Noctua NH-D15 G2 HBC Heatsink Review

One of the fundamentals of overclocking is the promise of “free performance” and with most things’ enthusiasts love, to get the most out of your efforts you need to consider the supporting hardware.  With cars you can do a camshaft swap but, unless you tweak the fuel delivery and timing there is a strong chance that you won’t notice any benefit.  The same can be said for golf, you can be a really good player but, if your clubs don’t match your swing, you may never score better than 90. 

The same can apply to computers.  An example we used on the Hardware Asylum Podcast is when an enthusiast spends a bunch of money on a new build expecting a massive performance boost.  Benchmarks prove that everything is working correctly however, their monitor is still locked at 60hz or may only support 1080p and thus, never fully realize the potential of their build.

In this review we looked at the Noctua NH-D15 G2 HBC.  This is an upgraded variant of the popular Dual Tower D15 cooler that has been powering high performance gaming builds for over 14 years.  Systems have changed a lot since then making the occasional upgrade and revision a welcome change.

The Noctua NH-D15 G2 is available in two versions, the one featured in this review is HBC or High Base Convexity making it optimized for the LGA 1700 series of processors and for CPUs that have been damaged by excessive pressure across the heatspreader.  The LBC or Low Base Convexity variant has a more traditional cold plate design that works well with AMD CPUs and other processors with a flat heatspreader.

Another upgrade with the G2 is the dual NF-A14x25r G2 cooling fans.  These 140mm PWM fans have a unique design that is not only more efficient that previous editions but comes with a new blade design that will direct the airflow into a vertical column without the need for a focus flow frame or variable pitch stator guides.  I found them to be extremely quiet with a smooth motion and very little “bleed” at the frame.

Overall, I see the Noctua NH-D15 G2 HBC to be a worthy upgrade to the D15 lineup.  Performance was extremely good and rivaled that of AIO coolers while offering the ease of aircooling.  Dual tower coolers like the NH-D15 G2 are extremely large and while the radiator fins have cut-outs for memory access there are situations where interference is unavoidable.  During our tests I needed to raise the forward most fan to clear our Viper DDR5 memory.

Thermal performance is enhanced by the larger 8-heatpipe design and when combined with the new fan design allows the NH-D15 G2 to handle the larger multi-core processors while still offering considerable headroom for overclocking, which is what helped make these coolers famous.

Great 140mm Cooling Performance
Dual Tower Design
Excellent Performance
Noctua Mounting System
New Cooling Fan Design
Large 8-Heatpipe Cooler
HBC and LBC Variations Available

LGA 1200 and 1700 mounts easy to mix up
Fan to Memory clearance