Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans For Desktop (Brown)

I've always heard great things about Noctua NH-D15s, and now that I can finally experience one, those claims are all accurate. The Noctua NH-D15 is great for users who want a quiet and cool air cooler.Packaging was super clean and used a lot of recyclable cardboard, which is always great to see over plastics and Styrofoam. The manual was super easy to follow and had pictures to help illustrate the steps you needed to follow.Installation was simple to follow, but I've also built a few PCs before so I already had some knowledge from prior builds. Conveniently, they include a thermal paste syringe so you don't have to worry about buying your own, or trying to find that tube you left somewhere a year or two ago when you last build a PC.Performance is exceptional. My thermals have never been this low or consistent. For reference, I have been using an AIO with a single fan radiator, so I was due for an upgrade. I run a Ryzen 5800x3D, and I haven't seen my temps go higher than 80 degrees, even during my full load stress test. My idle temps are consistently around the 38-50 degree range depending on background tasks. The noise level is also fantastic, considering I can barely hear the fans when they are running at full bore.Overall, if your case has the space for this beast of a cooler, it is worth the investment. Especially considering Noctua has an excellent customer support team who will ship you a new bracket if you upgrade to a system that requires a new one that didn't come with your original box.

This one isn't for amateurs. Be careful when handling or moving your fingers around it. The fins on this are razor-sharp enough to seriously lacerate you. Enough to need stitches from a casual graze. Keep your fingers clear of the fins. I recommend getting some ESD-safe Kevlar gloves, or at the very least, rubber dishwashing gloves when handling. You don't need a trip to the ER. This becomes more of a problem in smaller cases, as it is a tight fit on many mid and full-tower cases, and installing around it will become a pain. I can't imagine attempting to install this on any ITX setup that isn't caseless. The pictures are deceptive, this thing is HUGE.Most RAM sizes, due to the slot positioning, will require you to offset the front fan, which will in turn give very little clearance on most mid towers for the side panel. You may have to keep it loose or mod the panel. If you have top-case fans you may need to remove them as this will hang over the top as well. Keep that in mind.Also, it isn't stainless, so sweat and fingerprints may cause corrosion and rust over time. Blood definitely will if you get cut, as blood is corrosive to most metals, especially iron-based.While this isn't the hardest thing to install, it is definitely complicated in a methodical way. Read the instructions and follow them step by step.I recommend unclipping the fan that comes installed in the center of the heatsink first, and putting the extra clips on the second fan before anything else, and plugging both fan power cords onto the motherboard where you want them to be, before installing the heatsink itself, as it is huge enough to block a lot of stuff on the motherboard, including most CPU fan headers on a ATX and mATX motherboard. Clipping the fans on with them plugged in already is easy to do. The included screwdriver tool can be used to apply pressure to any finicky clips. Don't use your fingers in tight spots, you'll get cut.Despite all of this, this beast is a CPU-cooling masterpiece. It's incredibly quiet and will air-cool anything on the planet that isn't a Threadripper or modern Xeon, both of which are too big for the baseplate to adequately cover.I was able to get full overclocks on anywhere from a 8700k to a 13900k with this thing. It performs better than most AIOs I am aware of.

I have a rig with i7 - 4790K OCed to 4800MHz on Z97AC mobo with NZXT ATX extended case.With my old H60 closed loop water cooler, the temperatures were in the range of 55-68 degree Celsius during idle or regular load.During intense gaming, I would just get reboot after about an hour of play.When I received the Noctua D15 yesterday, I was surprised to see the size of the box and the unit itself. It is huge and rightfully so, as it performs so much better than what I have experienced with tower coolers and water coolers.The quality of packaging, cooler and everything included is excellent. It is very well made and finish is flawless.The installation instructions are easy to follow and actually helpful.But, it was a pain to install because it is huge and second, if your video card and ram height come in the way. In my case, the case (NZXT ATX extended) was big enough to handle it. However, the issue was the ram height and the proximity of the PCI-16x slot around the air cooler.Somehow I managed to install it. It comes with a L shaped key with Phillips head screw driver. But, I used my own screw driver for the install. I managed to install both fans and used LNA (low noise adapters) provided.I think one time install was enough for me and I hope that I would not have to change anything or do it again.I bought this for mainly noise reduction because I don't like humming or fan noise from the electronics or computers.With Noctua, I could hear the fan noise during regular use of my PC and I sit about 6 feet away. So, it is not silent during idle or regular load during web browsing in my experience.Under max load (gaming) or stress testing, I get max temperatures around 72 degree c for 4790K@4800MHz.Under regular use, I read temperatures 41 degree c average. I used Core temp to do the reading and logging.Overall, I like it so far mainly due to its very high performance and relatively low noise. I have yet to see if this cooler could keep up this performance for a long time or not.