NH-C14S Features and Cooler Design
Features
Courtesy of Noctua
- Based on the award-winning NH-C14
- C-Type top-flow design
- Low Profile Mode
- High Clearance Mode
- Offset design for PCIe clearance
- NF-A14 140mm premium fan
- PWM support and Low-Noise Adaptor
- SecuFirm2™ mounting system
- Compatibility with past and future sockets
- NT-H1 thermal compound
- 6 years warranty
the NH-C14S is a re-factored version of the Noctua's NH-C14 cooler, built to accommodate a wider variety of board designs. The cooler features a single top or bottom-mounted 140mm fan, nickel-plated copper heat-pipes and CPU base plate, and a densely-finned aluminum radiator. Noctua designed the unit's seven integrated heat-pipes out of nickel-plated copper to optimize heat absorption from the CPU base plate and heat transfer to the aluminum radiators. The aluminum radiator was designed to facilitate optimal transfer of the heat from the heat-pipes to the air medium. The thin nickel plating covering the base plate and heat-pipes give both corrosion and scratch resistance, while maintaining optimal heat transfer between the cooler's interconnected components.
Courtesy of Noctua
The NH-C14S's single radiator was designed with a fin density of 12 fpi (fins per inch) with a thickness of almost double that of a standard fan. The radiator's thickness requires the user of a higher pressure fan to drive sufficient airflow through it for effective cooling. The construction of the individual radiator fins adds an immense amount of surface area for heat dissipation with the heat pipes soldered to each of the fins for structural integrity and optimal heat transfer to the radiator fins.
From a side view of the cooler, you can easily see the how the design works to enhance the air flow through and heat dissipation of the radiator. The integrated heat pipes are mounted through the radiator's middle and arranged in a straight line along the width of the unit for more uniform heat distribution. The heat pipes terminate in the base plate sitting directly below the radiator, giving the structure a "C" shape. Noctua strengthened the sides of the radiator with an integrated line of spacers along the center point, giving the radiator more structural integrity as well as an air guide to aid in directing the air through the radiator fins. The NH-C14S comes standard with a single 140mm fan, but supports up to a dual fan configuration. Integrated into the sides of the radiator are the standard hook configurations designed into most Noctua radiator-based coolers, used to hold the fans in place. The wire fan holds have two set of straight sections that lock into the hooked sections of the radiator to firmly secure fans to the front and/or rear sides of the radiator.
Integrated into the cooler's base is its top mounted hold down plate with two spring-loaded screw-in nuts, giving the unit more than enough force for a solid CPU surface mount. The heat pipes go through the base plate with six of them almost flush with the CPU surface and the seventh pipe bisecting the upper section of the block assembly. The additional material in the block gives it enhanced heat capture capabilities with the upper heat pipe useful in redirecting the excess captured heat to the radiator. Additionally, the position of the block directly under the radiator allows for direct cooling of the block via the radiator's fan.
The unit's base plate is a seamless copper plate with nickel-plating to prevent corrosion and surface scratches. The base plate is fixed to an upper plate to which the hold down assembly is fixed, sandwiching the copper heat pipes. The heat pipes run through the lower portion of the base plate, in close proximity to the CPU surface, to ensure optimal heat transfer. The base plate is machined flat and polished to a mirror-like sheen, ensuring a near perfect mating surface with the CPU.
The cooler fits to the Z87 test board well in its default orientation with the heat pipes facing the PCIe slots. The fit is tight with the fan mounted below the radiator, but does manage to clear the motherboard's integrated VRM heat sinks. When used with a board with larger heat sinks or with memory modules in closer proximity to the CPU socket, the unit's fan would need to be shifted to a top mounted configuration. In testing, we found their to be no difference in cooling performance using either fan mounting configuration.
As shown, the cooler can be mounted with the heat pipes facing either PCIe slots or the right edge of the motherboard. You would likely run into spacing issues between the primary system video card and the cooler when mounted with the heat pipes oriented to the right side of the board. For the closeup picture of the block, you can see that the heat pipes fit tightly in the socket, but do manage to clear the board's VRM sinks.
Morry,
As this article
Morry,
As this article appears on the Front Page, the “read more” link at the bottom of the snippet isn’t a link to this article, it’s a link to the Front Page. (On this page, the full article, the link is correct.)
Just tryin to be helpful. 🙂
Thanks for catching that,
Thanks for catching that, fixed up now.
Simply a message to
Simply a message to congratulate your effort, intriguing details in this posting..:)
My website … upgrade games
It’s unfortunately that I
It’s unfortunately that I didn’t known about this cooler a few weeks ago. Apparently some AM3+ boards only allow the CPU cooler to mounted in one direction. The CoolerMaster T4 overhangs the RAM slots making it impossible to remove the memory without removing the cooler.
Why didn’t you test the
Why didn’t you test the DH-15S with an additional fan? I have the DH-15 which has two fans and it blows the newer version out of the water other than at idle. It seems moronic for Noctua to design such a massive cooler for a single fan.
Single fan helps with
Single fan helps with compatibility and noise (just look at the noise charts in this review: the D15S and C14S are in a league of their own), but it still doesn’t make sense for it to cost so much; you may as well get the regular D15 and remove one of the fans. At $70, the single fan coolers would be a good option.
Sorry I cannot hear my twin
Sorry I cannot hear my twin fan DH-15 at all, so who cares if the DH-15s is less noisy if it doesn’t cool and it’s clearly an inferior product as tested. Have you asked yourself that the reason it’s so quiet is the reason it sucks as a cooler. No free lunch.
The D15 may be quiet, but it
The D15 may be quiet, but it is not silent. Maybe you can’t hear it because your PC (or room) has other, louder components, but for people who aim for exceptionally quiet PCs, that difference does matter. And saying that the cooling performance “sucks” is a bit of a stretch – this review tested it against a flagship AIO and custom watercooling, both of which used loud, high speed fans. Any single fan air cooler will lose against those unless it uses a 8000rpm Delta fan. It should have been compared to other quiet air coolers, not only to coolers intended for the last word in overclocking.
Still, I agree that as it is, these are not good coolers. Just too expensive, but with a solid price drop, they could be reasonable.
I wonder how the single fan D15 compares to dual fan with LNA. You might be able to get a better temp:noise balance with two slower fans.
I’d like to see it tested
I’d like to see it tested with an extra fan too. This seemed like it would be the perfect air cooler being an offset NH-D15 for PCIe slot compatibility but those Haswell-E numbers are ugly.
I’m sorry, but these tests
I’m sorry, but these tests doens’t make any sense to me. According to other reviewers the D15S beats the C14S with quite a margin.
Since noise and size is more
Since noise and size is more important to me than getting that last couple hundred MHz, the C14S will be on the shortlist for my next build. Thanks for the review!
Wish I knew about this
Wish I knew about this Heatskin before purchasing the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. Having the same Corsair Vengeance Pro Memory with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO makes the first DIMM 1 Slot unusable and even more with Corsair’s Memory Cooler.
PhoneyVirus
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Check out the CRYORIG H7. It
Check out the CRYORIG H7. It cools better and is quieter than the 212 EVO while also having full RAM clearance for the same price.
I just bought a D15 and I
I just bought a D15 and I have to admit whilst its thermal performance and acoustic performance under load is admirable (PWN/Silent Mode — the deep tonality helps), the fact that its idle/low-power noise is audible in any capacity is somewhat disappointing (and something I’m hoping to address in software).
Keep in mind a low power state is the one I do most of my work in (Word, Spreadsheets, emails) and where I appreciate absolute silence.
No doubt it will be quiet enough for most, but if you are the kind of person paying the premium price for these kinds of coolers then you are also, in all liklihood, a complete silence freak, right down the last decibel.
My machine is pretty much made from every conceiveble angle with silence in mind, so it’s safe for say the D15 is actually the loudest component in the machine in the lower power scenario.
In the high power scenario the graphics card kicks in somewhat but to be honest if I’m in that power state it means I’m playing a game. And if I’m playing a game the audio from the speakers handily drowns out the sound of the machine.
From my perspective, idle acoustic performance is actually more important than acoustic performance under load.
I’m also not shouting in
I’m also not shouting in silence but do want silence when I’m quiet. Nice perspective, like it. 😀
Anyhow, looks like NH-D15S failed on X99 Broadwell-E. Good to know, guessing I’ll go with Corsair H100i GTX when 6900k comes out.
We received new samples to
We received new samples to test with from Noctua on the Hawell-E system and the performance was improves dramatically over the orginal review samples. You may want to give the Haswell-E performance numbers another look…
So what went wrong if both
So what went wrong if both units were faulty should owners of the coolers be looking for something.
Or were they not installed properly or something went wrong in the testing of them.
Cheers
Not sure what the issue with
Not sure what the issue with the units. The old and new units were tested in the same method each time. Could have been something with the shipping of the units.
However, if you do run into similar issues, contact Noctua and they should replace them for you without issue.
(NH-C14S – Single Fan) My
(NH-C14S – Single Fan) My 4790k @ 1.25 volts, 4.6ghz on all cores (override mode for testing) OCCT peaks around 80 C, I mean its not amazing but it works and is pretty quiet. I considered an NHD15 but its massive. Hit 85C @ 4.7ghz @ 1.275 volts. Basically what I am saying is this cooler seems good for around 1.25 volts for nice temps during normal use.