Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4 CPU Cooler Overview
The first thing that you’ll notice about the NH-D15 SE-AM4 is that it is a very large cooler, it is actually Noctua’s largest cooler. It has official dimensions of 165 mm x 150 mm x 161 mm (HxWxD) so you are going to want to make sure it will fit inside of your system. The cooler also keeps the same Noctua colors we are used to seeing on their coolers.
This cooler is designed as a dual-tower cooler so you have two aluminum heatsink towers. If we look at the cooler from the side we can see that the heatsink stacks are thinner towards the bottom. This is for better compatibility with memory if you only plan on using a single fan.
This cooler ships with two NF-A15 140mm fans. One is to be mounted in the center of the cooler with the other on either of the sides depending on your setup. This fans make use of an SSO2 bearing and have a max rotational speed of 1500 RPM (+/- 10%), max airflow of 140.2 m³/h, max acoustical noise of 24.6 dB(A). These fans feature the rubber corners which will dampen vibration and they are held on to the cooler using the typical fan clips.
Coming out of the base you’ll find six nickel-plated copper heatpipes. These heatpipes go up into the heatsink in a “U” fashion. These help transfer heat from the base of the cooler up into each heatsink tower for dissipation by the fans. Compared to the NH-D14 the heatpipes on this cooler are spaced further apart, which allows for a more uniform heat distribution over a larger surface area.
If we take a look at one of the heatsink towers we can see how the heatpipes go up into it in uniform fashion.
Taking a closer look at the base one thing that is very interesting is that we do have visible machining marks. This is a little different than the mirror-finish bases we’ve seen from Noctua in the past. From this video you can also see how the heatpipes come in from each side on the cooler.
40 degrees at 100% load?? Is this 40 over ambient or just the actual temperature of the CPU being 40? If it’s the latter, what’s the ambient temperature?
I know AMD uses some sweet thermal compound between the CPU and the heatspreader. But this seems absolutely crazy. An 8 core CPU at 40 degrees at full load.
First on the list would be to spray paint those fugly fans with a better color.
I have an R7 1700. At stock, maximum all core clock speeds are only 3.2GHz, and my Noctua U14S does similar temperatures. Overclocked to 3.8GHz all cores, the temperatures do push the high 60s.
do not forget the temperature offset used by many Ryzen CPU (1800x-1700x) unless you have a program reading the proper temperature AMD did state the temps are actually reported as 20c higher from the factory
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/03/amds-ryzen-cpus-arent-running-as-hot-as-they-say-they-are/
Either way ~60c fully loaded all cores is actually not bad though I would expect better from a noctua unit, but still much better then many Intel higher end core i chips let alone previous bulldozer/piledriver chips hitting in the 70-80s 😀
Man those fans are fugly bastards. Might be one of the best coolers. Wont win any color contests. Noctua needs to switch all fans colors over like the NF-F12 iPPC-3000. Beautiful.