[SOLVED] Noctua D15 or D15s?

[Hypoltan]

I am looking to cool the i5 9600k and overclock it to its max. Which one should I go with? I mainly value the price vs performance and know there is a $10 difference between them.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

The S version has a design , that gives memory modules a little more room. I would get the S , but they will perform the same in terms of thermals.

 

[Hypoltan]

The S version has a design , that gives memory modules a little more room. I would get the S , but they will perform the same in terms of thermals.

But the S version does have one less fan.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

But the S version does have one less fan.

Still performs the same.

 

[Karadjgne]

Almost the same.

The S is the same tower as the older D15, except it's offset slightly to the right (looking from the front). This had a net affect of giving space on the downside for gpus with backplates as the tower with the 140mm fans encroached on the gpus, even touching them.

Other than having the tower look like someone stepped on it slightly, there's no difference between the standard and S versions. The S includes a single 140mm fan, capable of mounting 3 fans. The standard comes with 2x 140mm fans and has capability of 3x. At maximum ability, that translates into a 4°C difference in favor of the standard tower (that's from Noctua support). If you add a second fan to the front, you'll still have the same ram clearance issues as with any other 25x140mm fan, but essentially you'll have the same performance as the standard version.

But that's on a stress test. With the way Windows and games bounce temps all over the place, realistic ability is identical, you'd need a constant load to get any constant results, and windows/games are anything except constant. All you really need is ability, not exact temps ability

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

I've owned both D15's and the original D14 , 3 of the best. Performance was very very good on all 3. My Cryorig R1 Universal also performed about the same level.

 

[Karadjgne]

I just picked up the Cryorig R1 Ultimate. Very nice cooler, easiest aircooler to mount that I've owned, but it's still louder than the kraken x61 it replaced. Can't do crap about fan curves with bios or my old z77 mobo fan software. Somebody needs to release a universal version of asus fanXpert or similar api, cuz I really don't want to try and get SpeedFan running on Win10.