dark rock pro 4 vs nh-d15: which one?

Cyber-Mav said:
maybe we have reached the limits of air cooling? but the NH-U12A is impressive and smaller than the d15 but close in performance so maybe there is a little room for improvement on the d15?
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I'm certain that D15 successors were shown at trade shows years ago, and if memory serves correctly, Gamers Nexus touched on this with Noctua when it failed to materialise after being shown and the explanation was that basically there wasn't enough benefit to warrant its existence.

There's been some triple radiator type air heatsinks as well, but again, I think the gains weren't that significant over a D15.

With all that said a quick google has just shown that Noctua plans to release it in Q1 of this year: https://overclock3d.net/news/cases_cooling/noctua_has_delayed_its_nh-d15_successor_to_q1_2023/1
 
Pulseammo said:
I'm certain that D15 successors were shown at trade shows years ago, and if memory serves correctly, Gamers Nexus touched on this with Noctua when it failed to materialise after being shown and the explanation was that basically there wasn't enough benefit to warrant its existence.

There's been some triple radiator type air heatsinks as well, but again, I think the gains weren't that significant over a D15.

With all that said a quick google has just shown that Noctua plans to release it in Q1 of this year: https://overclock3d.net/news/cases_cooling/noctua_has_delayed_its_nh-d15_successor_to_q1_2023/1
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They had to delay the launch of their new 140mm fans for some reason. Can’t wait to see how much their new cooler can improve over their actual range.
 
Drumroll said:
Yes, sharply.
Just because they aren’t 1000k items, a 20% plus increase doesn’t get much attention from must customers.
Fans and cases also.
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some of that price increase has to be because of so many youtube vids showing water cooling aios to be failing. lot of vids from greg salazar showing liquid coolers with clogging issues. but even stuff like arctic freezer 34 has gone up in price.
 
Glanza said:
Not bigger but a new gen of the d15 is on the way, granted it keeps getting pushed back due to covid and other issues.

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That's pretty funny, from the article I linked which was written in April '22 and stated Q1 '23 release - it's already slid to Q4 '23 in your picture and I'm sure I've been reading about this heatsink for years. It's the Duke Nukem forever of heatsinks, it's practically vapourware at this point.
 
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Pulseammo said:
That's pretty funny, from the article I linked which was written in April '22 and stated Q1 '23 release - it's already slid to Q4 '23 in your picture and I'm sure I've been reading about this heatsink for years. It's the Duke Nukem forever of heatsinks, it's practically vapourware at this point.
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Hope doesn’t fare as “well” as the game. :D
 
TBH improving on the D15 while keeping a reasonable price is quite the challenge.
Would you pay double the price for +20% cooling?
 
Zarax said:
TBH improving on the D15 while keeping a reasonable price is quite the challenge.
Would you pay double the price for +20% cooling?
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Nope, I'd expect it to supersede the D15 as that did the D14, hopefully at the same price point in order to stay relevant against AIO which seems to be increasingly necessary with the amount of heat the newer CPUs are pumping out.

Certainly wouldn't pay double. I do like my air coolers though. Still running an Alpenfohn K2.
 
Pulseammo said:
Nope, I'd expect it to supersede the D15 as that did the D14, hopefully at the same price point in order to stay relevant against AIO which seems to be increasingly necessary with the amount of heat the newer CPUs are pumping out.

Certainly wouldn't pay double. I do like my air coolers though. Still running an Alpenfohn K2.
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I agree with you, the thing is that doing better without significantly increasing costs is hard as the easy ways are exhausted:

- They cannot make it significantly larger without severely restricting case compatibility (and many otherwise fine cases can't fit it already even if they can fit slightly smaller coolers like the Dark Rock Pro 4)
- They cannot make extensive use of better performing but exotic materials. For example, an industrial diamond coating or extensive copper layering could help but at what price?
- Improving the design is doable but additional manufacturing complexity increases costs. I would wager that something like a multiple vapour chamber system or something fancier could work but if it takes 3X the time to build it the cost would skyrocket and quality control would be harder.

I do wager that they're going mostly on the 3rd solution but the constant delays suggests unforeseen issues with larger scale production.
Personally I will never use liquid cooling so at the very worst case I will limit my purchases to relatively "energy efficient" CPUs and the recent Intel trend of power at all costs is seriously making me consider switching for the first time to AMD and I say that as someone who used Intel since 1988...

I wouldn't pay double either, especially as PC gaming is becoming a very expensive hobby and especially GPUs are forcing me to go lower and lower down the ladder to keep costs down.
 
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