Noctua NH-L9x65 Low-Profile CPU Cooler Review

Performance

This tiny cooler was never going to offer the lowest temperatures ever, but it’s not designed to. What it need to do is offer reliable performance in an ultra-compact form factor for servers, HTPC and other SFF system builds and it does just that. These scores may not look great, but they’re perfectly fine for 24/7 operation at stock clocks.

When overclocking, the performance wasn’t great, temperatures were quite high but this is a heavily overclocked CPU. However, the cooler completed the test run just fine and the system wasn’t quite near shutting down anytime soon, so that’s good. All you need to do is not run this cooler with such a high voltage on the CPU and you’ll be fine. If you want high overclocks, get a bigger cooler.

At stock clocks, the cooler was nice and quiet, surprisingly quiet actually given the dimensions of the fan.

Now this is where it gets interesting, the temperatures may not have been amazing while overclocks, but the acoustics certainly were. If you’re running this in a hot server room and the fan is going like crazy, you’ll be glad to hear nothing more than a light hum from that amazing quality fan.