Noctua NH-D15S D-Type Premium CPU Cooler Review

TECHNOLOGY X TEST PROTOCOL

At Technology X, we test our CPU coolers slightly different depending upon the cooler’s marketed purpose, whether it be for a silent operation or extreme overclocking.  Our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however, CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your cooler performs the way it should.

Z170 Test Bench Photo 5

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchases; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project. All of the components we use for testing and evaluation can be easily purchased at a relatively affordable price. The links provided below can assist in pricing, as well as availability for those of you who may find interest in our equipment.

PC Chassis: In Win 805 Mid Tower Chassis
Motherboard: ASRock Z170 OC Formula
CPU: Intel i5-6600K
CPU Cooler: N/A
Memory: Crucial 64GB DDR4-2133 Memory
Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W
Graphics Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Amp! Edition 4GB
System Cooling: be quiet! Silent Wings 2 Chassis Fan
Keyboard: Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum
Mouse: i-rocks M20E Illuminated Gaming Mouse
Storage: Intel 750 Series NVMe PCIe SSD (1.2TB)

AIDA64 EXTREME

In order to test our CPU cooler, we’ll be running a CPU stress test and monitoring our temperatures using AIDA64, which is a great utility for benchmarking, testing the stability of, and monitoring your system.

COOLING PERFORMANCE

To test our cooler, we ran AIDA64’s ‘System Stability Test’ for one hour and recorded the highest temperature reached on any core. We did so at both the stock core frequency of our Intel Core i5 6600K, as well as overclocked to 4.2GHz, and 4.6GHz.

During all tests our ambient temperature was approximately 20C while the cooler’s intake temperature was a slightly warmer 28C.

NH-D15S AIDA64 Testing

As you can see above, the results returned better than we expected and much cooler as well. With two NF-A15 PWM fans installed, this is one cool running CPU cooler. At the stock clock speed, the increase in temperature was only that of 7C! Better yet, when we look at our max overclock of 4.6GHz, the difference was only that of 23C! Exceptional!

Here we are again taking another in-depth look at one of the historically well-performing CPU cooler manufacturers, Noctua, and their NH-D15S D-Type Premium CPU Cooler! As you may have seen, we recently reviewed their recent C-Type CPU cooler, the NH-C14S. The NH-D15S is a larger CPU cooler than the aforementioned version, with the intention of making your CPU ice cold, let's see how this cooler performs! If you are looking to compare the NF-D15S to other Noctua CPU coolers, please head on over to here where you read up on Noctua's excellent CPU cooling line up! PACKAGING, PRICING AND SPECIFICATIONS Taking a…

Review Overview

Build Quality
Specifications
Performance
Noise
Pricing

Ice Cold!

The Noctua NH-D15S D-Type Premium CPU Cooler provides exceptional performance, especially when a second NF-A15 PWM fan is added.

User Rating: 5 ( 2 votes)

2 comments

  1. *Puts Toast Down* Damn, I knew I was doing something wrong! lol Great review Chris!

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