Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler Review

👤by Sahil Mannick Comments 📅28-11-10
Closer Analysis

Top down Coolers

**Updated**



At stock speed, the NH-C14 provides the best performance of all top down coolers tested. The added benefit compared to the Tuniq Propeller is much quieter operation and compared to the NH-C12P (SE14), it can be used in three configurations depending on usage and clearance.


Again, the Noctua NH-C14 is in a league above, being more comparable to tower heatsinks than top down coolers without compromising on noise and practicality. Even with one fan, it coped much better than the NH-C12P SE14.

Northbridge and Motherboard temperatures


The advantage of top down coolers is their ability to cool motherboard components so the Northbridge (X58 chipset) and motherboard temperature deltas were recorded. Compared to its much bigger brother, the NH-C14 did an excellent job cooling the Northbridge lowering temperatures by 3C under load. Strangely, reversing the fans yielded slightly better performance which could be due to heat being extracted from the area, as opposed to hot air being pushed onto the board underneath. High clearance mode provided the worse results because airflow was attenuated by the heatsink itself and the greater distance to the motherboard. Conversely, low profile mode had the fan closer to the components for better cooling.


The motherboard temperature remained vastly the same throughout testing.

Thermal Paste Comparison


For all the cooler tests, I use Thermalright's Chill Factor II thermal paste but the Noctua cooler comes bundled with NT-H1 thermal paste so additional comparisons were warranted. Our results suggest that they performed very similarly. The NT-H1 lost by 0.25C in low profile mode but won by 0.5C in the default setup. The test highlights the margin of error is cooler tests.


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