While we are a community formed around the idea of small, space-efficient designs, once again, a bigger cooler may be the best option for your build, be it for performance or to ensure low noise levels. While the NH-U14S is smaller than the recently reviewed NH-D15S, it should still offer great performance, enabling satisfaction of the above requirements.
The Noctua NH-U14S can be used in single fan and, with the addition of a separately purchased NF-A15 fan, dual fan modes. To see how the cooler performs, continue reading.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
The Noctua NH-U14S
| HEATSINK SPECIFICATION | |
|---|---|
| Dimension (with fan) | L52 mm x W150 mm x H165 mm |
| Weight (with fan) | 935 g |
| Weight (without fan) | 770 g |
| Heat pipes | Copper heat pipe (x6) |
| Fin Material | Aluminium x 51 |
| Mounting plate | Copper nickel plated |
| RAM Height Limit | 65mm |
| TDP | 220W AMD, varies with Intel. More information here. |
| Replaceable Fan | Yes |
| FAN SPECIFICATION | |
|---|---|
| Dimension | L140 mm x W150 mm x H25 mm |
| Connector | 4 Pin PWM |
| Rated Speed | 300 ~1500 RPM |
| Noise Level | 19.2 ~ 24.6 dBA |
| Max Air Flow | 68 CFM |
| Voltage | 12V |
| Power Consumption | 1.56W |
This product supports Intel LGA2011-0 & LGA2011-3 (Square ILM), LGA1150, LGA1151, LGA1155, LGA1156, and AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, FM2, FM2+ (backplate required).
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Unboxing
The usual Noctua packaging style is evident here, it’s something we’ve commented on a few times before, and it bodes well for a quality product.
Included is a full complement of SecuFirm2 mounting hardware as well as an extra pair of fan mounting clips. We’ll see more about how these come into play below.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
The NH-U14S
The NH-U14S consists of 51 aluminium fins, 6 nickel plated heatpipes in a ‘U’ configuration, and a Noctua NF-A15 fan. Build quality is excellent, and the fins are thick and sturdy – which makes for a product that will last through many builds.
Included with the mounting kit is a set of replacement vibration dampeners (and of course, a pair of wire fan clips), to be used for adding a second NF-A15 fan, like this:
It’s great to see Noctua including accessories like this, meaning that you don’t have to go out and buy extra accessory packs or hack something together to run the cooler in a higher-performance configuration.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Compatibility
With performance sometimes comes compromises, and here’s a major one. Like a few other larger coolers that we have tested prior, this cooler has one major flaw – it blocks the use of the PCIe slot on the M-ITX board. While this board does have the socket very close to the slot, this is a common layout style used by many low to high end M-ITX boards, and some M-ATX boards, where the x16 slot is at the top of the 4 available.
Interestingly, the mounting system for this cooler matches the one seen on the Noctua NH-U12S, for which I go into more detail here.
On the test board, only regular or low profile DIMMs need apply. No fancy heatspreaders here, but really, unless you are overclocking memory, who needs those? (Cue ranting from some in the community!)
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Testing
To test this cooler, we used the SmallFormFactor.net thermal test bench and methodology, as detailed here.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Results
The cooler performs better than its cousin, the NH-U12S. Out of the coolers tested on the small SFFn test bench, it performs the in the top of the field. In the noise world, the cooler was exceptionally quiet with no negative aural characteristics. In the dual fan configuration, it performs better compared to the other coolers, and making for a 0 c at idle and 3-4 c at load improvement, for no major change in noise characteristics.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Conclusion
It has come to be expected, but yet another product from Noctua offers great performance with exceptional build quality. The performance especially was exceptional. Unfortunately for us in the SFF community, this does come with caveats that for some would make this product unusable – namely the component conflicts. Using this cooler on one of quite a few M-ITX or M-ATX boards leads to the (topmost for M-ATX) expansion slot being blocked.
Pros
- Great performance
- Upgrade-ability
Cons
- Size
- Compatibility on our test system
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
This cooler is currently available for around US$70 on Amazon.com
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Thoughts? Discuss them in the forum.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Review sample provided by Noctua.
Here at SmallFormFactor.net we give manufacturers the ability to be part of the community. We offer a right to reply to hardware reviews. If a manufacturer responds, their comments will be posted here.
