Noctua NH-L9a-AM4: A Very Low-Profile AMD Ryzen Cooler

[microcode]

Very cool, I've been looking for basically this exact thing.

[Caffarius]

While I see the intent of this cooler, unless you cornered yourself with a case that really needs this, with Ryzen AMD simply killed a lot of the market for third party coolers.

For the first time in many years, my next build will not include a aftermarket cooler.

I built a mini-ITX dev server with a 1700X and this cooler over a year ago in a much older In Win BP671 case. "Cornered" is a bit harsh when they don't sell all their chips with a cooler.

That said, this heatsink opens up the possibility for some beastly tiny machines. I don't have a sound level meter handy but anecdotally it's pretty quiet at <50% but it can scream when I strain a bunch of VMs. If I were using it for finding prime numbers I'd have chosen another heatsink.for my 95W chip. For a mostly idle VM host it's amazing.

[Michael]

Like atomsymbol mentioned, the Temperature is rather pointless. The Sone value would be interesting for many people.

Unfortunately too much noise from other systems and other variable factors is why I don't provide sound measurements.

The temperature was mainly to show its performance is at least on-par with the stock heatsink.

Keep in mind at Phoronix not focused on CPU HSF reviews and such, that this wasn't even a review sample or anything, mostly just relaying some basic thoughts after having bought this heatsink for a SFF PC so hopefully of assistance to anyone else in a similar situation.

[Michael]

Care to share which MB and which model of Rosewill 2U chassis please?

Should be able to find it on NewEgg or anywhere, don't have it offhand but easy to find and is the ones shown in many Phoronix articles.

The MB is also shown in this article on the second page under the system details, an ASUS B450 will have more on it in article tomorrow.

[hetzbh]

Care to share which MB and which model of Rosewill 2U chassis please?

[M@GOid]

While I see the intent of this cooler, unless you cornered yourself with a case that really needs this, with Ryzen AMD simply killed a lot of the market for third party coolers.

For the first time in many years, my next build will not include a aftermarket cooler.

[M@GOid]

Like atomsymbol mentioned, the Temperature is rather pointless. The Sone value would be interesting for many people.

Since the function of a cooler is to cool, I believe knowing the temps are half the info people are interested in. Sone means nothing to the typical user.

[Nille]

Like atomsymbol mentioned, the Temperature is rather pointless. The Sone value would be interesting for many people.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Noctua NH-L9a-AM4: A Very Low-Profile AMD Ryzen Cooler

When looking for a heatsink with a small stature for an AMD APU mini PC build for HTPC / file storage use-cases (more on that build in the next day or two), the Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 fit the criteria and so I went with that given the success with the many Noctua heatsinks we have used over the years. For those potentially interested in the NH-L9a-AM4 for an AMD APU like the new Ryzen 5 3400G or for lower-end Ryzen CPUs, I ran some benchmarks with this cooler.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=28276