NoctuaNH-U9S, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A9 92mm Fan (Brown)

I usually wait a while before coming back to review a product, to see how things work out over time. This time I'll make an exception ...I have a i3 Skylake build for my home office. My CPU monitor was consistently pinging me that my temps were going over 80c under normal use...under idle, it usually hovered around 50 to 60. The case was free of dust and temps in the room were always not nearly hot enough to explain it.Opened my case up yesterday to install a new vid card and decided to also get rid of the original Intel fan and get a better solution. I searched Amazon and this option popped up on top of the list. The reviews and feedback were so good I only scanned a few other options before coming back to this one and pulling the trigger. Same day delivery was an added bonus!Installation is a bit of a project, but nothing anybody with a bit of experience with this kind of thing can't handle. On most mobos you will need to remove the whole board to get the included mounting bracket on the back. As a bonus its nice they include a (necessary) long screwdriver for the main mounting screws, and some quality thermal paste. The entire kit is very solid, quality materials.I mounted mine so the fan directly faces the rear fan in my case. That way the cooling fan pulls air through the block across the CPU, and the rear fan sucks it out the back of the case. Super quiet I hardly know its even on.I recommend searching YouTube for tutorials, I found a couple of guys that walked through the details of how they got it installed with minimal hassle and no errors. Always a huge help and makes it go that much smoother.Immediately after installation I booted up and checked the CPU monitor. CPU temp now hovers under 30c (27 / 29) at idle. In fact, with about 10 Brave tabs open and normal clicking around / typing, its *still* right there at the same temp. Does not even rise at all! Running 3 YouTube videos in separate tabs ... still does not even budge.I haven't tried any rendering or anything that seriously taxes the CPU yet but for normal every day use this thing is doing its job like a champ! Can't speak to long term use but based on all the positive reviews I'm confident its most likely going to continue to do so!

Great buy, install is easy, it's super quiet, good temps. The packaging is great too which I really like

Comes with a bunch of screws, brackets for AMD/Intel.I had to modify mine because I didn't want to remove the motherboard. If they had just made a bracket screw that was thin on both sides, and added additional thumbscrews for that thin screw, then you could just mount this bracket without having to take apart your motherboard, because this is light enough that a front bracket can support it.Aside from that, it runs great, very cool and essentially silent. The fan it comes with is just a high quality one, and it comes with like 5g of thermal paste. It's not worth buying a thermal paste separate, unless you find some like extremely good one that's better than Grizzly. I wasted $10 on Grizzly (gonna return it) and tested the paste on the stock cooler and there was no temp difference for me, and people say the Noctua pastes are about 90% as good anyway.I added some example pics. The Handbrake picture is essentially a stress test or worst case scenario. My CPU throttles back to 3.8ghz because I'm using all these goofy Dell BIOS settings and then overriding them with Throttlestop to get an overclock. (I might have to manually adjust my machine to 4ghz or 4.2ghz to keep the temps low while encoding) You can see that 4.5ghz on low usage has great temps, 54C on 20% usage, so for gaming this will probably work very well and stay well below 75C, since you won't hit the CPU usage you'd hit while encoding. In Nier Automata for example it's staying around 60C at 4.5ghz, so pretty great. Some games may be more optimized for CPU and may push it hard. Not quite sure how they're made these days, but generally they'll all leave a certain % of your CPU aside so you can use your computer well, meaning your temps won't get crazy.

My Dell Studio XPS 9100 desktop's cooler was not keeping my CPU cool - due to the well-known plastic tabs breaking on the cooler - keeping the cooler from making solid contact with the CPU. I tried to order a replacement from Dell for a perfect-working computer...but Dell no longer sells a cooler for that model. Planned obsolescence, I presume even though my XPS runs perfect in all other regards.So i checked a few aftermarket coolers that some said "might work" and after viewing some YT videos, this Noctua U9S cooler seemed to be my best option. Before, my core temps were almost "off-the-charts" reaching 90-100 Celsius regularly with very little load. After (easily) installing this cooler, my minimum core temps went from 50c to under 25c in all six cores. My maximum core temperatures decreased from over 95c in all six cores to about 55c. And the fan that comes with the cooler is much quieter than the OEM fan provided by Dell. All the positive reviews I've read about Noctua, turned out to be 100% true.To make this work, Noctua had to send me a modification kit for my Intel 1366 motherboard. I just had to provide proof of purchase of the U9S and my dell 1366 socket. Once I did that, Noctua customer support mailed me the kit I needed. Just great customer support. And my computer is now running cool and calm. Should help me get another year, or two, out of Michael Dell's computer.****UPDATE - I bought this Noctua CPU Cooler Feb. 2022. March 2024 it is still working like new. My CPU never runs hot and the fan is extremely quiet. One of the best Amazon purchases I've made in the last 15 years. Good company to work with, too.