Noctua NH-U14S Tower Cooler Review

Published by Marc Büchel on 08.07.13
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Construction and design

Construction

If we had to define the type of cooler the NH-U14S is, then we would say it is a single tower cooler. Tower coolers come with the advantage that the air used to cool the CPU will be moved directly to a case fan, which then put the warm air outside of the case. Unfortunately there is no direct airflow towards the motherboard, which means, that the power design as well as the memory almost only receives passive cooling. The Noctua NH-U14S has been built using aluminium and copper. You can find a nickel plated copper base plate which leads the dissipation power to six - also nickel plated - heatpipes. All heatpipes have a diameter of six millimeters. Altogether there are 51 fins soldered to the heatpipes for perfect heat transfer. A closer look at the edges of the cooler reveals, that fins have been angled by 90°, which causes them to form a channel where the air has to flow through. Shifting focus from the outer edges about two centimeters towards the center, we see, that at this point the fins have a tooth shape. Thanks to this design there is going to be vortex inbetween the fins and since the fan produces the highest airflow at this location it is very effective to have such a shape at this spot.



Design

We couldn't find any manufacturing mistakes on our sample, and it seems that it has been very well made which means that manufacturing is on an excellent level. The heatpipes do have different bending radius. When looking at how they have been arrange from a birds view, we see that they for a hexagon. Two out of four heatpipes, which pass the center of the base plate, go to the outside, where there is the highest airflow and two of these heatpipes are located closer to the center of the cooler. The other two heatpipes which pass through the base plate on the outside, a located between the other four heatpipes (when looking at the cooler from a brids view).




Page 1 - Introduction Page 6 - Testsystem
Page 2 - Preview Page 7 - Results 2.66 GHz 12 volts
Page 3 - Specifications / Delivery Page 8 - Results 2.66 GHz 7 Volts
Page 4 - Construction and Design Page 9 - Conclusion
Page 5 - Mounting  



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Noctua NH-U14S Tower Cooler Review - Cooling > Aircooling - Reviews - ocaholic