Noctua is a company known for making quality and well
performing CPU Coolers, some of the best on the market today surely. They’ve
recently introduced a new cooler called the NH-C14 which gets its name from
the ‘C’ shape that the cooler is. The NH-C14 comes equipped with two Noctua NF-P14
140mm fans for excellent cooling performance. The two fans are mounted, one on
top and one on the bottom, and you can configure it however you like. If you
need more room beneath the cooler then just use the top fan. The NH-C14 is made
to be versatile and have good performance at the same time.
Product Name: Noctua
NH-C14 CPU Cooler
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Sponsor: Noctua
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
The NH-C14 brings
top-flow cooling to a new level by offering an exquisite, uniquely flexible
140mm dual fan setup: The two supplied NF-P14 premium fans can be installed on
top and underneath the fin-stack to configure the cooler for maximum
performance in dual fan mode and either lower profile (105mm) or maximum
component clearance in single fan modes. Bundled with the award-winning NT-H1
thermal compound and Noctua’s SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting system, the
NH-C14 is a highly flexible, premium-class top-flow solution that further
boosts the renowned quiet cooling performance of the much acclaimed NH-C12P
series.
Features:
C-Type top-flow
design
The NH-C14’s six
heatpipe c-type design allows for superb quiet cooling performance while
maintaining a much lower profile than today’s tower-style coolers and providing
excellent airflow over RAM modules and near-socket mainboard components.
Dual NF-P14 FLX
fans
The NH-C14 comes
with two of Noctua’s award-winning, premium quality NF-P14 140mm fans that can
be fine-tuned according to the user’s needs via the supplied Low-Noise (L.N.A.)
and Ultra-Low-Noise Adaptors (U.L.N.A.).
Low Profile Mode
Run with a single
NF-P14 fan underneath the fin stack and with the top fan removed, the NH-C14
measures only 105mm in height, which makes it ideal for use in smaller
enclosures and HTPC applications.
High Clearance Mode
The lower NF-P14
fan can be removed in order to provide additional clearance for chipset coolers
or RAM modules with tall heat-spreaders. Run with a single fan on top, the
NH-C14 provides a full 65mm of clearance.
SecuFirm2
multi-socket mounting system
Noctua’s enthusiast
grade SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting provides broad socket compatibility
(LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA775, AM2, AM2+ and AM3) and meets the highest
demands in safety, performance and ease-of-use.
Noctua NT-H1
high-end 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, LGA1155, LGA775 & AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3
(backplate required)
Height (without
fan): 105 mm
Width (without fan) : 140 mm
Depth (without fan) : 166 mm
Height (with fan):
130 mm
Width (with fan):
140 mm
Depth (with fan):
166 mm
Weight (without
fan): 700 g
Weight (with fan):
850/1000 g
Material: Copper
(base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints & nickel
plating
Fan compatibility:
140x140x25mm / 120x120x25mm
Scope of Delivery:
-2x NF-P14 premium
fan
-Low-Noise Adaptor
(L.N.A.)
-Ultra-Low-Noise Adaptor
(U.L.N.A.)
-NT-H1 high-grade
thermal compound
-SecuFirm2 Mounting
Kits
-Noctua Metal
Case-Badge
Warranty: 6 Years
Fan specifications:
Model: Noctua
NF-P14
Bearing:
SSO-Bearing
Rotational Speed
(+/- 10%): 1200 RPM
Rotational Speed
with L.N.A. (+/- 10%): 900 RPM
Rotational Speed
with U.L.N.A. (+/- 10%): 750 RPM
Airflow: 110,3 m³/h
Airflow with
L.N.A.: 83,7 m³/h
Airflow with
U.L.N.A.: 71,2 m³/h
Acoustical Noise:
19,6 dB(A)
Acoustical Noise
with L.N.A.: 13,2 dB(A)
Acoustical Noise
with U.L.N.A.: 10,1 dB(A)
Input Power: 1,2 W
Voltage Range: 12 V
MTBF: > 150.000
h
Price:
$85.78 (From Amazon at time of review)
A Better Look at Things
:
So I did a video unboxing for the NH-C14, I figured it deserved it.
The box for NH-C14 is nice looking as you might expect.
Inside you’ll find not only the cooler but four accessory bags and
installation instructions for Intel and AMD CPUs.
The bags are individually labeled for you to make life that much easier.
Noctua also included a support bar that affixes to the base and holds
the bottom fan more securely in place. This can be used just for peace of mind
or for extra support during transit.
The last bag is labeled Common Parts and in it you’ll find a tube of NT-H1
thermal compound, nice Noctua case badge, screws and accessories to mount
the fans in your case, an ‘L’ shaped screwdriver, four fan speed limiters and a
‘Y’ cable so you can hook both fans to one header.
The NH-C14 comes with two NF-P14 fans pre-installed for you, one on top and one on the bottoms of the heatsink
fins.
The cooler has six heatpipes running from the base through the cooling
fins. The base is flat but not exactly smooth, but that’s by design as to more
evenly spread the thermal compound.
The NH-C14 is well made as we’ve come to expect from Noctua. It looks
rather large but it’s lightweight for its size. It’s much thinner than I
expected it to be, the fin section I mean.
The fans are attached with metal brackets that clip over the edges of
the fins. They’re fairly easy to remove and install. Here are the fans:
Here are a couple views of the NH-C14 without the fans attached. There
are two square holes through the fins, these are for installation purposes, and
you can pass the screwdriver down through them to secure the NH-C14 to your
motherboard.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
I installed the Noctua NH-C14 on my Core i5 750 Socket 1156 CPU which is
inside of an NZXT
H2 PC Case.
The first thing you’ll need to do is install the motherboard brackets.
This involves a back plate, two front brackets, four plastic stand-offs, four
pass-through screw style posts and four thumbscrews. You’ll need to figure out
how you want to have the NH-C14 oriented in your case, either horizontally or
vertically and install the brackets accordingly. I was going to install it
vertically but found that it comes just a bit too close to my video card for
comfort.
For my testing I used no fans, one fan and two fans. When the bottom fan
is attached it came very close to the Patriot Viper DDR3 ram, within
millimeters really. If you have tall ram you will not be able to use the bottom
fan at all if you orient the cooler that way I have it.
I also found out that if you don’t install the bottom fan before
mounting the NH-C14 it’s virtually impossible to get it installed then. I
thought I would just run my testing without a fan and then install the fans,
but after my testing I found that I had to remove the cooler to get the bottom
fan attached.
Before I got the NH-C14 for review I was using the Noctua
NH-U12P CPU Cooler, so I figured why not compare them in this review.
During testing the ambient room temperature was 24.7C (+/- .3C). I used CoreTemp to monitor and log the
temperatures I got during testing. I used two instances of Orthos Stress Prime
to get 100% load on the Core i5 CPU. I
combined the four cores and averaged them out to get one single temperature for
the chart I have below.
The stock speed of the Core i5 is 2.66Ghz which I used for testing, then
I overclocked it a bit up to 3.2Ghz to see how well the NH-C14 handled it.
In the following chart you’ll find temperatures for the Noctua NH-U12P
at stock speed and overclocked. You’ll also find temperatures for the NH-C14
with one fan, two fans and with no fans installed. I only ran stock core speed
with no fan and not overclocked.
So there are the results in the chart above. The NH-C14 handles the heat
fairly well, better than the NH-U12P. The max temp for the Core i5 is 72.7C and as you can see, both coolers
keep things below that. Having no fan it comes very close to the max temp, so I
personally wouldn’t run it without a fan installed, but I did that just because
I was curious.
Having one or two fans installed the NH-C14 was virtually silent, it
added no additional noise to my system. I didn’t use any of the speed limiters
either, and it was still very quiet. If you wanted things even quieter you
could slow them down of course.
Summary and Comments
Once again Noctua proves that it knows the CPU Cooler business, the
NH-C14 is an excellent performing cooler for sure.
The NH-C14 might be large in size meaning that it might not fit in
smaller cases, but if you’ve got the room then I can certainly recommend
getting one to keep your CPU running cool even under the largest loads.
The two NF-P14 fans do an excellent job of keeping things cool while
staying virtually silent while doing it.
The NH-C14 is a versatile cooler in that it can be configured to the
user’s needs, be it for more room for large style ram or for more cooling
performance while running two fans.
I’ve been a fan of Notcua for a long time, in fact four computers in my
home have Noctua coolers on them and I personally recommend them anytime
someone asks what CPU cooler to buy.
DragonSteelMods gives the Noctua
NH-C14 CPU Cooler a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
+Excellent performance
+Fairly easy installation
+Very well made and designed
+Aesthetically pleasing
+Lightweight for its size
+Virtually silent
+Can lower fan speeds easily
Cons:
-Might be considered expensive
-Rather large in size
-Installation can be tricky
-Might not fit with large style ram depending on system configuration
review# 701
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.