Noctua - Heatsink + Fan CPU Cooling Kit - Dual Fan - NH-D14

This cooler is a piece of cake to install if you have an AM3 board. No need to take motherboard out unless the cooler you used previously got rid of the standard backplate which you will need to fit this cooler.

I was using the Antec freezer 7 pro v2 on a 1090t at 1.35v 3.6 GHz ambient temp 22c; idle 32c load 50-55c.

This beaut of a cooler on a 1090t 1.536v at 4.12 GHz ambient temp 22c; idle 28c load 55c.

These temps above are the CPU Die temps, the core temps are about five degrees below those figures. I was using Artic silver 5 thermal compound.

You can get these volts down if you use the latest chipset, I'm using a MSI 790FX-GD70 board which is why I have to use higher volts.

The cooler is massive compared to the old antec cooler. I use an antec 300 case which is 205mm in width and it fits nice and snug. I have about 10mm to spare job done!

Also I have the fans on top whack and they cannot be heard over the five case fans. Not saying much but the case fans I use are Alpenfohn wing boost which are pretty quiet for five fans running at 100%. They are rated at 21db but anyway that's for another review.

This cooler is a must have, pretty expensive but compared to a H70 which is a make believe water cooler anyway and costs 15 quid more and no way near keeps your overclocked cpu cooler than this beast does and wait for it.... and is much more of a pain in the buttocks to install... and alot noisier at full whack, why not buy this?

Well the only minus points is for AMD users. You can only position the heatsink horizontally and if you have stupidly high heatsinks on your ram sticks this ain't going to fit. If your like me and have the ram sticks (corsair xms3 1600 MHz) that don't have high heatsinks it does fit. The Noctua website is the best place to go if you are unsure.

Not many complaints so what are you waiting for.... oh nooooo!!!!!! the silver arrow. Still buy this though for ease of install on AMD boards.

This cpu cooler is great. Keeps my amd 965 3.4GHZ {Oc to 4GHZ} idle 24-25 degrees and 35-37 degrees underload. I would defo recommend this cpu cooler

Bought this cooler replace my Intel stock cooler which was struggling to cool my Intel i5 750 CPU Overclocked at 3.25 Ghz. Since having this cooler I have been able to reach brilliant performance with my i5 Processor with a clock speed of 4.162 Ghz. The Noctua NH-D14 cooler keeps the CPU brilliantly cool at this speed with temperatures of 34 Degrees Celsius at idle load and about 48-55 Degrees Celsius under load. This cooler is a great compromise to more expensive cooling solutions.

There is a few things to look out for when purchasing this cooler. Firstly this thing is massive in all dimensions. The cooling fins are placed very high up and are extremely wide which can cause problems. The cooler just fits in my Antec 900-2 with a little modification to the side panel (Just had to remove a clip on the inside of the side panel which can hold an extra fan to cool GPU's, Very minor . Another thing to look at is the size of the heat spreaders on your RAM, this could be a problem as I've seen some large cooling fins on RAM through the years but this generally won't be a problem with most system but its good to look out for. I would recommend you measure up your system well before purchase as this is a big cooler.

The installation is extremely simple although if you follow the guide although slightly time consuming depending if you have to take your motherboard of to attach the backplate(some chassis have holes behind the motherboard for changing the backplate such as the CoolerMaster ATCS 840). The NH-D14 comes with a great installation guide and ample spare screws. I was happy to see that Noctua supplied two 3 pin fan connector extension cables and and 3 pic fan connecter cable splitter which will allow you to connect two fans through one 3 pin connector. The build quality of this cooler seems to be great, haven't had any problem with the cooler, fans or the installation kit.

This cooler is epic, cools brilliantly at high clock speeds and makes barely any noise. The Noctua NH-D14 looks great, performs well and is a great for anyone who wants to overclock their CPU heavily, The cooler makes water cooling look pointless to a certain point. Great for beginners, enthusiasts and professionals looking to improve their systems cooling. One thing to note is the size, I wouldn't let this put you of this cooler as most performance chassis either large mid tower or full tower chassis will be big enough to host the cooler, just measure up well before purchase. I would heavily recommend this cooler to anyone on the market for a high performance premium CPU cooler, I am yet to find a fault with this cooler and expect never to find one.