- Review -

23.02.2020 XtremeSystems.org

NH-L9a-AM4 chromax.black,NH-L9i chromax.black

It would be good to clarify that neither the Noctua NH-L9 chromax.black coolers are products meant for general usage and, therefore, we cannot treat them as such. They are coolers designed to fit in spaces where no other cooler will fit, not products designed to compete with "regular" high performance coolers. Both the Noctua NH-L9 chromax.black coolers are products meant for users who need ultra-low profile coolers and that alone. The NH-L9a-AM4 chromax.black & NH-L9i chromax.black are exactly what we have come to expect from Noctua: elegant products of exceptional craftsmanship. Blacking out their coolers is the right move for Noctua. At the same time, they still have their brown coolers available. However, for ultra-clean PC builds, black is much easier to work with. The performance of both coolers is significantly better than that of the stock coolers supplied with the CPUs, although it clearly cannot reach the performance of tower coolers. When it comes to quality, it is very hard to find anything even mediocre about a Noctua product and these two ultra-low profile coolers are no exception. Measuring only 37mm tall, the NH-L9a-AM4 chromax.black & NH-L9i chromax.black are the shortest desktop CPU coolers we have seen to this date, making them ideal for mini-ITX systems and basic servers. I have really tried to find faults with those products, but I have failed more than Bulldozer in doing so.

"Overall I was very impressed by the Noctua's coolers performance. It handled the 65W Ryzen 3 1200 without much issue at all. " (Ambrosidou Nat, XtremeSystems.org)