Noctua NH-L9x65 CPU Cooler Review: A New Low-Profile King

Test System and Benchmark Results of the Noctua NH-L9x65

• Ambient temperature monitored at case intake and temperature Delta was used.
• All case and heat sink fans were benchmarked with fan control settings disabled and running at 100% unless otherwise specified.
• Intel integrated video is utilized to eliminate additional ambient heat source from discrete graphics cards.
• Temperatures are averaged (last minute) from individual core temperature results monitored by AIDA64 after 15 minutes.
• Stock settings have all power saving features enabled in the motherboard with Vcore set static to 1.1V and set to “Balanced” in the OS.
• All tests were taken at least three times to get the final result.
• Note that performance results on this setup are not directly comparable with any benchmarks from previous reviews as the UEFI BIOS on the motherboard has been updated and now has a much tighter control on the Vcore voltage.
• Since it is an ASUS motherboard, it engages all cores when it turbos so temperature will be higher compared to other Z87 motherboards that do not by default.
• An American Recording Technologies SPL-8810 was used for noise level measurement in dBA, 20CM away from the center fan intake.

Comparison Heatsinks:

Benchmarks: