Noctua NH-D9L Premium CPU Cooler 92mm Fan

After experiencing a failure with the AIO cooler in my mini ITX gaming PC, I decided to switch to the NH-D9L air cooler after conducting some research. Here’s my experience with this cooling solution.

“The installation process of the NH-D9L was painless, especially compared to the hassle of fitting the old AIO cooler into my compact case. I’m currently running an Intel i-11600k processor, and the performance of this cooler has exceeded my expectations in every aspect.

At system idle, the CPU temperature remains stable at 49°C without any fans running. Upon activating the case fan and CPU fan at 50%, the CPU idle temperature drops further to 43°C. Even during intense tasks such as running a full-core 100% CPU stress test with the fans operating at maximum speed, the NH-D9L maintains a manageable temperature of 81°C.”

“Overall, I’m impressed with the NH-D9L air cooler and would highly recommend it to anyone in search of a high-performance cooling solution for Intel gen 11 mini ITX gaming PC. With its easy installation process and excellent performance, it’s undoubtedly a 10 out of 10 in my book.”

If you’re like me and are getting this to replace a stock cooler. Wow, the temps are amazing and I can turn all my fans down such that my PC is silent.

So first thing I need to put as a disclaimer my H80i likely just needed a new round of thermal paste – this wasn’t discovered till I removed it to install the Noctua NH-D9L. But I’ve had issues with the Corsair liquid coolers prev so…better safe than sorry.

Anyhow for whatever reason when I moved my Mobo into a new case – left the H80i attached to CPU just disco the Rad/Fan set from case and relo to the new case. After that cooling just sucked and I even had an additional fan on the case. Now wee bit of history I had a Corsair before the H80i (forgot the model) but it failed just before warranty. It had been in the same case, same mobo for a bit under a year. Corsair sent me the H80i as a replacement.

H80i had worked decently well for 2+ yrs but as stated above after case swap (heatsink was never moved from CPU) it just wasn’t cooling anymore – ~20% load on CPU was skyrocketing into 155+ (F) temps. Attempting to do anything too intensive pushed it into auto shutdown. With prev xp of the Corsair line just quit working properly was time to replace.

I did search around for many different coolers, was going to go liquid again. My sys sits in an enclosed space, not ideal and not really what I want (I’m an IT guy) but with a 4&6 yr olds running around I don’t want my PC exposed to them. Running an AMD FX8320 I figure a decent liquid cooler and the 2 x sets of fans I attached to the desk side and back would keep it running decently. This PC is always on and acts a video streamer to Rokus and is my gaming rig as well, 10TB of space on 4xSATA drives. Bit older rig, no M2/U2 – future project will include the newer drive systems.

I wanted to get away from Corsair, basically 3.5 yrs total with Corsair w/replacement. I’ve certainly seen standard HS+Fan setups last way longer than that, and in worse temp environments where I work at (I live in Vegas – warehouses are not that well cooled here in the summertime). The better rated liquid coolers were brands I wasn’t familiar with, not a ton of reviews like with Corsair & Thermaltake so was very hesitant. I included my search scope to include the venerable HS+Fan setups as well.

Well there are many interesting HS+Fan designs out there, some very cool looking and very tempting as the seemed very promising but checking some of the stats it didn’t seem like they would be good candidates for my little 8xCore CPU (6 yrs old now). Especially since I am looking at heading to a Ryzen chip someday. Then I started seeing references to Noctua in some reviews of other coolers and normally very glowing remarks of Noctua.

Eventually ran across a link directly to one of the Noctua products, at first I thought what an ugly ass fan – first one I saw had the fan on the outside of HS. That doesn’t really bother me anyway cuz my system isn’t for showing how pretty it is. Someday when it is actually released from it’s hermit cave I don’t care how pretty and lit up the inside is – I just need my stuff to work and run decently, not expecting a Ferrari (after all is AMD 8320) but at least a good solid Volvo. So Nocua started getting my attention. Everyone said they were fantastic, ran as well as many liquid coolers (believe an H80i was even ref or the H100), and that the fans were super quite, bit pricey for fans but worth it.

Overall the cost of the HS+Fan NH-D9L unit really wasn’t bad and much less than I was expecting and willing to pay for a new liquid cooler or even some of the other HS coolers. With pretty much perfect reviews I was thinking I would be a big ass dummy if I didn’t give this a shot, after all if it now workee could always get it returned.

Ordered it, wasn’t expecting it until May 9-12, arrived on 5 May! Btw – family night out for a bit, gone for ~ 2.5hrs, my system (h80i still in) got heat stroke and shut down again, AC running so air temp ~78, Desk door ~ 1/2 open and I had a Bionaire desk fan running pointing at the case to help push cool air in but not enough help, was just becoming a bigger liability by the day. After we got back, seeing sys shutdown while out, swapped out the H80i for NH-D9L. Btw – GPU temps normally ~90-95 (not gaming), Mobo temps between ~85-90, so airflow was not the issue – this was without the Bionaire fan/door open too.

I am so freaking delighted! Bionaire fan remoted, desk door closed, very quite compared to prev and CPU temps ranges of course but basically writting this ~5-10% load, 102 (F). When first booting up, did Nvidia update – 100% CPU load and CPU temp was ~145 (F). That was great. As I did state at the beginning the Thermal paste was very lack luster on the CPU after removing the H80i, actually a good amount was stuck to the H80i HS, but was rather dry. Now it may have just been coincidental timing replacing the case and the H80i starting to suck – who knows. Possibly just redoing the paste and reattaching the H80i and all would have been good. But again I had experienced 1 Corsair Death before and really didn’t want to chance.

Overall highly impressed with the Noctua NH-D9L. Operating in an enclosed space, 4 x SATA drives running, as well as GTX 960 (recently added as well…maybe that had an additional factor on the H80i – prev to the 960 had a Ti750). But since the other system temps were decent I believe the H80i was just a bit too finicky about being moved and started to fail like it’s predecessor. Looking forward to a long life with my NH-D9L (is also compatible with the Ryzen CPUs!), will likely get the addon fan to the NH-D9L and probably look at getting a couple of their fans as Case fans as well. BTW my H80i Rad Fans I now am using as case fans, run at a bit lower speed so less noise than before, overall quieter than it was and apparently cool enough to handle some activity.

Go Noctua! -Packaging was very well done, not too flashy, all nice and tightly set, also love that instead of just a crummy ole sticker for an emblem to place on your system it is actually a metallic raised image w/sticky back. That is very nice additional and shows some class. Rock on!

This is a great little tower cooler that solves the problem of low profile coolers that can’t pull enough heat out, and larger towers that won’t fit in a rack mount case. I’ve got this installed in a 4u rack with an overclocked cpu running pretty intensive workloads and it’s running at 63 degrees max with 100% cpu utilisation. It’s silent, and would easily fit in a 3U system.

Keeps everything cool and quiet, it was super easy to install and has great instructions. It feels very durable, I was worried about clearing my ram but it fit like a glove! Fantastic addition to my frankenPC