easy, something I didn't expect coming into this review considering the sheer size of the cooler, the SecuFirm2 mounting kit really impressed me. Most of the mounting hardware is attached to the motherboard, unlike most other coolers where it is attached to the cooler, this means that you can get the majority of it installed without the huge heatsink in the way, there are only two screws you have to tighten to actually attach the heatsink to the backplate, these screws are conveniently positioned between the two heatsinks, which does require the removal of the center fan but Noctua have made sure this is very easy as it simply slides out.
The fans attach to the cooler using Noctua's classic bent piece of wire method, which does work very well but can be a bit fiddly at times, especially when trying to remove the fan.
It's also worth mentioning that the box is very well laid out, when you first open it you're greeted with with a nicely labelled box that clearly shows what pieces of hardware you need for the socket you're installing the cooler onto. These labels on top of the box also correspond to the location of the specific item inside the box too, which does make the whole mounting experience much easier.
Aesthetic
It's hard to write a lot about the aesthetics of any Noctua cooler as they aren't designed with looks in mind. If you ignore the horrible fan colour then it doesn't look bad at all. We really like the basic look of the heatsink, the small embossed Noctua logo on each tower is a nice touch and not too over the top like the huge printed logos you get on some coolers.
Noctua does offer the option to purchase their "Chromax" range of upgrades to make the cooler look better and fit in with the colour scheme of your build. You can get covers that go over the heatsink with different colours and deisgns, black fans with multicoloured anti-vibration tabs that do make the cooler look good. There's also talk of Noctua offering full black models of their cooler in the near future which we can't wait for!
Also it's huge, take a look at the picture below with it installed in the CoolerMaster H500P.
Performance
Now to write about the bit where the NH-D15 really shines. We tested the Noctua NH-D15 against all of our other air coolers, it's main competitor being the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4, which put up a tough fight!
Here are the specs we used in our test system:
Test System Specs
- Processor - Intel i7 8700k
- Case - CoolerMaster H500P
- RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR4 16GB 3000Mhz (2x8)
- Motherboard - Asus Rog Strix Z370-F
- SSD - Samsung 860 EVO 250GB
- PSU - Corsair RM750x
- GPU - EVGA GTX 1050Ti
We performed a few different tests using different pieces of software, the software we used for stress testing were 3DMark Time Spy SPU Test, Prime95 with the Blend Preset and Aida64 CPU+FPU which gets the CPU hot, so is a very good test for the D15. We also logged the temperatures using Aida64's temperature logging function.
We ran the tests at both stock voltages and clock speeds, and with an overclock at 5.0GHz with 1.35V, in the results anything marked "OC" used these settings.
All of these tests were performed in out climate controlled test room at a constant 21°C. All fan speeds were set to normal in the BIOS, which worked fine and none of the coolers we tested had excessive noise levels.
After all of our testing, the Noctua NH-D15 came out on top! Well, sort of, it actually performed exactly the same over the board as the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 which is also the same price, so there's almost nothing between them.
The graph below shows they average temperature over a 20 minute stress test using Prime95's blend preset. This test was by far the best at showing the performance of these air coolers visually due to the range being much higher than other tests.
You can see from the graph that the Noctua NH-D15 and be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 are both sitting right at the top with the lowest temperatures in both the stock and overclocked tests, we knew these two behemoth coolers would be close in performance but not this close!
Conclusion
If you like Noctua, don't care about the simple aesthetic and brown fans, and want a massive air cooler that takes up half of your case then this is absolutely the one to go for. However if you do want a nice looking cooler to fit in with your build, the Chromax options (2x Black Fans & Heatsink Covers) cost a whopping £68, making the total cost of the cooler almost £150 which is more than then Corsair H150I Pro which if you don't know is a 360mm AIO liquid cooler that comes with three of Corsair's Magnetic Levitation fans.
Pros
- Best of the best when it comes to performance
- Very easy installation, also very easy to reinstall to re-apply thermal compound
Cons
- It's brown
- Costs a lot, more than a Corsair H100x AIO which outperforms it