Just a small note to add to this which didn't make it into the edit: none of our three samples from Noctua, nor a Standard version we bought at retail exhibited any of the "rattling" some people have experienced.
Would be interesting to see how a contact frame would alter the results on LGA1700. I wonder if the standard G2 would then work best on that platform? 🙂
I think I'm sticking with my Phantom Spirit SE but it is good to see Noctua doing so well since it costs so much. Noctua quality and sound is very tough to beat. Thumbs up!
Thermalright is just competing with itself at this point. Haven't they released like 5-6 affordable and superbly performing air coolers with similarly wacky names in the last 2 or so years? They're all just blending together at this point.
The thing is, what makes the Noctua better is mostly the fans. If you bought any of the big dual tower Thermalright coolers and added 2 Noctua fans, it would still be cheaper than buying the Noctua cooler with very similar performance.
Running my D15 since my 4790K up uittil my 7800X3D cooling everything like a boss. Even did cool my i9 10900K like a champ. And it is silent as hell most of the time. Fans are being cleaned once in a while and ofc the cooling block. I always cool all my systems with Noctua. Although I also have a water cooled system. Great video!
Same here, got the D15 for my first rig with a 4790k, and built up to a 12600k, but this cooler has been on various different builds in between, and I honestly cleaned it two or three times in this decade, I'm still impressed with the performance since even under heavy load i can barely hear it. It was 90$ when I got it, Noctua also sent me the hardware for AM4 and LGA1200. Although I have to say that 150$ for the G2 is personally too much, but if one wants something reliable, with great quality and support from the company I would say the G2 is a great choice
@@rokiesato On the cooler page for Arctic, I only see AM4 and AM5 as options to choose from, nothing for Threadripper. I am thinking about their Liquid Freezer coolers, any of them, not just III.
Not many companies bother with such sockets. Usually they are niche market, and you need to make specialized cooler with big enough coldplate to cover the IHS. best bet for you is custom water-cooling and getting block made for these CPUs (Heatkiller make some), or use exiting coolers like NH-U14S TR5-SP6.
Quality motors & sound frequencies it makes. Plus satisfies the geek in many who care enough to even watch this video. Supporting a company pushing the ball forward.
Well well.....the King is truly back. I'm shocked at the gap between the G2 and the other air coolers at high heat loads, looking at your graphs. And as far as the price and the brown and beige look goes, I love how the colours look in my current build. It stands out in an all-black build and draws attention to itself as though it's the star of the show. My only regret is that I didn't go with ultra-low profile RAM sticks so the front fan is not on the same level as the centre fan. I like symmetry.
Whilst I won't buy this cooler, I have infinite respect for its engineering. It reminds me of Baldur's Gate 3 in an odd way: made by people who love their job (and are extremely good at it).
I will be interested how Royal Pretor performs against this, 3 times more expensive, chunk of metal called D15 G2. Just can't wait for those new TR coolers. PS: just checked the price of standard G2 here.. 183€ lol (eastern Europe). Long live the PS120!
Noctua is a good company. They didnt need to upgrade plain and simple. In a sea of companies that want you to upgrade every years its nice to see Noctua take their time and release products they feel are needed.
I was almost about to spend 90€ for a NH-D15 G1 but luckily found your video on the Phantom Spirit 120 SE. Can't be happier this thing cools down my i5-13500 on 95W PL1/2 to 55 Degrees Celsius at idle rpm.
People bashing the price probably are right but cases also come with fans too that are just fine. But sometimes people want something that’s gonna still be working just fine 7 years from now, maybe more when it moves on to the next build or two
Great review! ..but I still see no reason to buy this cooler at 159euro, when my old TR phantom spirit at 24euro doing same work and in certain situations even better😅 I respect Noctua, but in my opinion they digging in the wrong side..
Have a 10850k, Noctua NH-D15, big case, temps never go above 80c on full load for an hour even during a heatwave, silent, efficient, l clean it once a year, dependable and a brand that ACTUALLY cares... A lot of comments about the price and how others are cheaper but no one talks about how noctua actually cares to make a good cooler and study it in depth more than others... Thats gotta be worth something, why not support the few companies that offer good service and a good product
i still use my 9 year old nh-d15 and it keeps my 13600K very cool (undervolted sure too, got to pay my bills), noctua send me 2 mounting sets for free just showing my mainboard invoice when i upgraded the system twice while having the noctua, thats customer support! No matter how my nh-d15 does i could buy the new one anyway jsut to give something back to noctua. Btw 2015 i paid 75€ for mine, i got wide eyes when i saw the G2 is twice that price now, near 150€ .. but the regular nh-d15 is at 105€ too, inflation. But still i really want the G2, maybe i see a nice deal end of the year in the sales.
I am still rocking my Noctua NH-U12A Chromax for my 5800x. This is the best single tower air cooler I have ever own, and it performs similar as the NH-D15. The best thing is that it doesn't get in the way of my Corsair Vengeance RGB rams.
I wish someone would include LBC and Standard with Intel 1700 with a contact frame. Noctua recommends the Standard for socket 1700, but if your Intel CPU IHS is flat or convex, you want the LBC. Or preferably, you want a flat base-plate. Hense I would like to see tests done for that. I mentioned this on Gamer's Nexus review, but they deleted it twice. Plus they called the ILM an indenpendent loading mechanism, and it is Intel loading mechanism. Which they deleted twice also. I guess they are so arrogant they don't like anyone adding constructive comments.
Gonna be honest I've used the noctua for 4 years and have never head an issue with noise or heat with my cpu not sponsored just being honest. Love my cooler.
For the money I'd rather go with a liquid cooler and replace that once, twice if i'm unlucky for the lifespan of a PC (8-10 years) and meanwhile enjoy 10 degree cooler temps the whole while. For now I'm good with Thermalright 1/5 -1/3 of the price that performs 1 degree worse at best, at least while Thermalrights pricing strategy lasts.
Great video Mike - as always! But I'm not sure it took the competition 10 years to match the original. 6 years ago I was researching which air cooler to get for my overclocked Ryzen 1800X and I ended up going for the Thermalright Le Grand macho RT (released 9 years ago), as it was trading blows with the original D15, was substantially cheaper than it...and I just thought it looked a little better than it too. It's now happily cooling a 5700X
Great video. I really like air coolers, their reliability. I've been watching/reading your content for very long in this subject, I love it. This review certainly is way up there when it comes to expectations hehe, since the D15 came out and dethroned my beloved D14. Although the breakthroughs Noctua brought are awesome, engineering wise, this time, however, for the vast majority of people is just not worth it $. But the product is top notch and all the Noctua perks that come with it are certainly worth it for some. Awesome review, thanks Mike. PS: The original D15 still looks incredible though, how cool is that wow. I wonder how my OG D14 would look in these graphs heheh, Noctua delivers.
Why would I pay 4 times as much for a cooler that's only 1% better??? I'd go with Thermalright and Arctic all day or even get a decent AIO instead of the D15G2 and I'd still be saving money.
@@wojtek-33 The price difference is so massive, that even talks of "support" are no longer relavent since if you experience problems with Thermalright, you can literally throw it into the trashcan and order a new one and you will still be saving money compared to Noctua. Unlike a decade ago, there is no longer a reason to buy Noctua at all. Their case fans are the only things still worth buying.
@angrysocialjusticewarrior When looking at total system cost, the price difference isnt that huge, if ur whole PC is 2k well now its 2.1k, thats 5% more for a quieter system.
If the case supports it, I will almost always go with Arctic Liquid Freezer III. Non-RGB 360mm version costs a little over half of what NH-D15 G2 costs in Europe, while being the better performer. Even the 240mm performs better. And with 6 years warranty I don't have to worry about it falling apart. You also get offset mount for AM4/AM5 included. One time that I've choose Noctua top tier coolers was when I've build few workstations for the company I've worked for at the time. Price was not an issue, but it had to be very reliable and easy to maintain, since those workstations were running at full load for 2-3 days straight. Those workstations lasted 4 or 5 years without a problem, before being replaced by a better performing ones. In that time they were air cleaned 2 times a year and paste was replaced every 18 months.
I'm really glad you mention that this increased cooling capacity won't really get you better gaming performance, just a nicer experience and great quality. Edit: for more reasonable CPUs like i5 and r5 I feel like we've had plenty of more than capable coolers for cheap prices for ages now. I'm still running the heatsink from a 15 year old Scythe Mugen 2 on my i5, and I don't even need to run my fan above 800 rpm. (1x Be quiet shadow wings 2 120mm)
Last I looked, it still IS one of the best coolers out there. However, between when we first reviewed it and now, there have been very comparable cooler launched.
What a review, you built the exact graphs with relevant info we need. The only thing missing that would be cool is noise measurements for a couple full high airflow pc builds AMD/Intel, few fan profiles, and workloads so we wouldn’t have to do any graph math to figure out how much quieter our rooms could be. Like in the real world would that money make our girlfriends happier when they’re sitting next to us when we fire up a game or trying to have a conversation listening to music at idle? What temps can we safely run to reduce noise, does this cooler let us achieve those temps with notably quieter fan speeds, and how do we configure that?
At 150 it's better to just buy a liquid cooler, they should have just slashed the price to 100 or atleast 125 the consumers would appreciate that and they would sell more
I think between all the “good” cooling options out there, for the most part, we’re talking about 1-6 degrees difference. Other than the small minority of people who have the mindset of performance > absolutely everything, I think most people consider a lot of other factors when deciding on their cooling option. Some people might prioritize price, some esthetics, some brand loyalty, some noise etc but when it comes to performance they don’t need it to be the “best” they just don’t want it to be bad. It’s a reviewers job to hyper focus on performance as they provide us with an important data point to help us avoid choosing a bad product but as consumers I think we sometimes put too much weight on that single data point.
oh my goodness there are three, this is so confusing. you either recorded this more than a month ago or you're a bodydouble cause you're talking as if you weren't at computex. who are you and what did you do with Fanboy? Peace! keep up the great work, I appreciate all the testing you guys do.
Noctua doesn't deserve to be king, the crown goes to Thermalright. Incredibly cheap coolers and great performance out of them. Pick one of those up and you can save some money to put into component upgrades. Enough so that if you had a budget for the G2 but went with Thermalright, you might be able to afford a whole tier upgrade for your GPU or CPU. Noctua's marketing really screwed this up and they don't deserve the amount of praise they're getting for accomplishing around 3 degrees better in cooling..........
Noctua is the air cooler king, I don't know why it would be undeserved? Best cooling while having very low noise levels, plus extremely high build quality. Other brands are good too and you don't have to buy the most expensive thing, but it does not make noctua undeserving of the air cooler's king status.
the tower itself brings much less improvements than the new a14 fans, just buy the new fans and install them on thermalright towers, that would be the best budget-performance choice
@@megapet777 They are BARELY king in performance and no where near king in pricing, that's the whole point I was making. Is 3 degrees worth the extra $114 premium over a Phantom Spirit? Hell no. Spend that extra saved money on component upgrades.
@@Pray4TheBatman Yeah it does not make sense to buy noctua if budget is limit, but for maxed out pc with best components on the market, why not? Thermalright does make very good coolers too.
A good coverage and exactly my worry that these optimizations done for specific platforms would work the other way round for next generation of CPUs. IMHO if the development effort could be spent elsewhere such as vapor chamber, that might be better for longevity.
Noctua was been chasing perfection while other companies were catching up and now there are coolers that perform just as good for much less. Pisses me off that they're still going with that colour scheme and add on a tax for the black version.
Yep the TR Peerless Asassin 120 SE and ID A620 Pro SE both cost 80% less at $30. Even the 33-35% more expensive TR Phantom Spirit 120 EVO that closes the performance gap further is still 73% more affordable than the D15 G2.
@@loomawoe what about ID Cooling? And assuming the average individual consumer (even professionals) don't have their system powered on for more than 100 hours per week it would take just about 7 years to reach that FDM longevity rating. Sure that's not 28 years of rated longevity hence part of what factors into the huge price premium, but I guess $120-$150 is worth it if serves in build-after-build for 20+ years.
Nice review! Is it possible to do the test with "orientation 2" per Noctua manual (rotated 90°). With only one fan at top? Meaning more heatpipes are engaged for AMD, but also heat from GPU.
You should test Cooler Master MasterAir MA824 Stealth since it seems to be better than the standard D15 but im wondering how close it can get to the G2 and since its 90€ its definitely cheaper.
"you don't need a high end cooler for gaming" very true but it is much appreciated with open back headphones :P when the cooling block itself is not really up to the job there is 1 solution at lower costs, bump the fanspeed :P 3000 RPM under load isn't that distracting right :P it's why i went custom watercooling....which is still cooled by noctua NF-A 12x25's as they are just the golden balance between actually doing work and not hearing them do any work :P
I was torn between a U12A and a D15 last year, and I thought I'd be swapping to a D15v2, but I'm glad I got the U12A, 1/2c difference between the coolers on AMD, but I can reuse my U12A fans unlike the D15 fans. Might get the Chromax 140mms for my case though. (if they don't take another 2 years)
Didn't realise until this review they have altered the compatibility to move it away from the GPU that's a definite bonus (can't use the offset on current DH-15 Chromax as it touches my 4090 FE). Sounds like a great cooler but then you have things like the Arctic L Freezer 3, 360 going for £79 its a difficult sell, but as you say you want the ultimate Air cooling Experience Noctua have done it again.
I bought a Thermalright PS140 and snapped a screw when trying to fit the AM4 mounting kit. It’s the cheapest and worst fitting I’ve ever worked with. Zero spare screws so basically can’t use a brand new cooler. I drove to the PC store and purchased the Deep cool Assassin IV and I couldn’t be happier. It looks better, runs quietly and was so easy to mount
Does anyone else actually wanna know how Thermalright is doing it!? Like surely they are selling for a loss...? 95% of the performance for $35 is ridiculous 😭
You include a graph of noise vs. CPU frequency for the 13900k, but not the 7950x. Is this because the various coolers don't affect peak frequency, or because you simply didn't test that?
The first class vs economy seating analogy was absurd. The better analogy is someone who paid $10,000 for a first class ticket with an additional irreverent perk and another person who paid $3500 for a similar first class seat without that perk.
You're mostly paying for type of noise, level of noise and longevity, if that doesn't matter to you, fair enough, I'll be picking up 3 140s when the case fan is out, very sensitive to type of sound.
They prioritised the ultra niche platform specific versions (which basically become obsolete trash once we move onto newer platforms) instead of giving us different colour options at launch, or a value optimised version. Honestly I think Noctua has flopped hard on this.
Noctua really dropped the ball on this one, the performance gains don't justify the price. Releasing 3 SKUs was also a huge waste of time and resources. The HBC variant is only good for the LGA 1700 socket which is now a dead platform (in more ways than one) and there's no guarantee Intel's next socket would benefit from HBC. LBC is also rather pointless, the performance gains are minimal. I really don't know who would buy this, I don't agree that there's a market for it. Using the analogy in the video, first class in this case would be more more like a 360 AIO with RGB and a screen on the pump, the NH-D15 G2 would be like paying first class ticket price and still traveling economy, but with a complimentary glass of champagne and a hot towel.
Noctua is becoming the intel of coolers sadly. They were the best a few years back with no real threat. They didn't evolve during those years but others did and caught up.
Noctua recommends the standard config. I personally would never use an AIO, so if I wanted the best air cooled, no expense build, this is what I would get.
Excellent review. Mike is a great addition to the Hardware Canucks team. I've been watching this channel more and more since Mike started presenting. I second the other commenter that asked for a comparison of the old D15 heatsink with the new G2 fans. I'm curious how that will work out. Maybe we will get a YT short that will address this.
If I'm using aircooling, I'm sticking to thermalright. I will reward the company that has always been affordable while offering 85-95% of the performance of Noctua at a fraction of the price. Heck, I might be able to buy three thermalright products over a 3-5 year period for less than this cooler, and by the 3rd product, probably get the same or better performance than Noctua.
Wow, at 36db! Reality: noise from the street traffic is higher than any of these coolers. In my home office, even my 19 EUR Arctic Freezer 36 is as good as silent and cools my 5700X equally well in any scenario I throw at it.
I ran a NH -D15 on my x99 build & Loved it & even bought a second for my Ryzen 9 3900x But it Just Was not Enough to Keep Up IMHO I Dont Believe in running with temps at 80+ So i Bought The NZXT Kraken 360 aio & then i went to the Ryzen 9 5950x an still on it with a 4.5ghz all core manual OC The NZXT Kraken 360 & the Corsair 360 & 420mm AIO Are The Best On The Market But It Will Cost a Fuw Bucks Just Buy Once Cry Once Because Ya Get What ya Pay For..well 98% of the time any way ! the next step would be a full on Custom Water loop & I Really Dont want to do that again. Even though it was Fun..lol.
Just a small note to add to this which didn't make it into the edit: none of our three samples from Noctua, nor a Standard version we bought at retail exhibited any of the "rattling" some people have experienced.
@HardwareCanucks noctua put out a response and offered a full refund, and they have been able to duplicate the issue.
The PCGamesHardware Test said - 2,3°C for the Corsair A115 compared to the G2 @ 150 W.
I hope you can test the G2 fans on the old NH-D15. I'm really curious how much performance they got from just the fan upgrade.
Would be interesting to see how a contact frame would alter the results on LGA1700. I wonder if the standard G2 would then work best on that platform? 🙂
I think I'm sticking with my Phantom Spirit SE but it is good to see Noctua doing so well since it costs so much. Noctua quality and sound is very tough to beat. Thumbs up!
I bought mine for £30! Hell yeah brother!
wait till u hear of tr royal preytor ultra
Thermalright is just competing with itself at this point. Haven't they released like 5-6 affordable and superbly performing air coolers with similarly wacky names in the last 2 or so years? They're all just blending together at this point.
It gives other companies something to aim at.
The thing is, what makes the Noctua better is mostly the fans. If you bought any of the big dual tower Thermalright coolers and added 2 Noctua fans, it would still be cheaper than buying the Noctua cooler with very similar performance.
Running my D15 since my 4790K up uittil my 7800X3D cooling everything like a boss. Even did cool my i9 10900K like a champ. And it is silent as hell most of the time. Fans are being cleaned once in a while and ofc the cooling block. I always cool all my systems with Noctua. Although I also have a water cooled system. Great video!
Same here, got the D15 for my first rig with a 4790k, and built up to a 12600k, but this cooler has been on various different builds in between, and I honestly cleaned it two or three times in this decade, I'm still impressed with the performance since even under heavy load i can barely hear it. It was 90$ when I got it, Noctua also sent me the hardware for AM4 and LGA1200.
Although I have to say that 150$ for the G2 is personally too much, but if one wants something reliable, with great quality and support from the company I would say the G2 is a great choice
Same, I got the NH-D14, and put it on the 4770K, then upgraded to the NH-D15 when I got Ryzen 3900X and now it's on a 14700K and works great.
I wish they made a Threadripper version of this. And that Arctic made a Threadripper version of their Liquid Freezer coolers.
there’s already a threadripper version of the freezer iii?
@@rokiesato On the cooler page for Arctic, I only see AM4 and AM5 as options to choose from, nothing for Threadripper. I am thinking about their Liquid Freezer coolers, any of them, not just III.
Not many companies bother with such sockets. Usually they are niche market, and you need to make specialized cooler with big enough coldplate to cover the IHS. best bet for you is custom water-cooling and getting block made for these CPUs (Heatkiller make some), or use exiting coolers like NH-U14S TR5-SP6.
@@eliadbu Yeah. And I have the U14S, but this seems better
Frostgiant??
Quality motors & sound frequencies it makes. Plus satisfies the geek in many who care enough to even watch this video. Supporting a company pushing the ball forward.
Your comparative graphs are the easiest to read.
Thanks...I think?
This. So nice. The clock speed graphs are really cool too.
👏
This is the video I've been waiting for... Thanks, G. You're the man!
Coolers 1/3 the price offer 98% of the performance...
I would way rather just buy 5 dual tower thermal right coolers
It's not made for price-sensitive buyers. Never was.
corvette vs ferrari moment
Noctua would be more PORSCHE ;-)
Get those then❤
Mike could you test the old heatsink with the G2 fans? And even with just one. For example D15S with one G2 fan. Thanks!!
I think Gamers Nexus may have done this.
Interesting question. I'll get on it.
@@wojtek-33
I don't think they did, I believe Machines and More did it.
@@fatrob88 I went back and looked, GN tested the old fan on the new heatsink. It was about 3 degrees warmer.
@@wojtek-33 They did
I WAITED 10 YEARS FOR YOU TO MAKE THIS VIDEO MIKE 💞🎉
Well well.....the King is truly back. I'm shocked at the gap between the G2 and the other air coolers at high heat loads, looking at your graphs. And as far as the price and the brown and beige look goes, I love how the colours look in my current build. It stands out in an all-black build and draws attention to itself as though it's the star of the show. My only regret is that I didn't go with ultra-low profile RAM sticks so the front fan is not on the same level as the centre fan. I like symmetry.
Whilst I won't buy this cooler, I have infinite respect for its engineering. It reminds me of Baldur's Gate 3 in an odd way: made by people who love their job (and are extremely good at it).
I am soo looking forward to your videos on the TR coolers Mike
I will be interested how Royal Pretor performs against this, 3 times more expensive, chunk of metal called D15 G2. Just can't wait for those new TR coolers. PS: just checked the price of standard G2 here.. 183€ lol (eastern Europe). Long live the PS120!
Been waiting for this, fab thankyou
I love the look and feel of a crispy, new Kirkland black Tee. Great choice.
Hey it's pima cotton. I love me some well priced pima.
Noctua is a good company. They didnt need to upgrade plain and simple. In a sea of companies that want you to upgrade every years its nice to see Noctua take their time and release products they feel are needed.
I was almost about to spend 90€ for a NH-D15 G1 but luckily found your video on the Phantom Spirit 120 SE. Can't be happier this thing cools down my i5-13500 on 95W PL1/2 to 55 Degrees Celsius at idle rpm.
People bashing the price probably are right but cases also come with fans too that are just fine. But sometimes people want something that’s gonna still be working just fine 7 years from now, maybe more when it moves on to the next build or two
Great video 👍🏼
When the new fans out, I’m gonna build a fully air cooled system with the G2 and new fans
On the topic of the HBC vs Standart G2 variants of the cooler - I'd say get a contact frame (form TR/Thermal Grizzly) and just get the standart one.
Cannot wait for Peerless Assassin 140 test :D
Great review!
..but I still see no reason to buy this cooler at 159euro, when my old TR phantom spirit at 24euro doing same work and in certain situations even better😅
I respect Noctua, but in my opinion they digging in the wrong side..
You're not a real gamer! Real gamers always overpay for performance they won't even notice.
Have a 10850k, Noctua NH-D15, big case, temps never go above 80c on full load for an hour even during a heatwave, silent, efficient, l clean it once a year, dependable and a brand that ACTUALLY cares... A lot of comments about the price and how others are cheaper but no one talks about how noctua actually cares to make a good cooler and study it in depth more than others... Thats gotta be worth something, why not support the few companies that offer good service and a good product
i still use my 9 year old nh-d15 and it keeps my 13600K very cool (undervolted sure too, got to pay my bills), noctua send me 2 mounting sets for free just showing my mainboard invoice when i upgraded the system twice while having the noctua, thats customer support! No matter how my nh-d15 does i could buy the new one anyway jsut to give something back to noctua.
Btw 2015 i paid 75€ for mine, i got wide eyes when i saw the G2 is twice that price now, near 150€ .. but the regular nh-d15 is at 105€ too, inflation.
But still i really want the G2, maybe i see a nice deal end of the year in the sales.
Klarna, job done 😜
I've been waiting for your review of this cooler, and you delivered! Great vid
Thanks!
Return of the King sure, but u gotta sell your own Kingdom to afford it.
I am still rocking my Noctua NH-U12A Chromax for my 5800x. This is the best single tower air cooler I have ever own, and it performs similar as the NH-D15. The best thing is that it doesn't get in the way of my Corsair Vengeance RGB rams.
I wish someone would include LBC and Standard with Intel 1700 with a contact frame.
Noctua recommends the Standard for socket 1700, but if your Intel CPU IHS is flat or convex, you want the LBC. Or preferably, you want a flat base-plate. Hense I would like to see tests done for that.
I mentioned this on Gamer's Nexus review, but they deleted it twice.
Plus they called the ILM an indenpendent loading mechanism, and it is Intel loading mechanism. Which they deleted twice also.
I guess they are so arrogant they don't like anyone adding constructive comments.
Gonna be honest I've used the noctua for 4 years and have never head an issue with noise or heat with my cpu not sponsored just being honest. Love my cooler.
Good review. Are you gonna make video of Noctua NH-L12Sx77?
For the money I'd rather go with a liquid cooler and replace that once, twice if i'm unlucky for the lifespan of a PC (8-10 years) and meanwhile enjoy 10 degree cooler temps the whole while.
For now I'm good with Thermalright 1/5 -1/3 of the price that performs 1 degree worse at best, at least while Thermalrights pricing strategy lasts.
Great review! Could you do a review on newer Scythe fans, Wonder Snail for example?
Best bit about Noctua, even when the fans are spinning fast, they sound pleasant, its something you can very easily filter out and forget its there
Great video Mike - as always! But I'm not sure it took the competition 10 years to match the original. 6 years ago I was researching which air cooler to get for my overclocked Ryzen 1800X and I ended up going for the Thermalright Le Grand macho RT (released 9 years ago), as it was trading blows with the original D15, was substantially cheaper than it...and I just thought it looked a little better than it too. It's now happily cooling a 5700X
Great video. I really like air coolers, their reliability. I've been watching/reading your content for very long in this subject, I love it. This review certainly is way up there when it comes to expectations hehe, since the D15 came out and dethroned my beloved D14. Although the breakthroughs Noctua brought are awesome, engineering wise, this time, however, for the vast majority of people is just not worth it $. But the product is top notch and all the Noctua perks that come with it are certainly worth it for some. Awesome review, thanks Mike.
PS: The original D15 still looks incredible though, how cool is that wow. I wonder how my OG D14 would look in these graphs heheh, Noctua delivers.
Why would I pay 4 times as much for a cooler that's only 1% better??? I'd go with Thermalright and Arctic all day or even get a decent AIO instead of the D15G2 and I'd still be saving money.
You wouldn't, but someone who wants the best air cooler, plus the support you get, would. I'd personally never use an AIO but that's just me.
I think my plane reference flew over the heads of most people. :P
@@wojtek-33 The price difference is so massive, that even talks of "support" are no longer relavent since if you experience problems with Thermalright, you can literally throw it into the trashcan and order a new one and you will still be saving money compared to Noctua. Unlike a decade ago, there is no longer a reason to buy Noctua at all. Their case fans are the only things still worth buying.
@angrysocialjusticewarrior When looking at total system cost, the price difference isnt that huge, if ur whole PC is 2k well now its 2.1k, thats 5% more for a quieter system.
@@ThunderingRoar We are not talking percentage here. A price increase of 120€ in comparison to something more "reasonable" is real money.
If the case supports it, I will almost always go with Arctic Liquid Freezer III. Non-RGB 360mm version costs a little over half of what NH-D15 G2 costs in Europe, while being the better performer. Even the 240mm performs better. And with 6 years warranty I don't have to worry about it falling apart. You also get offset mount for AM4/AM5 included.
One time that I've choose Noctua top tier coolers was when I've build few workstations for the company I've worked for at the time. Price was not an issue, but it had to be very reliable and easy to maintain, since those workstations were running at full load for 2-3 days straight. Those workstations lasted 4 or 5 years without a problem, before being replaced by a better performing ones. In that time they were air cleaned 2 times a year and paste was replaced every 18 months.
cant wait to NH-D16
I'm really glad you mention that this increased cooling capacity won't really get you better gaming performance, just a nicer experience and great quality.
Edit: for more reasonable CPUs like i5 and r5 I feel like we've had plenty of more than capable coolers for cheap prices for ages now. I'm still running the heatsink from a 15 year old Scythe Mugen 2 on my i5, and I don't even need to run my fan above 800 rpm. (1x Be quiet shadow wings 2 120mm)
I love Noctua, but the price is outrageous... I can't justify the NH-D15 G2 for that price when Thermalright exists...
99.9% won't notice a difference in performance in idle, gaming and regular use. It's mainly just for the branding, The Starbucks/Apple of heat sinks
Your prior graphs show the Frost Spirit as one of the best coolers for the 7950.x Has your testing methodology changed since your last review?
11:20
Last I looked, it still IS one of the best coolers out there. However, between when we first reviewed it and now, there have been very comparable cooler launched.
If this thing was $100 it would have been more appealing but even at that price, the current market conditions make it a really hard sell.
This guy videos are the only ones at this channel that is worth watching. The other two guys present us just dumb things all the time.
brother it worththe money! Mine still working completely fine i didnt even changed the fans i changed 2 cpus but the cooler is still fine
Take note kids: ambient temperature referenced on the graph.
What a review, you built the exact graphs with relevant info we need. The only thing missing that would be cool is noise measurements for a couple full high airflow pc builds AMD/Intel, few fan profiles, and workloads so we wouldn’t have to do any graph math to figure out how much quieter our rooms could be. Like in the real world would that money make our girlfriends happier when they’re sitting next to us when we fire up a game or trying to have a conversation listening to music at idle? What temps can we safely run to reduce noise, does this cooler let us achieve those temps with notably quieter fan speeds, and how do we configure that?
I have the old one. I'll upgrade when the Nawktuah NH-D15 G3 releases
its so beautiful
At 150 it's better to just buy a liquid cooler, they should have just slashed the price to 100 or atleast 125 the consumers would appreciate that and they would sell more
Today I learned that Noctua is named after the Athene noctua, which is a small kind of owl. Thats where their logo comes from too!
I think between all the “good” cooling options out there, for the most part, we’re talking about 1-6 degrees difference. Other than the small minority of people who have the mindset of performance > absolutely everything, I think most people consider a lot of other factors when deciding on their cooling option. Some people might prioritize price, some esthetics, some brand loyalty, some noise etc but when it comes to performance they don’t need it to be the “best” they just don’t want it to be bad.
It’s a reviewers job to hyper focus on performance as they provide us with an important data point to help us avoid choosing a bad product but as consumers I think we sometimes put too much weight on that single data point.
oh my goodness there are three, this is so confusing. you either recorded this more than a month ago or you're a bodydouble cause you're talking as if you weren't at computex. who are you and what did you do with Fanboy? Peace! keep up the great work, I appreciate all the testing you guys do.
Air coolers rule I love it.
I would like to see a challenge between Noctua NH-D15 G2 and the new ThermalRight Peerless Assassin 140. Thanks for the review
Noctua doesn't deserve to be king, the crown goes to Thermalright. Incredibly cheap coolers and great performance out of them. Pick one of those up and you can save some money to put into component upgrades. Enough so that if you had a budget for the G2 but went with Thermalright, you might be able to afford a whole tier upgrade for your GPU or CPU. Noctua's marketing really screwed this up and they don't deserve the amount of praise they're getting for accomplishing around 3 degrees better in cooling..........
Noctua is the air cooler king, I don't know why it would be undeserved? Best cooling while having very low noise levels, plus extremely high build quality. Other brands are good too and you don't have to buy the most expensive thing, but it does not make noctua undeserving of the air cooler's king status.
the tower itself brings much less improvements than the new a14 fans, just buy the new fans and install them on thermalright towers, that would be the best budget-performance choice
🔥
@@megapet777 They are BARELY king in performance and no where near king in pricing, that's the whole point I was making. Is 3 degrees worth the extra $114 premium over a Phantom Spirit? Hell no. Spend that extra saved money on component upgrades.
@@Pray4TheBatman Yeah it does not make sense to buy noctua if budget is limit, but for maxed out pc with best components on the market, why not? Thermalright does make very good coolers too.
I’m looking forward to see results for the HBC version with the incoming Intel cpus like Core 9 Ultra 285K
Thermaltake is already copying every inch of Noctua’s new air cooler
Well, I just finished a build with the Nh d9l, For the Mood case, I'll keep this one in mind for a next build.
A good coverage and exactly my worry that these optimizations done for specific platforms would work the other way round for next generation of CPUs.
IMHO if the development effort could be spent elsewhere such as vapor chamber, that might be better for longevity.
Noctua was been chasing perfection while other companies were catching up and now there are coolers that perform just as good for much less. Pisses me off that they're still going with that colour scheme and add on a tax for the black version.
Yep the TR Peerless Asassin 120 SE and ID A620 Pro SE both cost 80% less at $30.
Even the 33-35% more expensive TR Phantom Spirit 120 EVO that closes the performance gap further is still 73% more affordable than the D15 G2.
Perfection is 3 degrees difference ? while AIO get quieter years after years and stay cool everytime.
@@loomawoe what about ID Cooling?
And assuming the average individual consumer (even professionals) don't have their system powered on for more than 100 hours per week it would take just about 7 years to reach that FDM longevity rating.
Sure that's not 28 years of rated longevity hence part of what factors into the huge price premium, but I guess $120-$150 is worth it if serves in build-after-build for 20+ years.
I still have the G1 of the Noctua NH-D15. Still balling like a boss.
Time to build a brand new DDR5 system.
Excellent piece of engineering, worth every penny... but I'm still riding with Thermalright. I get the same performance for less coin.
Nice review! Is it possible to do the test with "orientation 2" per Noctua manual (rotated 90°). With only one fan at top? Meaning more heatpipes are engaged for AMD, but also heat from GPU.
You should test Cooler Master MasterAir MA824 Stealth since it seems to be better than the standard D15 but im wondering how close it can get to the G2 and since its 90€ its definitely cheaper.
"you don't need a high end cooler for gaming" very true but it is much appreciated with open back headphones :P when the cooling block itself is not really up to the job there is 1 solution at lower costs, bump the fanspeed :P 3000 RPM under load isn't that distracting right :P
it's why i went custom watercooling....which is still cooled by noctua NF-A 12x25's as they are just the golden balance between actually doing work and not hearing them do any work :P
Here I am watching this video who only ever used intel stock cooler for 8+ years :) pretty interesting stuff :D
2:47 Made me laugh. Reminded me of a show girl from the Price Is Right
I can't do this color. Have to wait for the black version. Not sure why it's not out at launch.
I was torn between a U12A and a D15 last year, and I thought I'd be swapping to a D15v2, but I'm glad I got the U12A, 1/2c difference between the coolers on AMD, but I can reuse my U12A fans unlike the D15 fans.
Might get the Chromax 140mms for my case though. (if they don't take another 2 years)
There is honestly NO reason why you should get a Noctua instead of an Arctic AIO or Air cooler, not gonna lie
Why ?
the old F12 and A14 really were beautiful to look at though, weren’t they
Didn't realise until this review they have altered the compatibility to move it away from the GPU that's a definite bonus (can't use the offset on current DH-15 Chromax as it touches my 4090 FE). Sounds like a great cooler but then you have things like the Arctic L Freezer 3, 360 going for £79 its a difficult sell, but as you say you want the ultimate Air cooling Experience Noctua have done it again.
The one perk this cooler has is its clocks speed with no limits when using intel cpu compared to aios. It very close to them.
I bought a Thermalright PS140 and snapped a screw when trying to fit the AM4 mounting kit. It’s the cheapest and worst fitting I’ve ever worked with. Zero spare screws so basically can’t use a brand new cooler. I drove to the PC store and purchased the Deep cool Assassin IV and I couldn’t be happier. It looks better, runs quietly and was so easy to mount
Really enjoy the extra added noise coming from the fins on the bottom really annoying.
Please do a lower end cooler round up ... Slim single tower coolers chart would be awesome
Does anyone else actually wanna know how Thermalright is doing it!? Like surely they are selling for a loss...? 95% of the performance for $35 is ridiculous 😭
Probably, but they claim they make everything themselves, so maybe that helps more than we expect.
Their development and production fees are substantially less. They also make iterative changes until a "jackpot" moment.
Thermalright owns their factories, which can significantly speed up prototyping, and keep costs down once a cooler enters mass production.
I can't wait to cool my i3 with this G2.
You include a graph of noise vs. CPU frequency for the 13900k, but not the 7950x. Is this because the various coolers don't affect peak frequency, or because you simply didn't test that?
I'll wait for the black version of this.
The first class vs economy seating analogy was absurd. The better analogy is someone who paid $10,000 for a first class ticket with an additional irreverent perk and another person who paid $3500 for a similar first class seat without that perk.
Can you do a test with the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360/420?
You're mostly paying for type of noise, level of noise and longevity, if that doesn't matter to you, fair enough, I'll be picking up 3 140s when the case fan is out, very sensitive to type of sound.
I love Noctua as much as anyone but this is absurdly overpriced. The Thermalright and Arctic coolers have completely killed this.
bro has every thermalright fan except the thermalright phantom spirit 120
Epically BIG, Heavy, expensive, and held down by 2 screws ... yeah, no thanks ... I'll stick to a 360 AIO or custom water loop for heat exchange.
They prioritised the ultra niche platform specific versions (which basically become obsolete trash once we move onto newer platforms) instead of giving us different colour options at launch, or a value optimised version. Honestly I think Noctua has flopped hard on this.
Noctua really dropped the ball on this one, the performance gains don't justify the price. Releasing 3 SKUs was also a huge waste of time and resources. The HBC variant is only good for the LGA 1700 socket which is now a dead platform (in more ways than one) and there's no guarantee Intel's next socket would benefit from HBC. LBC is also rather pointless, the performance gains are minimal.
I really don't know who would buy this, I don't agree that there's a market for it. Using the analogy in the video, first class in this case would be more more like a 360 AIO with RGB and a screen on the pump, the NH-D15 G2 would be like paying first class ticket price and still traveling economy, but with a complimentary glass of champagne and a hot towel.
Noctua is becoming the intel of coolers sadly. They were the best a few years back with no real threat. They didn't evolve during those years but others did and caught up.
Noctua recommends the standard config. I personally would never use an AIO, so if I wanted the best air cooled, no expense build, this is what I would get.
Great comprehensive review! Been waiting for this unbiased review. It's definitely a great cooler, but WAY overpriced.
Excellent review. Mike is a great addition to the Hardware Canucks team. I've been watching this channel more and more since Mike started presenting. I second the other commenter that asked for a comparison of the old D15 heatsink with the new G2 fans. I'm curious how that will work out. Maybe we will get a YT short that will address this.
If I'm using aircooling, I'm sticking to thermalright. I will reward the company that has always been affordable while offering 85-95% of the performance of Noctua at a fraction of the price.
Heck, I might be able to buy three thermalright products over a 3-5 year period for less than this cooler, and by the 3rd product, probably get the same or better performance than Noctua.
I would have loved to see the bar diagrams that you usally show
We will bring them back shortly. We were going to publish them here but Excel errors had other plans....
Is Noctua selling the G2 fans seperately? Like for us that have a D15 and would like to 'upgrade'?
Yeah, they're available. You can buy one fan, or a pair which have their "offset rpm" thing.
They should be available later in September
Wow, at 36db! Reality: noise from the street traffic is higher than any of these coolers. In my home office, even my 19 EUR Arctic Freezer 36 is as good as silent and cools my 5700X equally well in any scenario I throw at it.
I ran a NH -D15 on my x99 build & Loved it & even bought a second for my Ryzen 9 3900x But it Just Was not Enough to Keep Up IMHO I Dont Believe in running with temps at 80+ So i Bought The NZXT Kraken 360 aio & then i went to the Ryzen 9 5950x an still on it with a 4.5ghz all core manual OC The NZXT Kraken 360 & the Corsair 360 & 420mm AIO Are The Best On The Market But It Will Cost a Fuw Bucks Just Buy Once Cry Once Because Ya Get What ya Pay For..well 98% of the time any way ! the next step would be a full on Custom Water loop & I Really Dont want to do that again. Even though it was Fun..lol.
I take the LF3 over the D15 V2 all day. Its cheaper, doesn't put pressure on the motherboard and looks cooler.
Does the offset mount add any height at all? I have 2mm of space
Any chance of some AM4 numbers please? 😅