Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U, Premium CPU Cooler for Intel Xeon LGA20xx (92mm, Brown)

Pros: Quiet. Keeps a i7-5930K @ 3.5GHz at 40-41C with virtually no audible noise at idle. Installation is nice--there are vertical holes all the way through the cooling fins at each corner, and they provide a long hex driver that extends down through the holes to engage the mounting screws, so no access at all from the side is required to get the thing on or off even for the "square" hole pattern where you usually have to get under the cooler to get to the mounting screws. Removing and replacing the fan would be trivial even with the unit in place--remove two wire clips that engage the heat sink fins, and pull the fan out vertically.

Cons: It's $60 for a $5 fan and a couple of pieces of metal, but hey, it's keeping a $600 CPU from melting down, so I guess that's not really a con. The fan is this peach-and-brown color scheme like the furniture in a 1970s singles bar, which if it's laboring away in the dark is no problem, but if you're building a flashy gaming rig in a case with a lot of windows, you may want to replace the fan with something more decorative.

Overall Review: It is set up to work with the "square ILM" hole pattern. It comes with two sets of brackets which convert it to the "narrow ILM" hole pattern (the one where the mounting screws are at two ends of the CPU footprint rather than at the corners). In either case it can be mounted so as to get airflow in any one of the four directions.

Pros: This ran a 5820K with the "LNA" low noise adapter idle at 40, which is perfect. Surely the case had something to do with that as well, but the cooler did a great job. Expand-ability here is key, you can add an extra fan on either side of this cooler later if you wanted to over-clock - just make sure you've got some low-profile memory. Noctua quality you expect. Comes with an easy to understand manual for the extra mounting adapters / hardware. Includes by far more than enough high quality thermal paste.

Cons: Can always swap it out, but those brand colour fans!

Overall Review: Used on an Intel i7 5820K

Pros: Noctua product are generally excellent

Cons: This product requires a mounting plate for some 1366 socket motherboard to be installed. If your motherboard has holes to hold the CPU cooler, this wouldn't fix. However, due to Newegg politics, I've to pay a prohibitive return cost to return this because it's not defective but the product description his misleading. I wish you'll not make the same mistake I did.

Overall Review: Do EXTENSIVE researches before buying Noctua products because even if they're excellent product, descriptions and instructions aren't always clear enough to make sure you buy the right product. Really annoying.

Pros: - Compact - Easy to follow directions - Came with LGA 1366 backplate screws - Very well packaged - High performance cooling - Fits in square style dual socket motherboards

Cons: - Price - Noctua brown

Overall Review: But you're not going to see the color of the fans inside a 4U chassis anyway :) I got a great deal on a dual socket LGA 1366 board with CPUs and wanted to rebuild a good home media server. However it didn't come with cooling. Who knew that in the end, I would be spending more in the system's value in CPU fans. But this was one of the few that you could get that wasn't an Intel stock cooler that would fit in dual socket square or narrow boards. These coolers touch but not intersect. Plus Noctua has great resale value so if I find my next server venture outgrowing these, I kept all the original boxes and hardware. Now enough rambling from me and onto what's important, the cooling. A 4U chassis can get stuffy, especially when the hard-drive planes are filled, but even with case congestion, a prime95 burn-in test will not push the processors over 40°C and the fans I kept at 40% fixed using a NZXT Grid+ controller. When you get past 50% they will get audible, so if you're using this for a HTPC box, you may want to keep that in mind. However if your server is hidden away somewhere, you can see values as low as 30°C under full synthetic load on these dual 95w TDP processors with the fans cranked up. Without the fans running, I saw temperatures hover between 55°C and 60°C so you could technically run fanless if you're using a less congested server with proper case flow. But this will be a per-user basis, what works for me may not work for someone using dual 140w+ TDP processors like a high end 2011v3 processor. Not to mention can't beat Noctua reliability. What I have is by far not a mission critical server by any means, however I feel that you could rely on these to keep your system cool for years. I did consider water-cooling since 120mm AIOs are about the same price as these and wouldn't give me the problems of socket clearance, but I highly doubt they'd stand reliably against 24/7 ontime. Now that you've read all my stream of consciousness review, reward yourself with a beer!

Pros: - Awesome cooling. Keeps my E5 2680 v2 (115w TDP) processor at 22 C idle, and 35 C load. - Much *much* quieter than my old Dynatron R14 cooler. - Easy install. Four screws, includes special screwdriver, includes brackets for both square and narrow ILM. - Great flexibility. Allows orienting in multiple directions, so you can point it at your exhaust fan whether it's on the rear or on the top of your case.

Cons: None really. Yes the price is high, but the performance is amazing, so worth it. Only "con" I can think of, and this is a real nit pick, is that the screws are not phillips head, they're a very small size of allen head. But they include the tool, so ya can't really complain.

Overall Review: Using it on a Supermicro X9SRL-F with Xeon E5-2680 v2 processor. Note that depending on how close your memory slots are to the CPU socket, you might need low profile sticks to fit under this cooler. On my X9SRL, I'm not using the slots closest to the socket, so there's plenty of room. On this board, it is only a potential issue if you're running two DIMMs per channel. The take away here, is that you should measure before buying. But this is true with all aftermarket coolers, so you know this already I'm sure.

Pros: You get an alan wrench to insert through the top corners of the design... to make installation as painless as possible! Cools 16 core 1356's nicely. (On N82E16835608074 with a full tower case) and N82E16813131816) Comes with the best thermal paste as possible. (looks like silver mix). More than enough for 2 or 3 applications. Fans are quiet -even for 2 cpus installed. Made in Austria.

Cons: none!!

Pros: Extremely easy to install due to the included tool, especially in a tight, two processor motherboard

Cons: I haven't found a bad thing about them

Overall Review: I would certainly recommend this product

Pros: It's quiet cooler. Has bee keeping CPU Temp way lower than my previous CPU cooler. Modular design is good quality. Packaging was impeccable.

Cons: It's a little tight next to the RAM on LGA 2011 motherboards where the DIMMS are close to the CPU socket.

Overall Review: two thumbs up