Austrian firm Noctua has earned an impressive reputation in just a few years for its designs that offer excellent cooling-to-noise ratios. More recently, the firm translated its technical prowess into an enormous cooler that should, by way of sheer size, be able to outperform most competitors' devices. Roughly 50% bigger than the average “big air” competitor, the NH-D14’s $90 Web price is also around twice as expensive.

A great deal of installation flexibility adds some value to that high price, with support for single or dual fans and a full range of LGA 1156, LGA 1366, and LGA 775, plus AM2, AM2+, and AM3 processors. Noctua also adds two fan resistor wires for manual speed reduction.

An ultra-fine machined finish holds a thin film of thermal compound well, without being prone to the distortion that normally accompanies the polishing process. The NH-D14 appears to have the flattest mating surface of today’s competitors.

Noctua claims many innovations in fan design, but perhaps the most innovative feature of the NH-D14 is its multi-fit LGA support plate. Peeling the center portion of its rubber pad allows the plate to fit perfectly on LGA-1156 motherboards, with full mounting pressure against the motherboard’s integrated support plate relieving pressure from the circuit board.

Two curved brackets adapt LGA sockets from a four-screw to a two-screw mounting. These brackets, along with associated spacers, screws, and nuts, must be installed before the motherboard is placed inside most cases. Installing the sink inside or outside the case is as easy as unclipping the center fan to gain access to those two screws.
- Lynnfield Can Take The Heat, But Should It?
- Features Comparison
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
- Noctua NH-D14
- Scythe Mugen-2 Revision B
- Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer
- Thermalright MUX-120
- Thermaltake Frio
- Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme
- Xigmatek Thor’s Hammer
- Zalman CNPS10X Quiet
- Test Settings
- Thermal Testing Results
- Fan Speed, Noise, And Value
- Do We Have A Winner?
Hey Tom's - what temps are you getting at 3.2 GHz with the Arctic Cooling 7? Did you use arctic silver 5?
no worries there you will be fine
Thermalright sent the MUX-120.
Some companies didn't respond to the invitation. Sorry, I didn't keep a list.
I was surprised the new Thermalright Venoumous X was not included. It's an updated version of the Ultra 120 Extreme specifically designed for the new Intel Core i5/i7 cpu's.
Didn't THG mention in an older article that those extra tall heatspreaders that sort of look like a comb did not provide any additional cooling over stock heatspreaders?