The Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler is worth nothing. And now seriously...
Practically right after its release, the long-awaited Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler received a rattling sticker that is a bit far-fetched. We’ve also seen some escalated opinions that perhaps it’s “garbage” and here’s where we have to step in. Noctua 100% does not deserve such adjectives for its work. We have to stand up for a company that has really sacrificed a lot for development. We cannot ignore such distortions of public opinion.
Some of the reports and comments on the Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler reach into something that, we feel, distorts reality considerably. If you don’t have any personal experience, you can easily get the impression that one of the most technically advanced CPU coolers of today suffers from some fundamental flaws. This is not the case.
What’s the deal…
The Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler (including its HBC and LBC variants) is said to feature a vibrating top fin, resulting in an acoustic profile characterized by a rattling sound. We don’t want to deny this, and we won’t. It would certainly be irresponsible, because in some cases it is probably happening. But certainly not in all cases. You are not likely to encounter this behavior with the NH-D15 G2 cooler.
Cases like this one, presented in this video, probably shouldn’t surprise you, but you also shouldn’t get the idea that all Noctua NH-D15 G2 coolers will behave in a similar way. They won’t.
… what we know so far …
Pavel did not detect any critical rattling sound in standard tests of the NH-D15 G2 cooler. Still, only one sample, a coincidence… Okay, good point. Now we’ve got two more samples, and they’re flawless in that regard as well. At this point, we feel it appropriate to run a sort of small research in an effort to investigate further. Certainly, only three pieces is a weak sample and therefore we won’t be done “right away”. It might even be noted that we do not even give this research a high priority and it will more likely be in the “when there is time left” category. The Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler will be here with us for a long time, so we are basically in no rush to get anywhere. We have early samples and more will definitely be coming later.
The two samples (NH-D15 G2 and NH-D15 G2 HBC) that came to us on Friday (26/7/2024) are not affected by the rattling in any of the possible situations. We smoothly went from the lowest fan speeds to the highest fan speeds, in combinations with both rear and front fan mounts in all possible positions, between all fins. And we went really high with the clip, too.
In this PC Gamer Hardware video test, the author demonstrates how the sound differs between the front and rear towers when he taps the fins with his finger. The rear tower rattles as opposed to the front, but that doesn’t indicate any threat, our samples do as well. And actually, this is an expected behavior, where on the fly (with the fan active) there doesn’t need to be excessive noise by vibrating the heatsink. It’s a similar situation to when you kick a ball. At the moment of impact, a strong resonant frequency is generated, but it does not manifest itself in any way during flight. By analogy, this is technically the same case as when you strike the fins of the heatsink with your finger compared to the action of the airflow of the fans. And it is also good to know that the character of the sound when tapping the top fins changes depending on the exact position of the fan. The opposite situation can also be simulated. Thus, that the “rattling” will not be the rear, but the front tower of the heatsink.
… and how we will proceed
Multiple samples from different distribution channels (including stores) are necessary to obtain relevant data. Then the claims that we are getting “select pieces” directly from Noctua will be unfounded (and maybe we are wrong and they really took more care at Rascom than usual this time, who knows… we’ll see). We would also love to come across a cooler where that rattle is demonstrable. Do you have one? Let us know, we could certainly swap it for a piece that doesn’t rattle. Certainly worth noting here are the minor workmanship differences that may determine the acoustic profile of the cooler. However, even in such, rattling cases, the rattling probably doesn’t necessarily happen all the time, in every position of the fans, but only in some of them. By positions we now mean the location between the specific fins between which the fan is sandwiched. The top position, where the clip starts below the first fin, will probably lead to a slightly different result/acoustic profile than when the attachment is at the lowest possible position from below.
To be able to talk about exact results, it will be necessary to reach for a three-axis vibrometer (also used for our fan analysis) and create a kind of “vibration map”. This means locally monitoring where and with what intensity the heatsink’s vibrations can be. To handle this topic objectively and to evaluate the whole thing in a reasonable way will of course be a lengthy task, and at this point we do not want to promise anything more than that we will work on the analysis on an ongoing basis. However, we’re already sure that by distancing yourself from this cooler, you’re unnecessarily narrowing your choice among high-end models, where the Noctua NH-D15 G2 (HBC/LBC) definitely belongs.
We primarily ordered the NH-D15 HBC cooler for tests on the Intel LGA 1700 platform (with the Core i9-13900K processor) and later on the Intel LGA 1851 platform (probably with the Ultra 9 285K), and as part of the upgrade of the CPU cooler test build we will also add the AMD AM5 platform (with one of the Ryzen 9 9000s), so that the overview is complete. Thus, there will be a lot to study in the future, including a detailed dissection of the case around the possible vibration of the fins of the heatsink of Noctua’s “most powerful” cooler. In the meantime, you can write how much your piece rattles and what measures were necessary to avoid losing your hearing from it (the noise). 🙂
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
