Having forged their reputation on amazing performance, exceptional quality, and ultra-low noise levels, Noctua stands out as a premier manufacturer of PC-cooling products. Their can't-miss color scheme of tan and brown may not be to everyone's taste, but it does make them stand out. In fact, just about anyone who has ever built a PC can spot a Noctua product. That awareness paired with the knowledge that they offer some of the best warranty and after-sales support of any PC-cooling company has certainly garnered them a great deal of favor among enthusiasts. Well, that and their long-lived support. The front of the box displays the fan’s specs as well as a small picture of the fan outfitted with the different colored anti-vibration pads. It also displays the included pad colors next to the fan. You don’t need the extra features: If you don’t require the specific features offered by the NH-D15S, such as the asymmetrical design for RAM clearance, and you’re content with a more basic cooler, you can opt for a simpler and less expensive cooling solution. Final Remarks Attach the fan to the cooler as previously, making sure it is facing the desired direction ( airflow arrows can be seen on the side of the fan). Connect the fan to the 4-pin PWM connector once it’s been installed.

Upon removing the D15S heatsink from its box, I was amazed at its sheer bulk. This is a serious heatsink and it oozes quality. This is a heatsink you buy once and will re-use again every time you upgrade your system. In their long line of CPU coolers, Noctua introduced the NH-D15D coolers, especially made for those that require Noctua's best model cooler yet yearn a little more silence. The Noctua NH-D15S CPU cooler will to deliver both the cooling performance you may expect, yet remains all silent under normal processor conditions. The end result is a cooler that can cope with any CPU released to date cooled including even the most high-end Haswell and Skylake SKUs. Because Noctua provides only a single fan with this heatsink, if you have tall RAM you can use the money you saved and buy a 12cm fan. But really, there is no need for tall RAM in these days of 1.5v and 1.35v memory (even lower with DDR4). Buy low profile or ultra-low profile RAM. Now, let’s pull out this heatsink and take a look. I took this picture upside down, so let’s see the NH-D15S rightside-up. Yup. It is definitely asymmetric.

Noctua Chromax Upgrade

The NH-D15S is at least as good as its predecessor, the NH-D15. It accomplishes Noctua’s main aims of making more room for a 1 st-slot card, bringing down the cost of the cooler, and making this heatsink truly compatible with tall RAM.

The customization Noctua now provides with their chromax line further strengthens their already strong lineup of industry leading fans and heatsinks. Noctua NA-HC4 chromax.white Review However, even more impressive is our 79° temperature during 100% load! Just as with our idle temperatures, the D15S stayed in range of a high-quality 240mm liquid cooling unit, no pump noise necessary! After seeing the chromax heatsink cover in person, I can’t imagine building with it. While most aesthetic add-ons are a waste of money, the NA-HC4 can be seen and enjoyed every day if you are one of the many with a case that has a tempered glass side panel. The sheer quality of the covers and the stark change they have on the looks of your PC is well worth the price. Performance Looking at our results, we see that three fans cool no better than two fans, with substantially more noise. Comparing the pair of 1200 rpm A15’s to a single 1500 rpm A15 shows that the pair of 1200 rpm A15’s cool this heatsink about the same as the single 1500 rpm A15 cools it, but more quietly (Not that the NF-A125 1500 was all that loud).Finally, a second box under the fan tray has the additional anti-vibration pads necessary for installation in every color. There are also four mounting screws if the fan is to be installed in a case. A low-noise adapter is also included. Inside you’ll find the instructions, two white heatsink covers and two steel clips. Before I get into the installation, I must give kudos to Noctua for the excellent design of these covers. Not only do they look stunning but they way they are installed is ingenious! Noctua also sent out a Noctua NA-HC4 chromax.white heatsink cover kit for the D15S. The chromax series of heatsink covers is one of those rare ideas that takes an existing flagship product and without altering it, improves upon it without compromising the products’ greatest qualities. Inside, we find squishable foam – my favorite kind. The foam has some give to it and doesn’t break like Styrofoam. The foam surrounds fully recyclable boxes. But you are not going to recycle perfectly good boxes that were custom built for this heatsink and its accessories. The whole thing goes together too nicely. You will keep your box.

Those two threaded rods were for the tensioning screws. Noctua provides an L-shaped screwdriver for tightening the tension bolts. However, you would do well to get a 200mm long-shaft #2 Phillips screwdriver. Very helpful for this and for tightening motherboard screw deep in a case. In essence, I tried to do all the things you might find logical to try. I used two different mounts to compare the cooling. I mounted the NH-D15S a third time with the fans blowing up – I had recently tested the NH-C14S heatsink and found a 5 degree difference in cooling, depending on how I mounted it. So I tried this vertical mount to see if it made a difference in how well the D15S cooled. The results are presented in different charts to keep the different mounts separate. Dual-fan ready –Using the supplied extra fan clips, the NH-D15S can be upgraded with either a second round-frame 140 mm fan with 120 mm mounting holes (such as the NF-A15) . . . or a common 120 mm fan (such as the NF-F12) for improving performance while maintaining compatibility with RAM modules of up to 45 mm height. Each test run was 60 minutes in duration. The last 50 minutes of each run was measured, and the temperature logs were analyzed in Open Office spreadsheets. An Intel chip reports its temps in one degree increments, so for best accuracy these reports should be averaged in aggregate. Here the core temps were measured once a second, resulting in 3000-line spreadsheets. The digital thermometer measuring air temp reported its measurements in increments of 0.1 °C. The ambient temperature was measured every five seconds, resulting in 600-line spreadsheets. The mean ambient temp was subtracted from the mean core temps, resulting in a net temp for each run. The net temps were then averaged. Finally, slide a cover over each fixture and the magnets do the rest. It’s that easy! You don’t have to detach the fan and can even do this while the heatsink is installed on the motherboard. Amazing!

Unboxing & Overview

The Noctua D15S is a most capable heatsink and it shows exactly why AIOs have not replaced traditional CPU cooling solutions. Plus, there is literally no maintenance with the D15S. Yes, AIOs don’t require maintenance but the liquid mixture inside them does eventually breakdown and they have been known to fail and even ruin systems with water going everywhere. These situations are rare but nevertheless do occur. Conclusion