Solved I am not very impressed with my Noctua DH-15 cooler

Catnip · Jul 27, 2024

I had high hopes for this thing, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed with its performance.

I have a Ryzen 5800X on a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi board and it seems to be running OK. No major problems, but the CPU temp seems to be really hot at times. I have the CPU fans running at full speed and my case is cooled by three 120 mm Noctua fans at the front, blowing into the case, and two Noctua 120 mm fans at the back and top of the case, blowing out. I also have two 50 mm Noctua fans at the back of the PC blowing out of the PCI slots beside the GPU. In all I think I have pretty good cooling.

All right, TL;DR, here we go...

My room temp is a balmy 20 degrees Celsius and my PC idles at about 35C.

The average temp while working is about 55C, gaming can reach as high as 67C and be sustained at that temperature for long periods of time.

I did a stress test with Prime95 and it topped out at 71C.

To me, these temps seem a little high, but I have never been able to get them down, even when I had an AIO which the Noctua cooler replaced. I thought of turning down the VCore/VID, but the system becomes unstable. It currently tops out at 1.418V with a low of about 0.982V and it leans more heavily to the high range when I am doing anything. I have Performance Boost enabled, and I am not using Ryzen Master to overclock. The CPU settings are all stock.

I dunno, the cooler just does not seem to be cooling the way I expected it to. Am I expecting too much of it?

hsehestedt · Jul 27, 2024

The temps you are seeing are wonderfully low!

I would be extraordinarily happy with a mere 71 degrees during a stress test.

Ghot · Jul 27, 2024

Catnip said:
I did a stress test with Prime95 and it topped out at 71C.

71C is an excellent temp for a Prime95 run.

I have a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (push/pull), and seven case fans.
I get 74C with just AIDA64 stress test... which is a LOT less stressful than Prime95.

And... my room temp is 17C.

YOUR computer temps...

antspants · Jul 27, 2024

Catnip said:
I did a stress test with Prime95 and it topped out at 71C

It’s a stress test, I’d expect them to be higher. I agree with GHOT, even under a stress test, 71C is good in my opinion..
Gaming at 67C if running intensive games is fine?
Standard 55C is great.

abactuon · Jul 27, 2024

It seems fine to me, but if in doubt you can increase the fan speed in the BIOS.

FreeBooter · Jul 27, 2024

Ideally, your CPU temperature should be around 60 to 70 degrees Celsius (140 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit) when running essential apps and around 40 to 45 degrees Celsius (104 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit) when sitting idle. Moreover, the safe CPU temperature range for gaming is roughly 70 to 80 degrees Celcius. If your CPU is regularly shooting above these temperature ranges, you need to clean your PC, improve the cooling system, and re-apply thermal paste.

hdmi · Jul 28, 2024

Could be that your "Rosewill something or other" is not spaceous enough to make the NH-D15 really shine. A lot of online reviewers concluded that the NH-D15, in spite of the fact that it takes up so much extra space, is about on par or actually even slightly worse than the NH-U12A. But what these reviewers fail to tell you is that you really need more breathing space around the NH-D15 to be able to see why the NH-D15 has the bigger cooling potential. So, putting the NH-D15 in a case that makes the NH-D15 look like it can barely fit is just... well, this one:

SlicEnDicE · Jul 28, 2024

You're 20C below average during your prime 95 tests. There's nothing to worry about. Same with gaming. Anything below 90C is within safety limits. Below 80C and you're not leaving any performance on the table.

hdmi · Jul 28, 2024

Here is a list of things to worry about (i.e., depending on how much they matter to you).

Lower temps allow you to lower the fan speed, which, in turn, helps to keep the fan noise down more, and, in addition, also helps it to not suck dust up like a vacuum cleaner so much. As another bonus, the fans age slower if you let them run slower while they still provide enough airflow to keep the temps down low enough to be able to get no faster than normal aging of the PC's hardware components.
Lower temps help to improve the overclocked speed that can be achieved with stability. Why else would you choose to buy an expensive motherboard that has been specially designed to OC the bejeezus out of your CPU?
Lower temps help to slow the aging process that causes the OC stability from degrading gradually over time. Two different CPUs that are the exact same model will still behave differently due to how the manufacturing process works. Some CPUs will suffer from this gradual degradation more than others. In some cases you might actually even lose the whole OC potential at once, completely all of a sudden. Think of improved cooling capacity as one ingredient in the mix of what helps to reduce the risk of losing OC stability in this manner.
Room temp hovering around a balmy 20 degrees Celsius is magnificent alright, but not everyone has that kind of luxury under hot weather conditions.

BrianInEngland · Jul 28, 2024

I swear by Noctua coolers and would recommend them to anyone. I have the D15S

SlicEnDicE · Jul 28, 2024

I have the nh-d15 chromax.black on my i7-7700k auto OC (not sure what the speed is atm...but it's fast enough) Idle is about 40-45C and gaming around 75C. Prime95 causes it to reach 90C. I have a very conservative fan curve. Dead silent PC in all situations.

glasskuter · Jul 28, 2024

I wish I COULD run a Noctua.
About a month after I got this Dell , it overheated when I tried to use Photoshop. I found it to be the inadequate pancake cooler so I contacted Dell. Their answer-disable hyperthreading to cool it down...and they really considered that a solution. All that did was put a burr under my bonnet.

Having to take it in my own hands, I bought a complete Noctua setup (cooler and case fans) which dropped temp dramatically but boy was it quiet. Then this damn Dell mobo began throwing fan errors. I spent days swapping fans out to make sure it wasn't an actual defective fan. I contacted Noctua and was told it was common with Dell because of their proprietary mobo. So I had to then buy a Dell premium cooler and larger case fan from Dell to get rid of the fan errors. It got my cooling under control but temps could never get as low as the Noctua setup gave me. Noctua was 15 degrees cooler.

Now I'm stuck with a complete Noctua setup I can't use as I was unable to return it. I was totally impressed with Noctua.

jimbo45 · Jul 28, 2024

Hi there

@glasskuter

I am surprised why a computer should overheat when running photoshop -- ensure of course all the scratch files and layers / temporary storage is on SSD's or NvMe's.

I know it doesn't answer the question but I'm still surprised how running Photoshop should overheat a computer - even a modest laptop!!!

The other bonkers thing is to be told that Hyperthreading should be disabled -- Would you buy a Ferrari (assuming you had the money) but be told it's limited to a max speed of 40 Km/hr !!.

If the computer IS running hot and it's got "proprietary Mobo drivers etc" what's wrong with the "Old school way" of just adding Fans that simply run off the PSU without being CPU controlled etc --- or have I missed something here.

Cheers
jimbo

CountMike · Jul 28, 2024

Actually Hyperthreading would be like taking out half of sparkplugs. It may help overclocking and running single core jobs with high frequency increase but detrimental for anything else.
As for 5800x, I just upgraded from it to AM5 after 2 years. It is designed to run up to 90c without flinching, performance with same settings would be same as at -90c. With good cooler you can safely set fans to peak at or just bellow 90c.
With temps up to 70-ish makes me think it's not set for full performance or economy. At stock settings without boost you are losing at least 20-25% performance so no wonder you are getting such temperatures.

SlicEnDicE · Jul 28, 2024

jimbo45 said:
I am surprised why a computer should overheat when running photoshop

Because @glasskuter photos are too hot for their PC...DUH! :wink:

jimbo45 · Jul 28, 2024

SlicEnDicE said:
Because @glasskuter photos are too hot for their PC...DUH!

Careful -- in some jurisdictions (not here though) you'd be on some type of Police charge !!!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Lance · Jul 28, 2024

Ryzen 7600X hits 95c the second you hit the Prime95 OK button LoL
Turn your fans down, enjoy some peace.

SlicEnDicE · Jul 28, 2024

jimbo45 said:
Careful -- in some jurisdictions (not here though) you'd be on some type of Police charge !!!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Calm down...hot is relative. It could be a beautiful Mustang or a Barbie doll for all we care. Nothing wrong with that. Not everything hot have to be something perverted.

jimbo45 · Jul 28, 2024

SlicEnDicE said:
Calm down...hot is relative. It could be a beautiful Mustang or a Barbie doll for all we care. Nothing wrong with that. Not everything hot have to be something perverted.

Actually if you want "Hot" -- some of those gymnasts at the Paris Olympics -- !!! ---'Nuf said. !!

Cheers
jimbo