Noctua NH-D9L, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A9 92mm Fan (Brown) for Desktop

I bought this for my home server build which uses an AMD 3600. I've done many Ryzen builds, and they tend to run hot for their power consumption, probably because of 7nm. Even with the top AMD stock coolers, they have a hard time keeping the 6 core chips from getting to their 85C limit super quickly under AVX workloads. But the Noctua series do great work at keeping them under control and clocks higher for longer. I've done several builds with the NH-D15 on the 3700x, 3900x, and 3950x. It's a great cooler, but it's MASSIVE and it's EXPENSIVE! Plus, the 2nd 140mm fan won't fit in many cases.The CPU height was incorrectly reported on my server case, so I thought taller tower coolers wouldn't fit. After researching, I found this little guy, and it's now my favorite $50 cool. At half the price of a NH-D15, and only a little bit more than a Cooler Master 212, it's a fantastic option! The mounting system is easy to use, both mounting and dismounting. It fits in so many applications and it doesn't break the bank. From my experience, I'd say it's cooling capabilities are similar to the Cooler Master 212, but with a smaller and quieter fan (92mm). Plus, it has cool look, minus the ugly brown fan. (Seriously Noctua, your black fans look good, just switch to that)So for those looking for a good quality compact tower cooler, this is a fantastic option!

This thing is awesome. This is my first Noctua product, and I'm very impressed by the performance. I bought this for an i7 6700K to replace a Corsair H115i GTX , and it completely blows the Corsair out of the water (heh). 15C temp reductions at idle, almost 20C reductions under full load. And it is so, so much quieter. It's almost dead silent, actually, while the Corsair's pump and two fans were loud enough to be heard over a mic.It arrived very quickly and the packaging also exceeded expectations. The included thermal paste seems to work well- I haven't conducted any specific tests between thermal pastes, but it seems to perform as well as (if not better) than the Arctic Silver 5 and Arctic MX4 I've used before. My only gripe with the Noctua was with installation- while it came fully assembled and included detailed directions, I found the fan-clip system to be a bit obnoxious and frustrating (the center fan has to be removed in order to install the heatsink). However, the backplate and other components were very easy to install.All in all, very impressed with the cooler: it has significantly outperformed a much larger, louder, and more expensive liquid-cooling system, and as others have mentioned, the inclusion of a metal Noctua case tag is super awesome.

I just did a series of tests using these items: Date: 05/07/2024ARCTIC MX-6 $6.55TF7 Thermal Compound Paste - includedNoctua NT-H1 Thermal Computer Paste - includedThermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE Cooler $33.90Noctua NH-D9L, Premium CPU Cooler $54.95Configs and results:1. Noctua NH-D9L with Noctua NT-H1: Started here. I was getting about 35C to 38C Idle on the CPU with the fan at 950ish rpm. When I did the multi core CPU test on Cinebench 2024 the temp would jump up to the 100C throttle temp almost immediately and would bounce right at that for the duration of the 10 minute test. The fan ramped up to 2000rpm for the duration.2. Noctua NH-D9L with ARCTIC MX-6: The Artic paste dropped my idle temp down a bit to 34C to 36C. All other tests had the same results as the 1st test.3. Thermalright PA with TF7: Got a really nice drop here down to 28C to 30C idle with the fans spinning at 720 rpm. When running Cinebench it did eventually get to the 100C throttle, but it was about 5 minutes into the 10 minute test before it did. The temp was generally bouncing around 90C throughout the test. The 2 fans got up to 1550 ish rpm and were much quieter than the single Noctua fan.4. Thermalright PA with ARCTIC MX-6: The change in paste had no effect on thermals or fan speeds over the TF7.Bonus: I replaced the 2 fans that came with the Thermalright PA with 2 be quiet! Pure Wings 3 120mm Quiet PWM I ordered for a case. This had no effect on the thermals but the fan speeds are slightly slower at 700 rpm idle and 1500 rpm under Cinebench. More importantly, they run noticeably quieter. Under standard use I cannot hear them at all.Takeaway 1: For $35 the Thermalright PA is a fantastic cooler and the larger dual fans make it quieter than the Noctua NH-D9L. I do like the size of the NH-D9L but for a gaming system the Thermalright PA will be my new go to.Takeaway 2: CPU Grease makes much less of a difference than I thought. Maybe it is just the ones I tried but the reviews on the Artic MX-6 were stellar yet it barely did better than the Noctua NT-H1 that came with the cooler and didn’t do any better than the TF7 that came with the Thermalright PA. Save your money here and use it to buy better fans.CPU is an Intel i7-14700kf on a GIGABYTE Z790 Eagle AX Motherboard with an 850 watt EVGA Power Supply if you want to know.