Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black, Premium Dual-Tower CPU Cooler with NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fan (Black)

Product Information

The NH-D15S is at least as good as its predecessor, the NH-D15. It accomplishes Noctua’s main aims of making more room for a 1 st-slot card, bringing down the cost of the cooler, and making this heatsink truly compatible with tall RAM. If we installed a 2 nd fan, the D15S might even surpass an AIO. So, if you are after the highest possible performance and feel you must have an AIO to attain it, think again. Compatibility: Intel LGA 2066/2011-0/1155/1156/1150/1200/1700 and AMD AM5/AM4/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2/FM1/FM2/FM2+ A large 140mm Noctua NA-A15 PWM fan is clamped onto one side of the heatsink. An additional 120mm or 140mm fan can be installed on the other side but make sure it will fit in conjunction with your motherboard and RAM. Finally, a second box under the fan tray has the additional anti-vibration pads necessary for installation in every color. There are also four mounting screws if the fan is to be installed in a case. A low-noise adapter is also included.

After seeing the chromax heatsink cover in person, I can’t imagine building with it. While most aesthetic add-ons are a waste of money, the NA-HC4 can be seen and enjoyed every day if you are one of the many with a case that has a tempered glass side panel. The sheer quality of the covers and the stark change they have on the looks of your PC is well worth the price. PerformanceThe Noctua D15S is a most capable heatsink and it shows exactly why AIOs have not replaced traditional CPU cooling solutions. Plus, there is literally no maintenance with the D15S. Yes, AIOs don’t require maintenance but the liquid mixture inside them does eventually breakdown and they have been known to fail and even ruin systems with water going everywhere. These situations are rare but nevertheless do occur. Conclusion You don’t need the extra features: If you don’t require the specific features offered by the NH-D15S, such as the asymmetrical design for RAM clearance, and you’re content with a more basic cooler, you can opt for a simpler and less expensive cooling solution. Final Remarks Inside you’ll find the instructions, two white heatsink covers and two steel clips. Before I get into the installation, I must give kudos to Noctua for the excellent design of these covers. Not only do they look stunning but they way they are installed is ingenious! Finally, slide a cover over each fixture and the magnets do the rest. It’s that easy! You don’t have to detach the fan and can even do this while the heatsink is installed on the motherboard. Amazing! Because Noctua provides only a single fan with this heatsink, if you have tall RAM you can use the money you saved and buy a 12cm fan. But really, there is no need for tall RAM in these days of 1.5v and 1.35v memory (even lower with DDR4). Buy low profile or ultra-low profile RAM.

In their long line of CPU coolers, Noctua introduced the NH-D15D coolers, especially made for those that require Noctua's best model cooler yet yearn a little more silence. The Noctua NH-D15S CPU cooler will to deliver both the cooling performance you may expect, yet remains all silent under normal processor conditions. The end result is a cooler that can cope with any CPU released to date cooled including even the most high-end Haswell and Skylake SKUs. You want extra RAM clearance: If you have high-profile RAM modules and need a cooler that provides ample clearance for your RAM slots, the Noctua NH-D15S is an excellent choice due to its asymmetrical design. Now attach the mounting bars and install with the four NM-ITS1 thumbscrews, making sure the connection is tight and firm (not too strong). The customization Noctua now provides with their chromax line further strengthens their already strong lineup of industry leading fans and heatsinks. Noctua NA-HC4 chromax.white Review Attach the fan to the cooler as previously, making sure it is facing the desired direction ( airflow arrows can be seen on the side of the fan). Connect the fan to the 4-pin PWM connector once it’s been installed.The box for the Noctua NA-HC4 chromax.white maintains the same aesthetic as other Noctua product boxes and displays the compatible heatsink model numbers on the front.

NH-D15S vs NH-D15.The first chart below appears to show that the NH-D15S cools 3 °C better than the NH-D15. Relax. What this chart shows is that when you mount heatsinks, your mounts can vary. In fact, you are well-advised to mount and test your cooling, then remount and retest. Stop only when you have arrived at a really good mount. Each test run was 60 minutes in duration. The last 50 minutes of each run was measured, and the temperature logs were analyzed in Open Office spreadsheets. An Intel chip reports its temps in one degree increments, so for best accuracy these reports should be averaged in aggregate. Here the core temps were measured once a second, resulting in 3000-line spreadsheets. The digital thermometer measuring air temp reported its measurements in increments of 0.1 °C. The ambient temperature was measured every five seconds, resulting in 600-line spreadsheets. The mean ambient temp was subtracted from the mean core temps, resulting in a net temp for each run. The net temps were then averaged.You have limited space: This cooler, although not exceptionally heavy, is quite large in size. If your PC case has limited space, it may not fit comfortably, so consider the available space in your case before purchasing. However, even more impressive is our 79° temperature during 100% load! Just as with our idle temperatures, the D15S stayed in range of a high-quality 240mm liquid cooling unit, no pump noise necessary! Now, let’s pull out this heatsink and take a look. I took this picture upside down, so let’s see the NH-D15S rightside-up. Yup. It is definitely asymmetric.

Dual-fan ready –Using the supplied extra fan clips, the NH-D15S can be upgraded with either a second round-frame 140 mm fan with 120 mm mounting holes (such as the NF-A15) . . . or a common 120 mm fan (such as the NF-F12) for improving performance while maintaining compatibility with RAM modules of up to 45 mm height. Having forged their reputation on amazing performance, exceptional quality, and ultra-low noise levels, Noctua stands out as a premier manufacturer of PC-cooling products. Their can't-miss color scheme of tan and brown may not be to everyone's taste, but it does make them stand out. In fact, just about anyone who has ever built a PC can spot a Noctua product. That awareness paired with the knowledge that they offer some of the best warranty and after-sales support of any PC-cooling company has certainly garnered them a great deal of favor among enthusiasts. Well, that and their long-lived support. Looking at our results, we see that three fans cool no better than two fans, with substantially more noise. Comparing the pair of 1200 rpm A15’s to a single 1500 rpm A15 shows that the pair of 1200 rpm A15’s cool this heatsink about the same as the single 1500 rpm A15 cools it, but more quietly (Not that the NF-A125 1500 was all that loud). We utilized an Intel Core i7-10700K for this test and used the factory CPU settings of 3.8GHz at 100% load to put the cooler to the test. The second and third tests were performed with an OC stage of 4.7GHz and 5.0GHz, respectively. We wanted to see how well the Noctua NH-D15S performed in standard and high-end OC modes.As usual, slower fans do not cool as well as faster fans, but they work more quietly. But here, running with two NF-A15 fans at 1200 rpm will be very quiet; and if you are willing to remount your heatsink until you get that “golden mount,” you can get very good cooling indeed. Conclusions Noctua has released its NH-D15S to stand alongside its NH-D15. The NH-D15 is a huge heatsink, a full 15cm wide. The NH-D15S looks like the D15’s twin, also 15cm wide. Where do the two differ? The NH-D15S is moved over to make more room for the first PCIe slot, and it comes with one fan, not two – this keeps the price down. Otherwise they are the same heatsink. Think of the NH-D15S as the high-compatibility version of this heatsink. The single fan configuration gets you a highly capable dual tower cooler with very good RAM and PCIe compatibility. You can add a second fan according to your preference, be it a another NF-A15 if you use standard height RAM or a 120 mm if you need more space. The idea was to give customers more flexibility in configuring the cooler to their needs, be it for maximum compatibility or maximum performance. So let’s look at this heatsink.