Thermal Paste
We use Arctic MX-2 for all heatsink cooler tests and in fact we use it for all builds, test or otherwise. We run the AIDA64 Engineer stability test as our burn in programme for thermal paste, which allows the paste to spread out and share the love across the mating surfaces. It is worth doing, we always notice a drop in temperatures after 30 minutes of burn in.
Charts
If you are not familiar with our format, we use charts to describe the benchmark results. These use colours that can often be similar or even different shades of each colour. If this becomes hard to read, you can click on any of the review samples on the chart to remove it, or add it back in, we’ll mention this later too.
Results
We’ve been a bit naughty benchmarking essentially an mITX cooler with a desktop processor, but we can chart it with the rest of the CPU coolers tested with this CPU. The Intel 6700k has a TDP of 91W, way above Noctua’s recommendation of 65W TDP. So, as stated, we dropped the overclocking results, that was a little too much to ask of this Low-Profile CPU cooler.
Stock temperatures up first and it’s better than expected. The Noctua NH-L9i manages to adequately cool the Intel 6700K in stock and Turbo conditions. It’s last on our charts, to be expected, but still shows it can cool above the recommended 65W TDP.
Noctua NH-L9i L-Type Low-Profile CPU Cooler Review
Package - 9.3
Performance - 8.5
Price - 8
Consumer Experience - 9
8.7
Ok, so putting a dedicated mITX low-profile CPU cooler up against a serious desktop processor is a little out of context, but we managed to squeeze the Noctua NH-L9i L-Type Low-Profile CPU cooler into this window of performance, just. What does this mean? Well, you have your CPU limit for this CPU cooler, any further and you are in real thermal trouble. Any less of a CPU thermal design power (TDP) implementation, and you've got a great cooler.