- Review -

02.07.2017 Dragon Blogger

So as we can see, the Noctua NH-C14S does have a pretty good performance. At a room temperature of 28C, the I5 6600K reached a minimum average temperature of 30C while near 63C on load. I feel pretty relaxed when I say I’m good with those temperatures at the stock speed, but a little concerned with the overclocked temperature because my overclocked test is a bit overkill at 1.344 Vcore voltage. When it comes down to overclocked performance, we saw a good gain on the max temperature reaching 85C. Now compared to a liquid cooler, even if an AIO, but a 360mm AIO with 3x 120mm fans, the temperature seems justified considering it’s only air cooler and is only powered by 1/2 fan(s). We didn’t have an air CPU cooler to compare against the Noctua C14S, but even when compared to the 360mm AIO cooler, the comparison doesn’t seem unfair as the C14S is not lacking behind by a huge lead. As for the cooler itself, there’s not much difference between the performance of single and dual fan setup, so spending an extra $21.95 for another NF-A14 fan doesn’t seem like a good move for near 1-2 degree centigrade improvement. As for the build quality, I’m very happy with the quality of the product and the thermal and acoustic performance of the NH-C14S. The rubber padding on the fan helps out with the acoustic performance of the cooler as the fans are barely noticeable from 2-3 feets away, and in a concealed chassis, I’m sure you won’t even notice it spinning. As as far as clearance of PCIe and RAM slots are concerned, you’re good. You’ve got good enough space for the PCIe slot, but when it comes to the RAM clearance, if you have the fan installed in the middle of the cooler, the fan will make it a little difficult to install a medium-sized RAM. But if you’re using the cooler with the fan mounted on the top, then you’re good to even install RAMs with high-profile heatsinks.

"With the Noctua NH-C14S, you’re getting a C-Type CPU Cooler, which puts your fan on display in the system in a unique way, has great thermal performance, is very silent and is priced about right." (Ahmed Kazim Ahmed Kazim, Dragon Blogger)