[SOLVED] Dark rock pro 4 // Noctua NH D14 // Noctua NH D15

Jun 18, 2020
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Hello guys, i want to mention that this was my first build and i didnt buy a cpu cooler, i am using the old one : Cooler master hyper 212 .

I have heard some rumors that these 3 cpu coolers : Dark rock pro 4 // Noctua NH D14 // Noctua NH D15 are the best and I am not sure which one to buy, because i need to consider the space on my case i dont know.

My current specifications :
Case : Corsair Spec 06 Mid tower tempered glass
CPU : i5 9600KF 4.6ghz
GPU : RTX 2070 SUPER
RAM : Corsair vengeance 3200mhz
Cooler : Cooler master hyper 212

If you can tell me which one will be good for these i will be grateful.
1 more thing, do i need to consider the space for ram too? or it doesn't matter?
 
Solution
All of those are very good coolers. In terms of cooling performance (from best to worst) they go D15, D14, Dark Rock Pro 4. For reference the Dark Rock Pro 4 can remove about 250W of heat with the D15 doing about 350W. All of them are able to more than cool your 9600K, even if you OCd to 5.0GHz. With these very large air coolers you need to know how tall your RAM is, max cooler height allowed in your case, how far back the cooler will go, weight of the coolers. Since you gave us your case, that can be looked up and the case allows for 170mm max height coolers. None of these is more than 165mm tall so you are fine there. If you are going to be moving your computer a lot, the weight of these coolers will put a fair amount of strain on...
All of those are very good coolers. In terms of cooling performance (from best to worst) they go D15, D14, Dark Rock Pro 4. For reference the Dark Rock Pro 4 can remove about 250W of heat with the D15 doing about 350W. All of them are able to more than cool your 9600K, even if you OCd to 5.0GHz. With these very large air coolers you need to know how tall your RAM is, max cooler height allowed in your case, how far back the cooler will go, weight of the coolers. Since you gave us your case, that can be looked up and the case allows for 170mm max height coolers. None of these is more than 165mm tall so you are fine there. If you are going to be moving your computer a lot, the weight of these coolers will put a fair amount of strain on the motherboard. If you are using the included fan for the rear case fan, you should be OK in terms of the coolers not hitting the rear fan. If you are using a very thick fan, then it could happen that these will hit the rear fan and not be able to be installed. Do you know how tall your RAM is? One other thing to consider is that at this price range you could also look at AIOs like the Arctic Freezer Liquid II 240 or 280.
 
Solution
Thank you for your reply,
I looked it up on google and the ram is 31 mm tall, do you think it will be a problem?

I just want nice temps in games, because at the moment when i m playing call of duty warzone i have to open the case so i dont have high temps on the gpu and is annoying to open that everytime. I dont really know if that is the problem but i guess the cpu cooler helps the temps. Like i told u is my first time.

And thank you for your suggestions, i will think about it.
 
Thank you for your reply,
I looked it up on google and the ram is 31 mm tall, do you think it will be a problem?

I just want nice temps in games, because at the moment when i m playing call of duty warzone i have to open the case so i dont have high temps on the gpu and is annoying to open that everytime. I dont really know if that is the problem but i guess the cpu cooler helps the temps. Like i told u is my first time.

And thank you for your suggestions, i will think about it.
31mm is low profile memory and should fit fine.
 
From a cooling point of view, all will do the job.
With low profile ram, clearance for ram is not an issue.
One possible issue with the NH-D14 and NH-D15 is that on some motherboards, the first pcie slot is very close to the cooler and the cooler may touch the backplate of the graphics card.
To check for compatibility with your motherboard, here is a link:
https://noctua.at/en/support/compatibility-lists/mainboard

The s suffix coolers were redesigned for ram compatibility which you don't need.
But they are also offset a bit for better pcie clearance.

The NH-D15s is as good as it gets for cooling and would do fine in your case.
https://noctua.at/en/nh-d15s
 
Thank you for your reply,
I looked it up on google and the ram is 31 mm tall, do you think it will be a problem?

I just want nice temps in games, because at the moment when i m playing call of duty warzone i have to open the case so i dont have high temps on the gpu and is annoying to open that everytime. I dont really know if that is the problem but i guess the cpu cooler helps the temps. Like i told u is my first time.

And thank you for your suggestions, i will think about it.
Do you know how many intake fans you have? Are your fan filters clear of dust? If the case is sitting on carpet, it is there a hard surface (like a board) supporting the case? Having high temps sounds a lot like your GPU isn't getting enough fresh cool air. While the CPU temp can affect the internal case temp, it shouldn't be so much that you GPU gets too hot.
 
Do you know how many intake fans you have? Are your fan filters clear of dust? If the case is sitting on carpet, it is there a hard surface (like a board) supporting the case? Having high temps sounds a lot like your GPU isn't getting enough fresh cool air. While the CPU temp can affect the internal case temp, it shouldn't be so much that you GPU gets too hot.
I don't know how many intake fans i have, because i havent put them someone else did, my filters are clear of dust and yeah my case it is on my carpet.
I was thinking about that AIO cooler arctic 240mm which u recommended, do you think it will be better than Noctua? and do you think it will fit in my case? I saw in some reviews and the radiator is quite big, do you think i will have problems putting it?
I don't know many things about aio coolers, but where should i put it? like in front or up in the case?
Spec 06 corsair is the case
 
the D15 doing about 350W
I can personally attest to this one: that is not true.
With my 7820X at 4.5ghz, 3.0ghz cache, 3600mhz ram, in Prime95 Small FFT, AVX off... that pulls some 270w on the cpu, and it hits 90C... oh, it's delidded too, by the way.
It's right there with the old D14, and both are slightly better than the Dark Rock Pro 4, simply due to having more powerful fans.
 
I'd rather use NH-D15S than NH-D15
As much as I like this, unfortunately, both got outdone by the NH-U12A.
The pricing is deceptive, but the performance is no joke.

Sure, it's 100USD, but the user gets the performance of the D15 while having even better compatibility than the D15S. It's also smaller, which is another plus, because some people don't seem to care for large towers sitting over their mobos...
 
As much as I like this, unfortunately, both got outdone by the NH-U12A.
The pricing is deceptive, but the performance is no joke.

Sure, it's 100USD, but the user gets the performance of the D15 while having even better compatibility than the D15S. It's also smaller, which is another plus, because some people don't seem to care for large towers sitting over their mobos...
Except benchmarks don't support that perfomrnace claim.
"Noctua claims that the NH-U12A can compete head-to-head with 140 mm tower coolers. Though this definitely isn't true in all situations, when the thermal load is relatively low, the cooler can actually live up to Noctua's claims. With "relative" being, well, relative, by tower cooler standards, as high-end coolers can easily dissipate better than 200 Watts. This means that the NH-U12A will perform just like (or even better than) a 140 mm cooler with many stock-clocked processors, as only a handful of chips actually draw more than a 100 Watts or so.

Otherwise, once we start looking at high TDP scenarios, the larger 140 mm coolers of comparable class and quality will outperform the NH-U12A, even if only slightly. Noctua can't entirely escape the laws of physics here in that regard, as volume and surface area still count for something." Benchmark

The part about the motherboard compatibility is true.

I don't know how many intake fans i have, because i havent put them someone else did, my filters are clear of dust and yeah my case it is on my carpet.
I was thinking about that AIO cooler arctic 240mm which u recommended, do you think it will be better than Noctua? and do you think it will fit in my case? I saw in some reviews and the radiator is quite big, do you think i will have problems putting it?
I don't know many things about aio coolers, but where should i put it? like in front or up in the case?
Spec 06 corsair is the case
The Arctic Freezer Liquid II is a very good AIO. Benchmark You would want to place the AIO radiator on the top of your case. You should have no issues placing it in your case either.
 
Otherwise, once we start looking at high TDP scenarios, the larger 140 mm coolers of comparable class and quality will outperform the NH-U12A, even if only slightly. Noctua can't entirely escape the laws of physics here in that regard, as volume and surface area still count for something." Benchmark
Oh, a heat bench... that's got it's own set of problems, and also isn't accurate for different reasons.
A heat bench doesn't present the same issues that a CPU has of having hot zones from where the different cores are. Then there's AMD's Ryzen with it's multi-CCX dies complicating things further.
It would be far too smooth and even and like all synthetic tests, it doesn't reflect real world performance.
It's an engineer's conundrum: just because it "should" work in a certain way it doesn't always mean it will.
 
Oh, a heat bench... that's got it's own set of problems, and also isn't accurate for different reasons.
A heat bench doesn't present the same issues that a CPU has of having hot zones from where the different cores are. Then there's AMD's Ryzen with it's multi-CCX dies complicating things further.
It would be far too smooth and even and like all synthetic tests, it doesn't reflect real world performance.
It's an engineer's conundrum: just because it "should" work in a certain way it doesn't always mean it will.
Even using regular CPUs the U12A doesn't perform as well as the D15. Is it within a few degrees, sure, but it doesn't perform as well.