Noctua D15S vs Corsair H80i

[McBanjo]

Topic says it all. This would be for a 4690k @ 4.5ghz. Thanks

[Belgarathian]

Topic says it all. This would be for a 4690k @ 4.5ghz. Thanks

 

I would go for the H80i if you're planning on OC. D15 would be good too, just don't get the D15S. 

[Synawke]

h80i

[ryanmmax]

4.5, air cool... Air before water if your at all on the fence. One should not water cool unless they are water oolong for the sake of water cooling(which there is nothing wrong with).... If your not stoked about water cooling, you will live with the knowledge that you could spring a leak, listen to pump noise, and still lose the silicon lottery and be stuck at 4.6 max OC...

But you'll get 98% of the performance with a fraction of the noise, maintence, and shelf life. If your 2-5c warmer it's not going to hurt the chip, and 4.5 will be fine.

Water cooling benifits from aesthetics and max OC, but realistically you'll go from 4.8 to 4.6 as your overclocked and aside from some bench mark stats your in game FPS will go from 120 to 119.8...

Look at LTT, they went from water cooling to whole room water cooling back to air coolers. Water cooling is a hobby not a performance enhancer...

[WoodenMarker]

I would go for the H80i if you're planning on OC. D15 would be good too, just don't get the D15S.

h80i

What? Why? The NH-D15S is better.

[Belgarathian]

What? Why? The NH-D15S is better.

 

Sorry, I stand corrected! 

[Guest]

What? Why? The NH-D15S is better.

I have my i7 5820k ocd to 4.5, Temps are almost as good as my H110i gt and my h240x, around 68 c on full load for hours,......also I use only one fan, and it's way quieter than aios

[StevenSensei]

The NH-D15S is a great cooler. But be careful to make sure you pick up the S version and not just the D15. It is offset to allow more clearance with the first PCI slot on most boards. Memory clearance with this cooler is not a problem unless you plan to add an additional fan. If you add a 120 mm fan you will have 52mm of room. If however you add another 140 mm fan like the NF-A15 you will only have 32mm available which will result in the need for low profile memory modules. Lastly, be sure to check that it will fit in your case...it's huge!

[ShaithEatery]

So, it just so happens I have both of these coolers as I just replaced the H80i with the NH-D15s, and my temps are about 10c lower with the Noctua, both at idle and under load.  I have a modest OC of 4.2ghz on my 5930k for the record, I could definitely go higher but usually keep it here for day to day use.

 

The main reason I switched was because I couldn't stand the pump noise; it wasn't really loud or anything, but I wanted to go more of the silent route.  I have a Silverstone FT02 case and I originally had the H80i attached to the 120mm exhaust, which due to my motherboard layout having the RAM too close to the rear IO, I had to go with an only pull config (used an NF-F12 for the fan though).  When I replaced this with the NH-D15s I was impressed that even though it only has the one fan compared to the NH-D15 and it's two fans, it still did much better than the H80i.

 

Another note, I went with the NH-D15s specifically due to RAM clearance as it's pretty much the only cooler I could find that supports clearance for Dominator Platinum memory on both sides of the CPU since my system is x99, so the NH-D15 wouldn't work for me unless I removed one of the fans, which defeats the purpose.  Check Noctua's product page for the NH-D15 and see if the PCI clearance is an issue as they have a really good list of motherboard compatibility checks to make sure you won't have any issues, and if it fits you could consider going the non-S route since you only have memory on one side of the CPU to worry about clearance.

 

So in short, go with the NH-D15s for sure.

[McBanjo]

Great feedback everyone!! Much appreciated