Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler

[Rob Williams]

A huge computer chassis deserves a huge CPU cooler, and when you need one of those, Noctua delivers. With its NH-D14, the company seems to have had the goal of delivering the largest cooler possible that could still fit on most ATX motherboards, but with that size comes extremely good performance even low noise levels.

You can read Bill's full look at Noctua's latest behemoth here and discuss it here.

 

[Kougar]

Nice review Bill! I well agree on the Editor's Choice!

I love this cooler... it is how a real cooler should be manufactured. The Heat pipes are soldered to the fins, not pressed as in most heatsinks. Out of the three types they appear to use sintered heat pipes, which are the most expensive and least used, but highest performing and least affected by mounting orientation. Even the thin aluminum fins and fan mounts are solid. And the backplate is real quality, not a crappy piece of thin aluminum you can bend with your fingers like some Swiftech backplates I could mention...

I'm also happy with the thermal compound this stuff comes with. Watercooling or not, it dropped my temps. With the settings and hardware in my sig I'm getting 65-75 temps depending on the ~70c room temperature. The Noctua DH-14 has come the closest so far to matching it with temps around 85-90. A 10-15c coretemp difference is just good for a quiet air cooler... even if it costs more than my radiator.

 

[Optix]

This thing is like that big, quiet dude from the kung fu films. You know he can kick ass but he never does until the heat is on.

HEEYAH!

 

[samuelson1]

I have one and it´s quite amazing,

my system:

CoolerMaster ATCS840
Asus M4A79Deluxe
AMD Phenom™ II X4 955 BE + Noctua NH-D14
4 Gb DDR2-1066 OCZ Platinium LV
2xSapphire Radeon HD4870 512MB GDDR5 CrossFire,
LG L226WTQ-SF, 2xSeagate 500GB SATA-II, Corsair HX850W

I´m running soft OC (3,6 Ghz), and under prime95 test gets 61ºC, iddle around 42ºC

I used artic silver 5 thermal compound instead of Nt-H1, is It a mistake?

 

[Kougar]

I used artic silver 5 thermal compound instead of Nt-H1, is It a mistake?

A "mistake", no. Any possible differences would be 1-5c worst case. I think the NT-H1 is better, but I've not actually looked around to check. I can't speak for Bill though, as it is his review he likely has his own thoughts on the thermal compound or conducted his own testing with it.

But in regards to your question, in my opinion, it really doesn't matter unless you are just about to buy new thermal compound.

 

[samuelson1]

A "mistake", no. Any possible differences would be 1-5c worst case. I think the NT-H1 is better, but I've not actually looked around to check. I can't speak for Bill though, as it is his review he likely has his own thoughts on the thermal compound or conducted his own testing with it.

But in regards to your question, in my opinion, it really doesn't matter unless you are just about to buy new thermal compound.

Ok next time I´ll try NT-H1 to compare temps, already I have both


many thanks!

 

[saintbodhisatva]

I was initially considering buying this, but it really is too huge. I think I might just go for the Venomous X or the Megahalems.

 

[b1lk1]

I've personally found AS5 to be lacking as of late for quad cores. I currently use Arctic Cooling MX2 for all my testing and I also can recommend the paste Noctua supplies as very high quality. I would say you are not gonna see a big difference, but I bet it will drop a few degrees if you use the Noctua supplied paste over AS5.

 

[Rob Williams]

Thanks for the great review, Bill! I love this cooler, I admit, but I'm scare it wouldn't fit in my apartment.