Final Thoughts and Rating

...if you're heavily into overclocking and you want the very best cooling for your CPU, you'll do well to find anything better than the excellent NH-D15.

Noctua is a company that understands what enthusiast consumers are looking for in a CPU cooler. Responding to market trends, the manufacturer has in recent years bolstered its portfolio with a varied range of solutions that cover any manner of build, be it small-form-factor, low-profile HTPC or high-end gaming rig.

All share a common set of sought-after traits, including high-quality construction, low-noise-optimised fans, comprehensive bundles and a class-leading six-year warranty.

There's plenty to like throughout the range, yet it's the best solutions that create a buzz around the brand, and the NH-D15 is both a worthy flagship and a satisfying successor to the highly-regarded NH-D14. Despite its gargantuan size, this towering chunk of metal is refreshingly easy to install, it delivers a level of cooling performance that's on par, if not better, than today's closed-loop liquid coolers, and it's designed to make the least amount of noise possible.

We're of the opinion that smaller and cheaper Noctua solutions will serve most users just as well - this £78 crown jewel is overkill for the vast majority of users - yet if you're heavily into overclocking and you want the very best cooling for your CPU, you'll do well to find anything better than the excellent NH-D15.

The Good

Outstanding cooling performance
Runs very quietly
Well-rounded bundle
Good RAM clearance
User-friendly mounting system
Includes two 140mm fans as standard
Excellent build quality
Six-year warranty

The Bad

Brown and beige isn't for everyone

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Noctua NH-D15

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The Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler is available to purchase from Quiet PC and Overclockers UK.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Argh, I just bought the NH-D14! How annoying! :)

I would have been interested to see how this compares to the NH-D14 as it's the direct successor. Also I've seen a lot of buzz around the Thermalright Macho (rofl at the name), as a cheap but stellar performing cooler.

In case anyone is wondering: installation of the NH-D14 in a Xigmatek Aquila microATX case is a breeze, despite the initial worry when you unpack everything and look at it as though to say ‘nope, no way that’s going to fit in thar.'

Personally I'll stick with my H100.
The only down side of the Noctua is that I'd be worrying about damage to the board when moving the case around as there is so much weight on that small area. Where as the H100 is not as good on the cooling it's a fair trade off imo.

No thanks. I'll stick with my BLACK Phanteks PH-TC14PE that performs about the same, costs less and produces less noise.

Me I'll stick to my custom liquid loop, Running with Ethanol instead of water and with a 2-litre resevoir it stays cold. 40C under load with a i7 920 C0 @ 3.8GHz HT Enabled. Even with the pump switched off (by accident the first time) full load was 65C.

Tempted to get my hands on some 3M Novec 7000 and put that in the loop and see what happens :)

As Roobubba says it would have been nice to see the NH-14 figures in the tests to see if / how much of an improvement the NH-15 is over it.

Any chance of you adding them Hexus?

Had the NH-14 for a few years now atop my CPU and can't complain. I know RAM spacing was a concern but as I was buying the RAM and cooler at the same time I took that into consideration and got some Artic White 1.35v DDR3 that has a small profile heatspreader.