Noctua NH-L9a Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

Noctua NH-L9a CPU Cooler Benchmarks

I want to put a warning on our benchmarks. This CPU cooler was designed and built for sub 65W TDP chips but surprisingly we found that it kept our AMD APU cool even under 100% load testing using Prime95. Prime95 was only ran for an hour due to while it did hold its own it did keep constantly creeping up in temperatures. It looks like you could use this cooler for chips above the 65W recommended TDP if heavy loads aren’t constantly being used. Below is our results:

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

For what the Noctua NH-L9a CPU cooler is it works great. You aren’t going to be smashing any overclocking benchmarks but is perfect for an AMD APU or lower end FX processor. As I said earlier is that Noctua doesn’t recommend any CPU above 65W TDP due to heat issues but if you aren’t planning to run your CPU at load such as with a HTPC or small home server then it be just fine. From the benchmarks above you can see we used the NH-L9a CPU cooler with an AMD A10-6800K APU and blah blah blah. Now as far as motherboard compatibility this cooler will fit almost anything. Noctua has a list of compatible motherboards on their website if you have any doubts if the NH-L9a CPU cooler will fit or not. The list is more what will fit than what won’t fit. Looking at the list I only see two motherboards that this cooler will not fit potentially. So I would say my only complaint about this cooler is how it gets installed. It would be alot easier if they built the mounting screws so that you use a locking nut or something tightened from the rear rather than trying to hold the whole cooler on the CPU and screw it in since viability is very low when trying to line up the holes on the cooler with the screws.