Noctua NH-D15 Air CPU Cooler Review

Power Consumption

This is a newer section that we’ve added into the cooler reviews just to get a little more insight on what youre getting yourself into for power consumption. It’s only fair to check out how much each cooler consumes compared to stock, so well take a look at both idle and load numbers.

Each cooler will not have any power elements disconnected, unless otherwise noted; rather theyre introduced to help you understand the power consumption differences between the coolers when theyre fully functional.

To do our measuring for power consumption, well be using a Kill-A-Watt meter hooked up to the computer only, well let the system sit idle for 15 minutes after boot to allow it to settle down and take a measurement then. The average whole number that the meter is displaying is the number that we’ll use. Well then load up Prime95 to put a full load on the CPU to get each cooler to work as hard as they can, grabbing the power consumption numbers in the same way. All tests are done at the stock turbo frequency of 3.9GHz on the i7-4770k.

Overall Results: Power usage is spot on with just about every cooler at idle, and this is exactly what I was expecting from the NH-D15.