Noctua NH-D15 G2 CPU Cooler Overview
As I mentioned this is a massive CPU cooler! The official dimensions are 168mm x 150mm x 152mm (HxWxD) and it weighs in at 1525g. As of right now Noctua is going with their typical colorway of silver heatsinks and the “Noctua” brown fans. It is unclear if there will be a chromax.black version of the cooler anytime soon.
Talking about the fans right on the front of the cooler is the first fan. Both fans on the cooler are identical and are the NF-A14x25r G2 PWM fans which are 140mm fans. These fans make use of an SSO2 bearing and will spin up to 1500 RPM with a max airflow of 95.1 CFM and max noise level of 24.8 dB(A).
Looking at the NH-D15 G2 from the side we can see the second fan and the dual-tower design. The fans themselves are held into place by simple fan clips, but these are been redesigned from previous versions. We can see that the fin stacks are slightly cut-off at the bottom so there are no clearance issue with memory or motherboard VRM cooling.
At the back of the cooler we get a better look at the asymmetrical fin-stacks. These have also been redesigned. Since the new fans offer more performance Noctua was able to reduce the fin spacing from 1.9mm to 1.6mm, which made it possible to integrate 23 extra fins and increase total fin surface area by 20%. At the same time, the width of the front fin-stack has been cut by 5mm so that the loading is more balanced between the two fans. This cooler is actually slightly smaller than the original NH-D15.
The top of the cooler keeps the very industrial look we know from Noctua with the tops of the heatpipes coming up through the top fins and a simple Noctua logo.
Noctua has also increased the number of heatpipes from the original so now you get eight instead of six. This is of course going to give you increased thermal capacity. These heatpipes go up into each heatsink stack in a “U” fashion, which is pretty standard for dual-tower CPU coolers.
The base of the NH-D15 G2 is of course nickel-plated copper. Now the “standard” version of the cooler that we have uses the same medium base convexity as most other Noctua heatsinks, which makes it a perfect all-rounder that provides optimal results on AM5 with the included offset mounting and on fresh, unused LGA1700 CPUs when utilizing the included NM-ISW1 shim washers or so-called contact frames to reduce CPU deformation from ILM pressure. If you are unsure on which version of the G2 to buy you can check out this article. The base of the cooler has a very nice finish on it, we wouldn’t expect less from Noctua.
