Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4, Premium Dual-Tower CPU Cooler for AMD AM4 (Brown)

This cooler is fantastic. Like it so much that I also bought Noctuas 120mm fans and replaced everything in my system.

I got this for a Ryzen 5950X. It was a pain to install; first you do the heatsink, then you put the fans on it with fiddly clips. It works great. However, when you crank all 16 cores / 32 hardware threads to 100% and make the fan run at 100% speed, you definitely hear it.

I will try to keep it short. I had been on laptops for 6 years because I had a need for portability that outstripped all other concerns. Recently, that requirement ended so I set out to build the best possible PC within reason. AIOs had piqued my curiosity and thought the NZXT Kraken x62 would be the best cooling solution for my 2700x. It was problematic for several reasons the biggest being noise profile. The pump noise was grating to me. Now, the computer had been built so quiet that scratching my arm at full load would overcome the noise from the pump but it was severely irritating, especially if I wasnt gaming and the video card didnt have its fan running. The long and short of it, is short of manual overclocking the 2700x manually to 4.3ghz all core which had a HWinfo reported 230w CPU and SoC draw, the NH-D15 SE-AM4 was capable of running with the x62. With Performance Enhancer Level 2 enabled, I hit the same core clocks as the x62. The only differences are:

Installing this cooler was somewhat awkward, however completely worth it. I am running an overclocked Ryzen 7 1700x, and Im seeing great temperatures all around while being incredibly quiet.

This CPU cooler did not for the Asus TUF motherboard as listed in their specs. was a waste of money.

I bought this to put on my Ryzen processor. I love it. Its quiet and keeps my CPU very cool. I would buy one of these again. Installation was also very easy with the included instructions. High quality stuff.

Solved all my Ryzen 3900 thermal throttling woes

Well, its biffest air cooler on a marked, what did you expect? It really cools your CPU. Yes, its quite big, but I was able to fit it in NZXT S340 with 161mm CPU clearance, but just with one fan due to VRM heatsink and RAM configuration on my mobo. But even with one 140 mm Noctua fan its able to cool down stock 2700X in Blender and Cinebench rendering to 55 C on max RPM. Although it gets kinda noisy when fan spins on 90+% RPM, so keep it in mind.

Cools my non overclocked Ryzen 9 5950x very well. Quiet but greatness can be achieved by tuning the fan curves in bios for maximum quietness. The larger fans can be heard under load. In a quick comparison, I found fan speeds didn’t make a huge difference in lowering CPU temps and lower fan speed for less noise. Under load, it will keep the CPU at 75 degrees, sometimes peaking to 80. My build is on a Phanteks P600S with 3 intake 120 fans in front, one exhaust 140 at the back, and a 240 radiator with 2 exhaust 120 fans on top.

My temps were running high for an AMD3950x. Emailed Noctua tech support. Their tech support doesnt get back to you, and when they finally get back to you, they dont answer for several days at a time. Anyway,after getting a run-around from Noctua tech support, I borrowed a thermal imaging camera, and 1/2 the cooler isnt getting warm. Noctua hasnt responded so far.