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Noctua NH-D14 Heatsink Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

High performance cooling has come a long way over the years, so much in fact that it is hard to tell a difference from one cooler to another from performance numbers alone.  This is especially true If you are looking for something that also doesn't make a ton of noise.

Heatsink installation went incredibly smooth and was actually quite simple, despite having 3 basic levels.  Having only a single set of screws holding the main retention clips in place was a real time saver and made the process very easy.  To complete the installation we did have to remove the center fan to attach the main mounting screws.  This was a little strange, but all things considered it was a small price to pay.  The heatsink was held down with 2 spring loaded screws which was actually very sturdy.  This is likely due to the mounts actually being attached to the heatsink instead of just floating on top.

Overall performance was excellent and our heat tests showed that the Noctua NH-D14 had plenty of heat capacity to spare given that the C/W numbers were almost identical between the tests.  Cooling performance can be enhanced by installing a more powerful fan though will detract from how silent the cooler actually is.  We also did mention that running just a single fan did translate into slightly higher temperatures but well below any OEM solution and extremely close to most performance coolers on the market using more powerful fans.

Now for our list of good things and bad things 

6 Heatpipe Construction
Dual Radiators
Silent Cooling
Excellent Mounting System
Multi-Processor Heatsink Mount

Extremely Large Cooler
Heavy due to dual towers
May not fit on some motherboards
Larger case required

We would like to thank Noctua for helping to make this review possible.

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