With a third, nearly identical Noctua fan installed on the inside of the case, the photos I have seen show maybe three inches of distance between the outside of the case fan and the outside of the exhaust fan on the cooler. Thus, at most, there are four inches between the NH-D15 and the case exhaust hole. 1. The NH-D15 is a beast of a cooler. It should have no problem cooling a 12700k. People also overlook the fact your case temperatures will be atleast slightly better with an air cooler since you don't have a radiator blocking your front intake fans. AIO's are more sexy but an air cooler is more pragmatic. Plus an air cooler never runs the risk of But with my need to go beyond 4.2ghz with low temps made me look to see if theres any air, aio cpu cooler that is noticeable better, for no more than 50% more than what a NH-D15 costs. According to this thread there isn't, all we get is more noise, not even a Swiftech H220-X or the big brother the H240-X is not noticeable better than a Notcua As far as noise is concerned, I see that the Noctua NH-D15 generates 33.6 dBA at max fan speed, which is comparable to the Corsair H100i Elite at 33.9 dBA. Regarding cooling performances, I find it a bit harder to compare as the NH-D15 is nearly 10 years old and reviews back then were not exactly performed under the same circumstances and the my 12700k with Noctua NH-D15 and Fractal Define 7 casing runs Cinebench R23 with 4.9 PCores and 4.0 ECores at max temp of 88 degrees celsius (room ambient is about 29 degrees celsius). i can get it to 5.0 PCore but it will thermal throttle after 15minutes of Cinebench R23 full load. I watched lots of reviews on AIOs and saw that 360mm AIOs During idle this noise is not noticeable as i run all fans at minimum rpm. But its very anoying while running under full (-ish) load. Setup: Case: NZXT H510. Cooler: NH-D15S. Fans: NF-F12 and NF-A14 (both exhaust) Mobo: strix B550-F wifi. PSU: Yes (old corsair 750w) GPU: GTX 1060 6gb (blower style cooler) Storage: all ssd. Buy D15 which has 2 fans, and take off the front fan to be the D15S in term of performance and RAM clearance but without better PCIE clearance. 2. Buy D15S which has only 1 fan and better PCIE & RAM clearance out of the box, but get the hassle and extra cost later to get a second fan for it to be the D15 in term of performance. No one at 30 db is more coolt than a noctua nh-d15 or nh-u14s except mabye a thermalright le grand mach but not more than 1 degrees. A clc can be more cool an silent than the best aio and air coolers, but they cost alot more since a good silent pump costs as much as a noctua nh-u14s or Be Quiet Dark Rock 3. The package hits a TDP of 240w very quickly. Youtube videos confirm that the NH D15 can't keep the 12900K under 100°c under full load. Of course, this isn't a problem in real life scenario. My setup is 100 quiet when not under load (office work) & gaming is silent too. Only stress-testing the system throttles the cpu. Noctua constructed the NH-D15 CPU cooler from both copper and aluminum to maximize the cooling potential of the unit by taking advantage of the unique cooling-related properties of those materials. Copper is very good at absorbing heat, while aluminum is very good at dispersing heat to a different medium. 6uWsn3.