NH-L9i: TDP Guidelines - Noctua

NH-L9i TDP guidelines

The NH-L9i is a low-profile quiet cooler designed for use in small form factor cases and HTPC environments. While it provides first rate performance in its class, it is not suitable for overclocking and should be used with care on CPUs with more than 65W TDP (Thermal Design Power). Please see our CPU compatibility list as well as the following table for our detailed recommendations. Please also take note of the explanations below.

Socket	Codename	TDP rating	SKU	Compatibility & remarks
LGA1151	Coffee Lake	65W or less	all
		91W	i3-8350K
		95W	i5-8600K & i7-8700K
	Skylake	65W or less	all
	91W	i5-6600K
	91W	i7-6700K	Recommended with good case ventilation only.
	LGA1150	Broadwell	65W or less	all
		Sandy Bridge	65W or less	all
		95W	all*	Recommended with good case ventilation only.

*Caution: Under certain conditions unlocked Intel series CPUs may dissipate more heat than indicated by the TDP value. Please see this FAQ for details. Our recommendation includes unlocked CPUs, but only if the heat dissipation is limited to the indicated TDP by choosing appropriate BIOS settings.

CPU temperatures depend on various different factors, so please take note of the explanations below and keep in mind that our recommendations can only serve as general guidelines for typical setups.

1) Our recommendations are based on an ambient temperature of 25°C or less. If your ambient temperature is significantly higher (30°C or more), we only recommend the cooler for configurations where we specify full compatibility without any additional remarks or restrictions. Please also ensure good case ventilation when ambient temperature is 30°C or more.

2) Our recommendations assume that the cooler is installed in a typically equipped, properly ventilated HTPC system. If you are using particularly hot components inside your system, it may be necessary to use stronger case ventilation to ensure sufficient CPU cooling performance.

3) Our recommendations assume that the fan is used with PWM control (configured so that it can speed up to 100% when necessary) but without the supplied Low-Noise Adaptor. If you would like to use the cooler with the supplied Low-Noise Adaptors, we recommend choosing CPUs with less than 65W TDP.

4) All our TDP recommendations are based on thorough testing with the default values specified by Intel using popular applications such as Asus Realbench and prime95. Please note, however, that prime95 creates a particularly high load that goes beyond typical application scenarios and this leads to elevated temperatures. We thus recommend using other programs such as Realbench for checking the stability and temperatures of the CPU in realistic scenarios.