Testing
We installed the NH-D15 SE-AM4 in our AM4 test system. It is made up of the following components.
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 1700
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard
Graphics Card: Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming
Memory: 32 GB Crucial DDR4
Power: Corsair RM650x
Storage: 120GB Samsung 840 Evo
Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4
Noctua does included their low-noise adapters so we will also be including those results in our testing. We will be comparing the NH-D15 SE-AM4 to the Corsair H110i AiO cooler.
For testing we will first be taking our idle temperatures from the Windows 10 desktop after having the system on in an idle state for one hour.
Next we will be putting 100% load on the CPU using Prime95. We will run it and take a temperature reading at the 1 hour mark.
If we look at the results we can see that the NH-D15 SE-AM4 did a great job cooling our Ryzen 7 1700, even better than the Corsair H110i AiO!
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.