Happy New Year everyone! It’s a new
year and I’ve got a new review for you!
Today for review I’ve got the massive
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler. I’m testing it on my Intel Corei5 750 CPU
both at stock speeds and with an overclock. I don’t have many other
Socket1156 coolers on hand so I’ve put it up against two other Noctua
coolers and one from Cooler Master for comparison.
This cooler is massive, it’s pretty
much the largest one that I’ve looked at ever, at those that are air
coolers. There are of course larger specialized cooler like TEC and
water, but the NH-D14 is one humongous air cooler that performs very
well! Read on…
Product
Name: Noctua
NH-D14 CPU Cooler
Author: Kristofer
Brozio
Sponsor: Noctua
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Combining a massive six
heatpipe dual radiator design with an exquisite NF-P14/NF-P12 dual
fan configuration, the NH-D14 is built for ultimate quiet cooling
performance. Topped off
with a tube of Noctua’s
award-winning NT-H1 thermal compound as well as the new SecuFirm2
multi-socket mounting system, the NH-D14 is an elite choice for the
highest
demands in premium quality
quiet cooling.
Features:
6
heatpipe dual radiator design
Providing more surface area,
better heat-distribution and superior airflow efficiency than
conventional tower style heatsinks, the NH-D14’s six heatpipe dual
radiator design was
developed to provide ultimate
quiet cooling performance in dual fan mode.
Dual
NF-P14/NF-P12 fan setup
The NH-D14 sports a premium
quality dual fan setup consisting of Noctua’s award-winning NF-P12
(120mm) and NF-P14 (140mm) fans, both of which feature Vortex-Control
Notches,
SCD technology and SSO-Bearings
in order to achieve a perfect balance of performance and quietness.
Asymmetrical
design for high compatibility
An asymmetrical design that
gives more clearance towards the RAM slots ensures good compatibility
despite of the cooler’s size. The NF-P12 fan can be moved upwards
or left off in
order to further improve
compatibility.
Excellent
component cooling
Hanging out at the bottom of
the fin-stacks, the NF-P14 fan doesn’t only contribute to the
NH-D14’s superb CPU cooling capabilities but also provides massive
airflow over
surrounding motherboard
components and heatsinks, thus ensuring excellent component cooling
performance.
SecuFirm2
multi-socket mounting system
Noctua’s enthusiast grade
SecuFirm2™multi-socket mounting provides broad socket compatibility
(LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA775, AM2, AM2+ and AM3) and meets the highest
demands in safety, contact
pressure and ease-of-use.
NT-H1
thermal compound
Noctua’s much-acclaimed NT-H1
is a well proven pro-grade TIM solution that provides minimum thermal
resistance, excellent ease-of-use and outstanding reliability.
Specs:
Socket compatibility: Intel
LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA775 & AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3 (backplate
required)
Height (without fan): 160 mm
Width (without fan) : 140 mm
Depth (without fan) : 130 mm
Height (with fan): 160 mm
Width (with fan): 140 mm
Depth (with fan): 158 mm
Weight (without fan): 900 g
Weight (with fan): 1070/1240* g
Material: Copper (base and
heat-pipes), aluminum (cooling fins), soldered joints & nickel
plating
Fan compatibility: 140x140x25 &
120x120x25mm
Scope
of Delivery:
-1x NF-P14 premium fan
-1x NF-P12 premium fan
-2x Ultra-Low-Noise Adapter
(U.L.N.A.)
-Y-Split Cable
-4x Vibration-Compensators (for
using NF-P12 as case fan)
-4x Fan screws (for using
NF-P12 as case fan)
-NT-H1 high-grade thermal
compound
-SecuFirm2™ Mounting Kits
-Noctua Metal Case-Badge
Warranty: 6 Years
Fan
specifications:
Model: Noctua NF-P14 &
Noctua NF-P12
Bearing: SSO-Bearing
Rotational Speed (+/- 10%):
1200 / 1300 RPM
Rotational Speed with U.L.N.A.
(+/- 10%): 900 / 900 RPM
Airflow: 110,3 / 92,3 m³/h
Airflow with U.L.N.A.: 83,7 /
63,4 m³/h
Acoustical Noise: 19,6 / 19,8
dB(A)
Acoustical Noise with U.L.N.A.:
13,2 / 12,6 dB(A)
Input Power: 1,2 / 1,08 W
Voltage Range: 12 V
MTBF: > 150.000 h
A
Better Look at Things:
So the Noctua NH-D14 comes in a
box, yes a box! A nice looking box that of course has all the specs
and features listed on it.
Inside you’ll find a lot of stuff,
one things I love about Noctua is that they don’t skimp on extras!
You’ll find two separate bags for
both Intel and AMD platforms:
In another bag labeled common
parts you’ll find the low noise adapters, NT-H1 thermal compound, ‘Y’
adapter, both metal and silicone fan fasteners and even a very nice
Noctua case badge. Noctua included an ‘L’ shaped screw driver as well
to help you with the installation.
The NH-D14 is massive, there’s no
doubt about that. It has six U-Shaped heatpipes that go through two
separate heatsinks with a fan between them. As with all Noctua
products, the NH-D14 is very well made, it’s solid and surprisingly
not as heavy as it looks.
The fans use a new clip system
that works well to hold the fan on very securely.
The base isn’t a mirror finish but
it’s close and it seems flat.
Installation,
Testing and Comparison:
Before I installed the NH-D14 I
was using the Cooler Master Hyper 212, and that’s going to be in the
comparison charts below along with the Noctua NH-U9B and the NH-U12P.
I installed the NH-D14 in a Cooler
Master Sniper case. I like this case because it has very good
airflow, a lot of room inside and the motherboard tray is cut out so
you don’t have to remove the motherboard to install a new cooler.
That’s where I ran into my first problem with the installation, I had
to bend the tray a bit to slide the Noctua backplate in and get it
installed. The socket side mounts installed easily with no issues.
I spoke with Noctua about the
backplate and motherboard tray issue and they said I was the first to
mention this and that it’s most likely a case specific problem.
If you notice in the above Cooler
Master Hyper 212 picture you’ll see that I’m using Kingston HyperX
ram with the large heatspreaders on it. I quickly found out that I
cannot use that ram anymore with the NH-D14, it just won’t fit. The
ram would fit if I removed the front fan though, but that kind of
defeats the point of the cooler right? Or maybe not as you’ll see
below one fan with the NH-D14 works about the same as two fans, so
you could safely just use the middle fan and still use the large
style ram.
Installing this massive beast of
cooler is fairly easy overall, but it requires time and in my case I
even had to remove the video card to get the fans clipped onto the
cooler. For me that wasn’t too big of a deal though, especially since
I didn’t have to remove the motherboard from the case to do the
install.
Installing the actually cooler is
a two step or really three step process. First you’ll need to install
the cooler itself then attach each fan to the NH-D14. The clips work
very well to hold the fans in place, and they’re rather hard to
un-clip which is a good thing.
Once I got the NH-D14 installed I
found that it comes uncomfortably close to my top video card. Well
let me clarify that, the fan clip is what comes close to the video
card and not really the cooler itself. Yes the cooler does come
close, but the clip is literally a few millimeters from the card, so
much so that any shift in the cooler would cause the clip to touch
the card and possibly short out not only the card but maybe ever the
CPU as well since they’re all pretty much connected.
The issue with the VGA card isn’t
a big problem really, it doesn’t actually touch the card in my case.
It’s a motherboard specific problem for sure, so depending on which
mobo you have you may not have the same issue. I spoke with Noctua
about it and their suggestion is that if I was worried I could just
stick a piece of electrical tape on the clip to insulate it from the
card. Quick and dirty fix basically, but it works and gives me some
peace of mind…
For testing I ran my Corei5 750 at
the stock speed of 2.6GHz and then overclocked it a little up to
3.2Ghz. So below you’ll find two graphs, one for the stock speed and
one for the overclocked speed. Sp basically I ran two different
tests, one with the CPU at Stock speed of 2.6GHZ and one with the CPU
slightly overclocked to 3.2GHZ.
Ambient room temperature during
testing was 21.7C (+/- .3C)
I used two instances of Orthos
Stress Prime to achieve load on the Corei5 CPU and I used RealTemp to
get the temperatures from the CPU. To get the idle temperatures, the
computer was turned on and sat doing nothing for 15 minutes.
In the following charts you’ll see one temperature only, this is
an average of the four core temperatures.
I tested the NH-D14 in three
different configurations, single fan, two fans and with no fans to
see how it performs in different configurations.
First up is the stock CPU speed
temperatures:
As you can plainly see the NH-D14
comes in above the others in terms of performance even with no fans
at all.
Comparing two fans or one fan
there really isn’t much of a difference at all.
Again I spoke with Noctua about
these one/two fan results and they said:
“I
think the reason why you didn’t see much of a performance improvement
from the second fan is that you’ve got a rear fan sitting pretty
close to the cooler.“
and now for the overclocked CPU
test:
Here we see very similar
performance results from the NH-D14 cooler coming in the top spots
for both with fans and without. Again we also see not much of a
difference running on or two fans.
So back to where I mentioned
earlier about the large heatspreader ram, you can see that you could
remove the front fan and most likely still achieve the same cooling
results or very close to them.
The fans are fairly quiet, yes you
can hear them. The Cooler Master Sniper case is essentially an open
sided case, there’s no window, just mesh so everything seems a bit
louder really.
I like this cooler but it’s just
too big for my tastes honestly, I don’t like how close it sits to my
video card, it might just me being a bit paranoid about it but it
just makes me uncomfortable.
I’ve since swapped out the NH-D14
for the NH-U12P that is smaller, allows me to use the larger ram and
provides similar cooling performance.
Summary
and Comments:
Despite the minor issues I came
across, the Noctua Nh-D14 is very capable and excellent performing
CPU cooler. It’s very well made, and it is one of the best air
coolers on the market today.
If you’re an overclocker, but
don’t want water or other exotic types of cooling then you’ll want
this cooler as it should easily allow you to overclock your CPU and
still stay well within heat tolerances for your chip.
I can recommend this cooler for
it’s excellent cooling performance and if you’ve got the room for it.
Just keep in mind the large size when you think about getting this
cooler.
Yes they’re are a few issues that
I ran across, but most of them are motherboard and case specific to
me, so unless you’ve got the same setup as me I wouldn’t worry about
it too much really.
DragonSteelMods gives the Noctua
NH-D14 a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
+Very good cooling performance
+Very well made
+Multi-socket compatible
+Includes lots of extras
+Good temps with single or even no
fans
+Good for overclocking
Cons:
-Massive in size, might not fit in
many cases
-Depending on mother board
configuration it can come very close to the video card
-Issue with backplate not fitting
(most likely a case specific problem though)
-Installation can take some time
depending on your case and motherboard
-Cannot use large heatspreader
style ram (unless you remove the front fan)
I
would like to thank Noctua for the chance to review the NH-D14
Cooler and for their continued support of DSM.
review#626
Disclosure: This product was given to DragonSteelMods for review by the company
for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for
the review, we do not, never have, and never will, accept payment
from companies to review their products.
To
learn more about our review policy, testing methods and ratings
please see this page.