Installation & Performance
Fitting the Noctua NH-D15 or the NH-U12S uses the exact same bracket (see above). One of the primary reasons we use Noctua in the office, aside from their amazing performance, is that they have the easiest mounting bracket on the market. The whole kit can be fitted without the use of tools. However, when you mount the cooler, it’s just two easy to reach screws and Noctua even provides the long screwdriver to get the job done.
As I said, the D15 isn’t the best for some motherboards, and I had to jack the fan up to clear the RAM. Honestly, I think most people should look at the revised D15S unless they know for sure this one will fit. It’s the same cooler, just with a slightly off-set design.
Of course, you can run it in a single fan configuration too, and from my own experience, that’s more than enough. I’ll be keeping dual fans for the testing though.
The U12S has much better clearance and can be mounted in either orientation to suit your case design and airflow pattern.
It has perfect RAM clearance and doesn’t compromise the first PCIe slot either.
Then again, if you use the L9i, you’ll have no issues with space, as this cooler sides lower than the RAM and takes up less space than a stock cooler!
The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
When it comes to the performance of Noctua products, we’ve had them on and off the block in hundreds of eTeknix reviews. Take all of our CPU reviews and motherboard reviews of the past couple of years, almost all done on the Noctua D15(S). Some of the benches use the U12 coolers too, I think the Threadripper CPUs were delivered with those for review. Plus we use them in our case reviews a lot of the time, and on our storage bench too.
Unsurprisingly, the NH-D15S that I’ve had on my bench for a few years still delivers the same performance as the “brand new” chromax D15. Or more amazingly, Noctua managed to change every visual aspect of this coolers colour and the performance didn’t change, not one bit.
I put the U12S on the bench and even that was still thrashing some great performance despite having the difficult job of cooling an Intel Core i9-9900K. This isn’t our typical cooling bench though, as that’s under some revision at the moment. For that reason, I didn’t test the L9i, as the TDP of the 9900K would be a bit much. However, I stand by our previous reviews of the non-chromax versions of these coolers. As I said, the more things changed, the more you realised they’ve stayed the same.
