Question 1

Will this be sufficient for an Intel i7 quad core 4.0 ghz?  Not planning on over clocking.

Accepted Answer

Yes. 
The nice thing with this fan aswell is that you can  flip the fan over to change the direction of air flow. I am thinking about a water cooler system in the future, but for now I have a conduit cooling setup in mine. Its intresting, but it works very well. Using this CPU cooler and fan to pull air through the intake in the front of my case and through the heatsink out of the top of the cooler fan, and out the back of the case.

The processor you're using should not have any problems staying cool with this cooler. The heatsink block does take out a good amount of heat.

Question 2

Does the fan air-flow direction on the Noctua NH-L9x65 have to be oriented down? Or can it be flipped to the 'up' direction without loss of cooling?

Accepted Answer

The heatsink uses hooks that you can unfasten and flip the fan to blow upward. That's what I did in my setup bc I have a large fan above it that sucks even more air out. Whether you lose cooling by flipping the fan up is really based on your case layout and airflow. It's your choice.

Question 3

Does Noctua make fans for this that aren't brown?

Accepted Answer

Yes. But you'll have to buy it separately.

Question 4

Will this work with a LGA 1151 socket and back plate mount?  I've heard instances, but I just want to make sure.

Accepted Answer

I am using this cooler on a GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX which is LGA1151 socket with no problems with the fit of the cooler or back plate to motherboard/socket.  You should not have any worries.  I have ordered a Cryorig C1 cooler to replace the NH-L9x65 for that build because I need a little more thermal headroom for overclocking safely.  Hope this helps.

Question 5

does it support LGA1200?

Accepted Answer

Don't know...Sorry. I used mine on a Ryzen 3. But I went on their website and it appears to support lga1200.  BUT YOU go to their website and VERIFY FOR YOURSELF! 
Wes

Question 6

Does this come with a Noctua NH-L9i AM4 Upgrade Kit?

Accepted Answer

Luckily I kept the box. The only AMD sockets listed are AM2(+), AM3(+), FM1, FM2(+).  It only has one set of brackets labeled as NM-AMB1.

Looks like a negative, ghost rider.

Question 7

I like the NH-U12 model but I'm thinking about an mATX build into a case that is a little too small for the NH-12.
This CPU cooler model will solve the case size problem but I wonder if it has enough cooling capacity for my purpose.

I'm planning on a Z370 mobo with a Coffee Lake Core i5 8600K and a 1070 Ti video card. This computer will be used for gaming 1-3 hours a day maybe 4-5 times a week and regular Web surfing and video-watching 7 days a week. Total usage will be about 5 hours a day.

Will this Noctua NH-L9x65 92 x 92 x 14mm CPU cooler handle the job easily or will it be struggling to keep up?

If it's not quite up to it I can scrap the smaller-case idea and get the NH-U12 but I'd like to stay smaller if possible.

Accepted Answer

We have been pleased with the performance of this cooler with a quad-core I7 in a mid-sized desktop built for gaming.  With that said, we did install a second case-wide cooler.  The gaming video card we installed also had a built-in cooler.  So in all, we had this cooler for the CPU, a built-in cooler for the GPU and a case wide cooler for general heat dissipation.

Question 8

Is thermal paste pre-applied on this cooler?

Accepted Answer

No it is not pre applied, but it does come with a tube of their high quality paste.

Question 9

Would this work with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600?

Accepted Answer

With the Ryzen 5 3600, yes.
If you talking about the Ryzen 5 3600X, it would be best to go with a little beefier one.

Question 10

Will this cool a 125W FX-8350?

Accepted Answer

Yes it should but consider what you use your PC for, if gaming you may want more fans in your case or if room a little bigger cooler. A larger cooler would be good if later you decide to upgrade your processor.

Questions & Answers