Noctua NH-D15S D-Type Air CPU Cooler Review

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Just a while ago, we took a look at the Noctua’s NH-C14S CPU cooler, and today, we are going to take a look at their NH-D15S, which ones again is a cut-down version of NH-D15 which has dual fans. And once again, Noctua has provided us one more of the NF-A15 fan so that we can test the thermal performance of the CPU cooler in both single and dual fan configuration.

The Noctua NH-D15S unlike NH-C14S is a dual tower heatsink CPU cooler. it also features a copper baseplate and aluminum heatsink. As for the fan goes, the NH-D15S comes along with a NF-A15 fan which is a 140mm fan with a 150mm diameter. The fan features the same SS02 bearing from Noctua and also has rubber padding on the corners for better acoustic performance. So lets dive right into the unboxing video:

Noctua NH-D15S Unboxing Video:

Noctua NH-D15S Photo Gallery:

Noctua NH-D15S Specification:

CPU Cooler Specification:

Socket compatibility Intel LGA2066, LGA2011-0 & LGA2011-3 (Square ILM), LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA1151, LGA1150 & AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, FM2, FM2+ (backplate required), AM4 with NM-AM4
Height (without fan) 160 mm
Width (without fan)
150 mm
Depth (without fan) 135 mm
Height (with fan)
160 mm
Width (with fan) 150 mm
Depth (with fan) 135 mm
Weight (without fan) 980 g
Weight (with fan/s) 1150 g
Material Copper (base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints & nickel plating
Max. TDP see TDP guide
Fan compatibility 140x150x25 (with 120mm mounting holes), 140x140x25 (with 120mm mounting holes), 120x120x25
Scope of Delivery
  • 1x NF-A15 PWM premium fan
  • Low-Noise Adaptor (L.N.A.)
  • Fan clips for second fan
  • NT-H1 high-grade thermal compound
  • SecuFirm2™ Mounting Kit
  • Noctua Metal Case-Badge
Warranty 6 Years

Fan Specification:

Model 1x Noctua NF-A15 PWM
Bearing SSO2
Max. Rotational Speed (+/- 10%)
1500 RPM
Max. Rotational Speed with L.N.A. (+/- 10%)
1200 RPM
Min. Rotational Speed (PWM, +/-20%) 300 RPM
Max. Airflow 140,2 m³/h
Max. Airflow with L.N.A. 115,5 m³/h
Max. Acoustical Noise
24,6 dB(A)
Max. Acoustical Noise with L.N.A. 19,2 dB(A)
Input Power 1,56 W
Voltage Range 12 V
MTTF
> 150.000 h

Test Setup:

Motherboard: Asus z170P
Processor: Intel I5 6600K
RAM: Apacer Panther Rage 16GB 2400MHz C16
SSD1: Apacer AS720 240GB
SSD2: PNY Optima 120GB
SSD3: Kingston SSDnow V300 120GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM 
GPU: MSI R9 280X 3G
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S + Noctua NF-A15
Thermal Compound: Noctua NT-H1
PSU: Chieftec Nitro 1200W 85+ bronze
Chassis: Thermaltake Core P3

Methodology:

So, the Noctua NH-D15S was tested in a total of 4 configurations. One where the chipset was on default clock speed of 3.5ghz and 3.9ghz turbo. We tested the thermal performance with both single and dual fans configuration here. And the second configuration included the I5 6600K overclocked to 4.5ghz with 1.344 Vcore voltage and once again the thermal performance was tested with both single and dual fans here.

The fan speeds were left on default/standard curve in the bios. In each configuration, two readings were noted, one when the system was left idle for 10 minutes and another one when the system was under 100% load for 30 minutes, so the heat builds up.

Prime95 Small FFTs was running for 30 minutes to build up the heat and Realtemp, and HWmonitor were used to notice the temperature across the cores. What you see in the charts below is the average temperature of the four cores.

A room temperature of 28 degrees was maintained during the test period, and Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound was used with each cooler.

Thermal Performance:

Single Fan:

Dual Fan:

Acoustic Performance:

As mentioned in our previous review of the Noctua’s NH-C14S, we will not be mentioning the acoustic performance in numbers as to get the perfect measurements of the sound being produced by the cooler can only be measured accurately in an isolated system. Which of course, we don’t have at our home with all the environmental noise.

Still I can account for what my ears could hear, and it was barely noticeable ate a distance of 2-3 feet. Also, there’s not a significant increase in the noise even when 2 fans are being used, but yes, it does get a little louder than single fan setup. As for my ideal CPU usage on default curve, the fan is barely noticeable but when the fans hits it’s max RPM speed, the fan does get a little noisy but not as much to annoy you. The NH-D15S is only a little nosier than the NH-C14S but compared to the Water 3.0 Ultimate, it’s still better.

Conclusion:

The results from the NH-D15S thermal test seems a little bit odd for some reason. At stock speed, we can see that the NH-D15S in our test fails to defeat the C-type NH-C14S CPU cooler. Considering that the NH-C14S is a single heatsink and NH-D15S is a dual heatsink cooler, I was expecting the opposite, but for some reason, the NH-C14S seems to have taken the lead in both single and dual fan setup at the stock speed. However, the Noctua NH-D15S seems to be leading in the overclocked temperature test. The dual fans and dual heatsink design seem to be working out better at a higher Vcore voltage and clock speed. It does seem a little odd, there could be some errors during the test like the room temperature measurement might have acted up and so on, but that’s the result from our test.

The Noctua NH-D15S has an MSRP of $79.90 that is only $5 more than their NH-C14S, and both the coolers seem to have almost similar results in thermal and acoustic departments whereas one is a C-type and another is a D-type CPU cooler. Even though the thermal performance doesn’t come out as expected, we can still say that the Noctua NH-D15S is a great cooler for the price.

The build quality of the cooler is good, doesn’t seem like it’ll wear out too quickly, though I did have a little bit of trouble while mounting the fan on the cooler. The cooler comes with a good performance silent fan with rubber pads on the corner for even better acoustic performance yet once again, the theme of the fan might not be up to everyone’s taste. And while we didn’t saw much of a difference with the NH-C14S with dual fans, we saw an improvement of as high as 5 degrees centigrade with the dual fan setup on the NH-D15S so it might be worth considering to opt in for another fan. And also, with the Noctua NH-D15S, you are getting 6 years of warranty.

So in the end, I would like to rate the Noctua NH-D15S also a 4.5 out of 5 stars and give it our Recommended Buy award.

We are influencers and brand affiliates.  This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.