Noctua NH-U9B SE2
Oct 4th, 2010 | By JaredThe following system was installed and used to gather temperatures:
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CPU: Intel i5 760
MB: MSI P55-GD65
RAM: Patriot Viper II 2x2GB PC3-12800
Video: HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo 1GB
PSU: Ultra X3 1000W
HD: WD 250GB SATA
DVD-Rom: Lite-On 18x DVD Burner – SATA
Case: Cooler Master HAF932
OS: Microsoft Windows 7
Ambient Temperature: 22-24C
Comparison Coolers:
Noctua NH-U9B
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
For idle temperatures, the system was allowed to stand at idle for 3 hours before temperatures were taken. To achieve load temps, four instances of Orthos blend were run for three hours and the average peak temperature was recorded using CPUID HWMonitor.
I tested the NH-U9B SE2 with fans running at full speed. Now let’s see how the NH-U9B performs.
As you can see the NH-U9B performs well for its smaller form factor but no surprise that it can’t match the larger Hyper 212 Plus and this is expected. The NH-U9B offers a large improvement over the stock cooler.
The NH-U9B SE2 was quiet enough with the fans at full speed that I could not hear it inside the test system. What sound levels are acceptable are obviously going to vary by person and these levels get even more important in HTPC’s so if you found it too loud you have the LNA and ULNA’s to use.