Reviews & awards

It was December 2015 when I first installed the Noctua NH-D15, and right from the moment I opened the packaging I knew I'd made the right decision. Everything felt premium, and after a string of smaller, less well-made coolers, I was impressed by the thickness of the metal used on the fins, the oversized heatpipes, and those polarizing fans.

It cooled my Intel Core i7-4790K so well that I could push it to 5.2GHz while remaining almost silent. I hated the sound of fans ramping up to push air through the radiator of the AIO cooler, and the Noctuas' silent running was bliss. I still buy Noctuas for every one of my personal builds; there's just something about their unwavering dedication to quality and silent fans that instills respect.

It's cooled a dozen or more PC builds since then, and more CPUs than I can count. Every generation of Ryzen CPUs has been kept under control with that cooler, as have many of the Intel CPUs from the 9th to the 12th generations. It hasn't been used on every build, as I got into SFF cases for a while, but even at that time, it was on my open-air testbench getting results for articles.