Noctua D15 out performs Corsair H75 & NZXT x41 AIO's???

ImpulseRez · August 25, 2017

On 18/08/2017 at 6:44 PM, Gerr said:

Taking the 140mm area, adding 50%, that's the equiv of a 210mm area, which is just behind a normal 240mm AIO.

This isn't at all how areas work...

Seanzky · August 25, 2017

Here's my experience:

I had a Corsair H100i GTX that performed great on my i7 4790K. The 2 years I had with it was pretty good. But since upgrading to my current i7 7700K, I decided to get a Noctua NH-U14S (push-pull, twin OEM fans) instead. I recently got central AC in my house and I thought the CPU could really benefit from the low ambient temperatures in my home office. On top of that, I like to leave my computer on pretty much 24/7.

The biggest disadvantage of an AIO, to me, is that they have a much shorter lifespan due to pump failure. It's inevitable that at some point the pump will fail and you cannot replace it easily yourself. Although Corsair has a 5-year warranty, I hate having to deal with a downed computer just because the CPU cooler has to get RMA'd. With my current Noctua, all I have to worry about are the fans and those are cheaper and can be easily replaced and quickly (not to mention I already have a few Corsair SP and AF's lying around). Another disadvantage I hate dealing with is the dust buildup on the radiator and fans. It wasn't much because my airflow configuration in my old build was pretty much perfect, but dust will appear no matter what. Since I had a push-pull configuration with my H100i GTX (4 fans total), when I had to RMA (only after two years of more or less 24/7 uptime), it was a huge pain to clean. For my needs, I am never going back to an AIO or liquid coolers.

Now, I have no use for the replacement Corsair sent me so it's currently on eBay. It is a brand new unit that Corsair sent to me.

Right now, at idle, my U14S sits around mid-30s, at 100% utilization, I'm seeing around 68*C. These numbers are heavily influenced by my home's ambient of 22*C, which is exactly what I was looking for, not to mention much better than when I had the AIO (before central AC) but was closed loop anyway.