Noctua L9x65 Low Profile Heatsink Review

With the popularity of MiniITX motherboards there has been a push for companiles to make smaller computer cases.  As these cases shrink to take advantage of the smaller form factor it becomes increasingly difficult to find a good aftermarket heatsink that not only cools well but, can fit in a half height computer chassis.  The Noctua NH-L9x65 is designed to take advantage of this niche and offers up a viable replacement for the OEM coolers from Intel and AMD.

As always the installation hardware is extremely good and features the Noctua universal mounting system.  This system is easy to install and works on almost every Noctua cooler to date.  In this review we tested on the Z68 platform and while the chipset may be different the installation method applies to all LGA 115X motherboards including the latest Z97.

Overall performance was also good and as our heat tests showed that the NH-L9x65 could handle a mildly overclocked LGA 115x processor up to 130w.  At this speed the cooler is in range of a low-end LGA 2011 however, given the recommended 84w limit suggested by Noctua we wouldn’t recommend it.  In fact given that our overclocked tests were 50w beyond that limit we wouldn’t suggest anything beyond a Core i5 or mildly used Core i7 if you are looking to get the best performance while producing the least amount of noise. 

Small Form Factor
Noctua Mounting System
Four Heatpipe Configuration
High Performance Fan

Works best on low wattage processors