Small form factor systems are often plagued with two issues, performance and cooling. Assuming the same size chassis if you want to increase performance you often increase the heat load and thus put more demand on the cooling, increased noise and generally have a bad time. Likewise when you reduce the size of the case you often have to deal with performance concerns and finding a cooling method that matches.

In this review we will be looking at the Noctua NH-L9x65 L-Type Low Profile Cooler. This is a cooler designed for all modern processors from LGA 2011 down to LGA 1150 and FM2+ but is only recommended for CPUs with a TDP of 85w or less. As the name indicates this is a low profile cooler designed to be ultra compact for use in small form factor cases and HTPC Environments.