Date:
Tuesday , December 08, 2009
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler / Heatsink Review

Noctua's new CPU cooler works with about any Intel or AMD processor still in use by enthusiasts, and packs a lot of cooling power into a huge package. Two fans, two columns of cooling fins, and six heatpipes are engineered to give the computer hardware aficionado more cooling at less decibels.

Introduction

By now most of you reading HardOCP know what level of performance Noctua brings to the table with its line of enthusiast CPU coolers. Its products are well made and perform at the top of the class. What some of you may not know is that Noctua is not content to sit on their laurels. It continues to develop new designs in an effort to transfer every bit of heat from your CPU to the surrounding air. Breaking away from conventional designs is never easy. Nor is it guaranteed to be a hit. It is for these reasons I give Noctua a lot of credit for designing the heatsink we have for you today; the NH-D14. It is a dual tower heat sink that is both massive in size and cooling capacity. Read on to find out just how efficient and functional this new design performs and if it deserves a spot in your rig.

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System Setup

All testing of the Noctua NH-D14 cooler will occur on our test bed consisting of the GIGABYTE X58-Extreme motherboard, six gigabytes of Corsair DDR3 RAM and paired with the Intel Core i7 920. With four cores and a total of eight threads expect to see lots of heat. The video card of choice is the NVIDIA 9500 GT thanks to its low heat output and silent fan.

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Test Methods

CPU

In keeping with the spirit of the [H] we are once again doing hardware testing of all heat sinks. This means milling a very small path into an expensive CPU to place our thermocouple. This is by far the best way to test coolers and the only way here at the [H].

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Temperatures for the CPU will continue to be measured using our Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer.

GPU

For this article the GPU will be kept at stock speed to keep any excess heat away from the CPU that could impact the results. In 2D mode the 9500 GT generates very little heat and to further isolate it from the rest of the system we will install it in the secondary PCIE slot.

Thermal Paste

Noctua's NT-H1 thermal paste was selected as the paste of choice for a few key reasons. Firstly, the thermal paste has been shown to provide excellent thermal conductivity allowing the heat sinks to better do their job. Secondly, there is no observed curing time. That is, performance does not get any better over time. Any curing time could have introduced variables into the equation causing at best dubious results and at worst unreliable ones. Lastly, because we have a special CPU on our hands it requires a compound that is more viscous so not to seep into the channel and run off.

Temperatures

Ambient temperature will be kept at 25C for the duration of the tests and measured with a MicroTemp EXP non-contact infrared thermometer and cross referenced with the Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer. Any variance greater then 0.2C will halt the testing until temperatures return within spec for fifteen minutes.

Idle

Idle temperatures will be recorded after a fifteen minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Load

Load temperatures will be recorded after a fifteen minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using Prime95 v25.3 set to blend mode. In this way we can heat up the CPU as well as the memory controller which is now integrated into the die. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Sound

Sound levels will be measured with a Reliability Direct AR824 sound meter from a distance of four feet away. With everything turned off and the room completely silent the meter registered a sound level of 38dB(A). This is a very quiet room where a simple pin drop could be heard. All sound measurements are recorded in the very late evening to further reduce any ambient noise.