Noctua NH-L9i, Premium Low-Profile CPU Cooler for Intel LGA1200 & LGA115x (Brown)

This cooler is just absolutely brilliant, for this review i'm going to structure it abit more than my usual reviews, but i’ll starts from the box, all the way to the product/performanceBox/Unboxing: The box and unboxing experience is very premium, you get some high performance thermal paste to the right, a low noise adaptor on the left, a very very nice metal piece to stick on your case above the cooler, then the cooler itself in the middle with the four mounting screws below that.Thermal Paste: I didn’t use this as i’ve got some other stuff so unfortunately i can’t comment on it, but i looked it up and apparently it's actually pretty good compared to some mainstream pastes like the Arctic MX-4Low Noise Adaptor: Again, i don't use this, but, i can without a doubt say this is not needed at all. Don’t understand why they include this as the fan is by far the quietest fan i’ve ever seen (Or heard haha) im my life, but they do include performance metrics on the box for how the cooler performs with and without the adaptor, but honestly as i said, it's really not needed as the fan is already silent withoutMetal Peice: Not much to say about this, it's like a said really premium, unlike all other companies that just include a crappy sticker, this is actually a piece of metal with some 3m tape included already on the back, all you have to do is peel it and stick it.Cooler/Fan: Very nice fan, cannot put into words how quiet the fan is, i’ve used a lot of fans in my time being on pc and i’ve never heard one as quiet in my life, at 1200rpm you cannot hear it, over fans i’ve tried at that speed sound like jet engines.As for the cooler, it is also very nice and does a good job keeping my CPU cool, nice and low profile and fits perfectly in the Fractal Node 202.Mounting: The mounting process is really easy and simple and what i like best is that there is no backplate, never used a cpu cooler before that doesn’t have a backplate and i must say it's a luxury to havePerformance: As i’ve already said the fan is nice and quiet so i won’t talk about that anymore, so i will now move on to my temperatures.So i have this is the Fractal Node 202 which is a very small form factor case and the cpu fan is the only source of cooling the CPU gets , which by the way is the Intel Pentium G4600 so take those into account, also for thermal paste i'm using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and with all these factors in mind i get 30c at idle and at full load i get 60c, not even kidding i’ve never gone past 60c on this CPU which is insane for the setup i have.Overall: It's just a great cooler by a great company, it's very well thought out and you may think £36 is a lot for a CPU cooler but you get a lot included and as i said it's all very premium so when you take all that into account its actually a bargain! 10/10 Highly Recommended!

I first used this with my i5 4690k CPU (non-overclocked) and it made a very high-pitched whine with that CPU because it was at a higher wattage than the CPU was recommended for. I recently sold that and got an i3 instead though I might upgrade soon to Kaby Lake. Keeps my i3 around 50 watts during peak load which is quite good for a CPU though i3's are not especially hot. Even my i5 only reached around 65 degrees during full system load which was very impressive considering it was a 3 year old CPU by the time I got this and was not rated for that CPU initially. Still worked well although it was very noisy and would not recommend with that CPU for long periods of time unless you absolutely have to. The CPU cooler comes with very good thermal paste, a really long warranty, 4 screws, the heatsink and a noctua fan, a fan plug extension to make the cooler extra silent. And it also comes with a Noctua badge that is magnetic and a nice edition to your PC case if you are so inclined to use the badge. The CPU cooler is only 3.2 cm in height so it will fit into practically any PC case on the market. It's also designed to be fully compatible with every kind of ram and GPU out there since some ram sticks have high heatsinks on them which can interfere with wide CPU Cooler's. Basically it is 100% compatible with almost all components and I think it fits most modern motherboards such as AM3+, LGA 1150 and 1151, etc. It doesn't even need a backplate as it has 4 screws that you attach behind the motherboard and they are thumb screws so you don't even need a screwdriver to install it. The installation took me only a few minutes and went off with a hitch. If your case has a big enough motherboard cutout for the CPU cooler that would be even easier cause otherwise you'd have to remove your motherboard like I Did but that is no fault of the cooler manufacturers. Overall this is a very good CPU cooler and I would highly recommend it for Mini-ITX enthusiasts.

Edit: I bought a second one of these for my silent HTPC build. I have it cooling a Pentium G6400 in a Silverstone ML05 and it's absolutely perfect. I have it on a fan curve where it's mostly off, and only comes on at low RPM when the temperature rises to 50C and it's inaudible even relatively close. Superb cooler.Original review for FreeNAS build below:I bought this to replace the stock Intel cooler for my FreeNAS build. It's only an i3-2100 so not exactly taxing, but the stock cooler was noisier than I'd like.I didn't need the extremely small size - it's currently occupying a Define 7 case - but I went with the low profile one in case I decide to repurpose it down the line in a small form factor or a smaller rack mount server type case.It's very quiet, which I have come to expect from Noctua, and feels very well built. Temperatures on my NAS are excellent, with peak temps at about 40 C if the system is under load (Plex transcoding usually) and around 30 C when the system is light/idle.

The heatsink does provide nice temps well below the dangerous zone of 75 celcius, but it does get between 64 and 68 celcius when I render video or run a lot of applications, which I think is too high. But that's personal preference, and it might be caused by dust or too much cooling paste, so those are factors to take into account.Overall it has great build quality, is not that loud even at 100% and it doesn't take up much space.Only cons for me is that the desired temperature is about 4 degrees lower than it delivers during heavy load and secondly that you have to take out your motherboard (or have a case which allows access ot the back of ur motherboard) to mount this fan, but this makes it much more secure than my old cooling unit.