- Review -

05.04.2011 OverclockersClub.com

The Noctua NH-C14 is an improvement over the NH-C12 in both size and cooling capability. With this cooler you have the tried and true C style design from Noctua with an added twist. The addition of a second NF-P14 fan to assist the top mounted fan in moving airflow through the heat sink. When tested against the NH-C12P SE14 in the stock testing, it delivered slightly better cooling numbers in both the idle and load tests. Where the NH-C14 excels against it predecessor is when the thermal load increases. In the overclocked testing, the NH-C14 bested the NH-C12P SE14 by three degrees Celsius in the load testing. This result puts the NH-C14's cooling capabilities ahead of some of the all-in-one liquid and tower solutions in the comparison field. [...] Noise is just about always the enemy of a good air cooled heat sink. As proven in the past, this does not have to be so. Noctua engineers their cooling solution to be effective with their own low noise, high performance fans. This means that when the NF-P14 FLX fans are spinning at 1200+/- rpm they are pushing over 65CFM at 19.6 dBA. By using the "Low Noise" and "Ultra Low Noise" adapters, the fan speed as well as noise signature drops to an almost inaudible 13.2 and 10.1 dBA respectively. Couple the low noise generated by the fans and the rubber isolation mounts for both fans attached to the fin array and you have a very low noise solution with no vibration noise that can cause an irritation to the senses.

"I did not think that a C style heat sink could stand up any better to the tower heat sinks or all-in-one liquid solutions on the market but Noctua again delivers a product that does the job of removing the thermal load while looking good and remaining dead silent." (Frank Dimmick, OverclockersClub.com)