Noctua NH-L9i Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

Noctua are increasingly dividing their attention between both the enthusiast and the HTPC/SFF segments of the market. We recently had a look at Noctua's NH-L12 CPU cooler, designed for HTPCs and Small Form Factor (SFF) systems, and today we are taking a look at something even more compact - the Noctua NH-L9i. The Noctua NH-L9 series comes in two variants, the i and the a. Naturally the i is for Intel and the a is for AMD. The reason two separate models are required is because these CPU coolers are so unbelievably small, just 37mm high, that it is not possible to develop a universal mounting system. The shape of the i and a variants is determined by the layout of the Intel LGA 115X and AMD (AM2(+)/AM3(+)/FM1/FM2) sockets. Today we have with us the Intel version supporting sockets LGA 1156 and LGA 1155. Older sockets like LGA 775 and LGA 1366 aren't supported and neither is the new socket LGA 2011. The function of this cooler is to provide the smallest cooling solution on the market, so if your chassis is ultra thin and compact then this is a perfect solution. As expected this product comes with 100% RAM compatibility but we think if you need a CPU cooler this small, then you'd be an idiot to pair it with high profile RAM. Like all Noctua products we are expecting a high quality package. We hope Noctua have been able to eek out as much performance as possible from this product because there are probably a lot of enthusiasts who want to put this into a mini-ITX rig with an unlocked and overclocked K processor and push it to its limits. You can check the full specifications of the Noctua NH-L9i here if you are interested. Now onto the review. Noctua really go to town on the quality of all the parts of their products - including the packaging. As much as it is really nice, packaging for most people falls into two categories - you think it should be as minimalist as possible to save costs and keep the product price down or you think they should put in the attention to detail to improve the overall buying experience. Unfortunately for Noctua I am the former, but I do appreciate the sentiment of the latter. Noctua really are a global company, as the back of the box shows. The brief paragraph shows that this is a cooler for HTPCs and SFF systems based on the LGA 1155 socket. I already mentioned you'd be a fool to use high profile RAM with this CPU cooler, I also think that you'd probably struggle to see the benefit of this cooler if you used a full sized graphics card. A low profile/ half height graphics card would be more appropriate in my opinion - or you could just use Ivy Bridge Intel HD 4000 graphics as they are actually pretty decent for most things except gaming above 720p resolutions. Here you can see the star feature of this product - the fact it is just 37mm in height. It also appears to have two heat pipes integrated into the heatsink. The base is incredibly smooth and like a mirror. It's a tried-and-trusted nickel plated copper base and as you can see the mounting bracket comes pre-fitted as it only supports LGA 1155 and LGA 1156. The heatsink is incredibly dense for such a small product and because of that it actually weighs quite a lot. From the top, which is what you'll probably see when installing into your chassis, the aesthetics are dominated by the 92mm Noctua PWM fan. For those of you who despise the Noctua brown, my best advice is that this product is likely to be shut away in a small HTPC so it shouldn't really matter! We always use the same test system with CPU coolers that we compare against each other. The full specifications of our test system are as follows: Test system: ASUS P8Z77-V Intel Core i5 3570K with Gelid GC Extreme 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3 AMD Radeon HD 5870 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage) Antec High Current Gamer 620W Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0 We’d like to say a big thank you to ASUS, Antec, Kingston, Cooler Master and Intel for providing components that makes this testing possible. Testing Methodology: We always use Gelid GC Extreme or Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste (almost identical performance) to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste. Prime 95 is run for 10 minutes and then the average maximum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted The system is left in idle for 10 minutes on the desktop and then the average minimum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted Fans are always left to operate at PWM speeds, if this is not supported then 100% fan speed is used Delta temperatures are always used (Observed temperature minus ambient temperature) and we keep the ambient at 22 (+/- 1) degrees for all testing although Delta temperatures correct for the changing ambient anyway. The average temperature across the four cores is taken on our quad core processor Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled The cooling performance tests are run at stock 3.4GHz (with Intel Turbo up to 3.8GHz) and overclocked 4.5GHz settings All other coolers in the graphs have been tested under identical settings Each test is repeated 3 times for consistency of results There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software There is approximately a 1dBA margin of error with our decibel meter Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Prime 95 Normally I would show the installation kit here but there wasn't really much to show. However I wanted to share the open box with you because it just looked so fantastic. As you can see Noctua included a whole tube of NT-H1 thermal compound, a low noise adapter for the fan to limit its speed, four screws for mounting, a Noctua badge and the product itself. Four longer screws are included but I couldn't work out what they were needed for! As always the included instructions are very concise and up to a high standard. As I mentioned earlier from the top the 92mm Noctua fan dominates the aesthetics. The fan blows down so airflow also goes over your VRM which is nice. As promised, no RAM compatibility issues. You can see the Trident X fits fine, any other tall RAM will do too. I have only done this for demonstration purposes, anyone building a HTPC should just buy some 1600MHz low profile RAM otherwise it is just complete over-kill in my opinion. One thing I will say now is, when you install this it is an incredibly close fit with your motherboard capacitors around the CPU socket. But for those who worry about metal touching metal, fear not as the design is mm perfect and sits about 3mm above the caps so there is no contact. The product fits the LGA 115X sockets perfectly. Stock temperatures aren't going to blow your mind but this performance is miles better than a stock cooler and it does that in a ridiculously small form factor so these results are good. Quite frankly I expected the Noctua NH-L9i to fail this test - and by fail I mean temperatures in the 90s which would lead to throttling of the processor. It specifically says on the Noctua website - 65W TDPs only with no overclocking. Yet we took a 77W i5 3570K and pushed it to 4.5GHz at 1.3 volts and the temperatures held in the low 80s. This is an absolutely fantastic result and I am truly gob-smacked. Stock acoustics were exceptional. The NH-L9i didn't struggle at all and that 92mm fan really helped keep those acoustics nice and quiet. We didn't use the low noise adapter with the Noctua NH-L9i. The noise did ramp up a bit because of that - hitting 46 dBA, but then again what would you expect if you've got a 3570K at 4.5GHz with only a single 92mm fan to cool it? Given that fact I think these results are still good. Generally speaking the fan only really rose above 40 dBA under Prime 95 testing - during gaming, rendering and other usage tasks it was totally inaudible. Though in the interests of keeping a fair test we still display the Prime95 results for our graphs. Noctua are recommending a price of $47.90/€39.90 for the NH-L9i. For British customers this translates into approximately £33. Obviously there will be variance between retailers depending on their pricing strategies and delivery costs but generally speaking this product is coming in at £33/$48/€40. For what some may see as a glorified stock cooler, this is quite pricey indeed. However, I want to come back to the most crucial point about this product, which is that there are very few products on the market like this - if any at all. I'd love to see another cooler that comes in under 37mm in height and offers a similar level of performance. That said Noctua have produced a very niche product here that targets a very small LGA 1155 HTPC and SFF enthusiast market. Nonetheless it is a niche product done very well, to the usual exceptional Noctua quality standards. For that I think the price is justified, but it seems possible Noctua could have brought it to market slightly cheaper. The NH-L9i has excellent cooling performance for the form factor, acoustics that make it ideal for a totally silent HTPC or SFF system and a price tag that is reasonable given how unique and innovative the product is. The chances are, if you've gone to the effort to make a super compact LGA 1155 based HTPC or SFF system, then having to spend a paltry £33 (when all the other components probably cost hundreds) is actually remarkably little. I have really tried to find faults with this product, but I have failed more than Bulldozer in doing so. The NH-L9i is a product that delivers way more than you'd expect and serves a niche market beautifully well. For that reason I've decided to award the Noctua NH-L9i the eTeknix Editor's Choice award.