Noctua is a designer and manufacturer of some of the most impressive CPU air coolers that you can find. The company was founded in 2005, and Bigbruin.com first reviewed their products in 2006 (the NH-U9 and the NH-U12). Their designs have followed the same basic formula, but they have evolved to offer greater performance, convenience, and compatibility with the latest processors from AMD and Intel. My first experience with Noctua came last year when I covered the NH-U12S and NH-U14S together, and I had actually acquired an NH-D15 before the sample was provided for review.

The promotional image above shows the beastly NH-D15, which looks more like two traditional heatpipe coolers standing side-by-side. It is hard to get a sense of scale, but consider that each fan is 140mm in diameter, and you may be able to imagine that this is a rather large cooler. Before getting in to the heart of the review, let's take a look at some published data on the NH-D15, as taken from the official product page on the Noctua website.