Page 4 - Conclusion
With Noctua being so recognizable and the NH-D15 model family so familiar to us, did the NH-D15 G2 HBC continue the company's tradition of excellence worthy of your money? Featuring additional fins to increase the total surface area by 16% or 0.22m², two additional heatpipes, new NF-A14x25r G2 fans, Intel backplate design and compatibility improvements, and with our particular variant, a curved base designed specifically for LGA 1700 CPUs' concave integrated heatspreader, the Noctua NH-D15 G2 HBC delivered notable improvements in cooling performance on my Intel Core i7-12700K test CPU compared to the original. The NH-D15 G2 HBC was consistently 3c cooler under load than the NH-D15 chromax.black I reviewed back in 2020, one of the best air coolers to ever exist, which is the same design as the standard NH-D15 from 2014, except in a different color. If you do not have the latest Intel CPUs, Noctua offers two other variants with different degrees of base convexity to best match your processor's integrated heatspreader. As always from Noctua, the NH-D15 G2 HBC is very easy to install with clear instructions and organized hardware. In operation, the NH-D15 G2 HBC with the new NF-A14x25r G2 fans are basically inaudible at low speeds, and have great acoustics at high speeds. Needless to say, the NH-D15 G2 HBC is a worthy flagship that continues the renowned Austrian PC cooling company's tradition of excellence. I wish there is a chromax.black version available though, and I am struggling to understand why they switched to using Torx socket screw caps when Philips head worked just fine in the past. I understand a screwdriver is included, but to me, this just seemed like an unnecessary change. Now, I rarely mention price as a con for a product, since that criticism is often unwarranted -- you have to pay to play. Complaining about the price for every product you review is more of a cop out for doing real critical thinking than truly understanding the product's value and market. But for about $150 at press time, the NH-D15 G2 HBC is shockingly expensive. Noctua has always been a premium product that comes with a premium price, but for the marginal performance increase it offers, you are better off just buying Noctua's previous generation NH-D15 models, or the plethora of coolers available from various competitors that delivers more than 90% of the performance for a fraction of the price.
Noctua provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Networks Review Focus Summary:
8/10 means Definitely a very good product with drawbacks that are not likely going to matter to the end user.
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks, but should be considered before purchasing.
-- Final APH Networks Numeric Rating is 7.5/10
Please note that the APH Networks Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other publications.
The Noctua NH-D15 G2 HBC pushes the limit of performance of CPU cooling on air, but it comes with a shocking premium for such excellence.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Installation and Test Results
4. Conclusion
