- Review -
NH-L9i
As you can see, at the absolute lowest settings on both coolers, the Noctua cooler still comes in 3.5°C cooler than the stock cooler, but when they are allowed to run on a more standard setting, Noctua talks away with a 7.5°C performance lead. This perhaps is nothing to jump up and down about with excitement, but it is nice to see some good performance gains - without any addition noise gains. Both of these coolers are virtually silent throughout testing and while the Noctua spins up a bit faster at maximum speed, the overall design of the cooler and fan keep the noise level to a minimum. I was impressed to see the Noctua keep a Core i3-3220 running Prime95 at a mere 48°C. This cooler does have some room to run.
"At the end of the day the Noctua NH-L9i is a winner. It is pretty amazing how much performance, silence and simplicity they can pack into such a small, attractive, organized package. [...] if you need a good cooling solution and only have a small place to use it, this cooler doesn't really even have a lot of competition and it is probably the best cooler you can buy for that application." (Benjamin Heide, bcchardware.com)
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