Heatsinks. Heatsinks everywhere. If you were to walk out your door and ask a passerby on the street what a heatsink is, half of them will look at you like you’re speaking French. Most of the people I know have no idea what a heatsink is. Meanwhile, I have dozens of them lying around my office. I’ve still got the very first ones I reviewed for this site back in 2008. I consider them a trophy for not getting canned from OCMS quite yet.
There’s no doubt that Noctua has some serious hardware up their sleeves. They’ve been known to mold copper and aluminum into a weapon that will cool even the most savagely hot processor. My only issue, aside from the colors (I swear, that’s it. Not another word) is the size. I think it’s overkill. But before we go on and see how many parts I have to remove before I can install this thing, let’s have a look at the Noctua NH-D14 heatsink:
“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.” –Noctua
On the next page we take a look at the heatsink…
Impressive. But did you catch the dimensions at the beginning? 160mm. That’s 6.29 inches sticking out from your motherboard into your case. So if you plan on getting this heatsink, you had better measure your case first. Because chances are good that you’re going to be taking off a side fan on even a full-ATX case.
Okay, I’m not trying to harp on this thing right away. It’s probably a real monster when it comes to cooling a CPU. So size aside for now, I shall install this thing and see what kind of power it has. Installation was fairly easy, with a couple of snares, since I was installing inside the recently reviewed Raidmax Raptor chassis. The right panel comes off and has easy access to the rear of the motherboard for just this purpose. For those Intel users without a case with rear mobo access, you’ll be needing to remove your motherboard from the chassis to install this heatsink.
All that needs to be done is to remove the stock (or whatever you have) heatsink, and then get to the rear of the mobo to remove the stock mounting plate. The NH-D14 comes with install kits for Intel and AMD processors, and comes with a mounting plate for Intel processors. Most AMD boards come with a plate preinstalled, so no worries for my fellow AMD fanboys. You can leave your mobo in the case for installation. If you find that your AMD board doesn’t have a plate, you can just float an email to Noctua and they’ll take care of you. They’re good people like that.
Intel, AMD, and Common parts in separate bags
Installing on either system is going to be slow, focused work. Turning your case on its side would probably be best for this due to loose parts that you have to tighten and the general weight and mass of the heatsink during install. Replace that mounting plate if required, install some included mounting bars, and you’re ready to install the NH-D14!
The trick here is to remove the center fan before you attempt to stick it in there. Don’t even put it in to eyeball it. Remove that center fan. You need it out to tighten down the screws onto the mounting bars. Also, plug in the fan connectors to the motherboard right now if you’re using onboard power. Once the heatsink is installed, you can’t even get to the CPU fan plug. I learned this the hard way. Also, large RAM (like those with big heatsinks) might not fit under this. Mine barely did. Okay, back to the mounting. Once those two screws are tightened (don’t overdo it here unless you want stripped screws), you can slide the fan back in and clip the wire retainer back into place.
I had an issue reinstalling the middle fan. It has a top and bottom wire retainer. The top one wouldn’t even go into the case, and having the room to snap it in up top isn’t even an option. If the top of my case were removable, then maybe. But I ended up having to take the top retainer off completely and snapping on the bottom one in place. It held tight, and I have no fear of it falling out of the heatsink, but it’s still irritating.
Now, on my case, the top exhaust fan was completely stopped by the heatsink. It pushed against it and stopped the blades entirely. I unplugged the fan to keep from ruining it and attempted to put the side of my case back on. It fit with less than an eighth of an inch clearance. I removed my side fan before-hand, thinking that it would be too much with a heatsink this size.
I’m running an AMD FX-4170 4.2Ghz processor in this system. I decided to do an ambient air and then a load test using the stock cooler to get an idea of what kind jump in cooling performance one would get in upgrading directly from stock to the NH-D14. I ran temperature monitoring during regular use of the computer, such as when I’m browsing or writing, as I am now, and then I ran a full CPU load on all four cores using AIDA64 Extreme Edition. The temperature in my testing lab stayed at a steady 68 degrees Fahrenheit the whole time, as it usually does. And here are the results of those tests:
The ambient air reading at idle for the stock cooler was right around 27 degrees Celsius (80.6 Fahrenheit) when I had a couple of instances of Firefox open, MS Word, AIDA64 running idle, and a couple other background programs running. I also use Arctic Silver 5 for all my heatsinks, stock or not. So any temps you see will be a tad lower than normal thanks to that. But the difference in temperature between stock and performance heatsinks will not change due to that.
Alright, so on with the load. I fired up AIDA64 and set it to stress the CPU. I let it run for 25 minutes at 100% load to see what kind of temperatures I would get. This was my first time stressing this particular CPU, so I was a little excited to see what kind of stock temperatures it could generate for a 125-watt CPU. After 25 minutes I had my results. I ended up with a maximum of 44 degrees Celsius, or 111.2 Fahrenheit. Not bad. I expected higher temps. I can’t wait to see the overclock temperatures with the Noctua on there.
Speaking of the Noctua, I installed it (with a little knuckle-bruising) and let my computer cool down sufficiently before firing it back up. I let it sit idle again while I spent some time making some lunch. I then came back and looked up pictures of lolcats, checked Facebook, and then checked to see what ambient temps the NH-D14 gave me. Where I had 27 ° Celsius on stock cooler at ambient temps, the Noctua NH-D14 dropped it to 18 ° Celsius (64 °F). That’s a difference of 9 degrees on the Celsius scale, or 16 degree Fahrenheit, depending on which scale you prefer.
Under load conditions, the Noctua blew the stock cooler away at a frosty 34 degrees Celsius. I was expecting a drop, but not one that big. I ran the stress test again and got the exact same results. I then switched over to Prime95 and ran the most heat-inducing test available. 34 degrees the whole way. Color me impressed.
Left: Overclocked Idle temp, Right: Overclocked load temp
Now it was time to see what the NH-D14 could do in an overclock situation. I restarted the system entered Setup to overclock the system. I made the jump from 4.2Ghz to 4.6Ghz and then booted into Windows. I let it run for a while on its own and then checked the temperature. I was sitting at 24 degrees Celsius. I loaded up my programs and ran the stress test.
Under load, the NH-D14 did great on an overclocked CPU. It took almost a full 15 minutes just to break 40 degrees Celsius. To put this in perspective, this CPU at stock settings is considered to be at a normal temp under load when it is the mid 50’s. And I barely got to 40 C. That’s not bad at all.
So, to wrap this up, I am very satisfied with what the NH-D14 has to offer by way of cooling. It performed well under all conditions I threw at it and kept coming back for more. My only real gripe is the size of the thing. If it works, it works… and that’s what matters. From what I hear, Noctua has lower profile CPU coolers out now on their website, so my griping may be for nothing anyway, if I can just purchase a smaller unit. To conclude, this is a great cooler. Thumbs up from this guy.