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Noctua NH-U9DX i4
Noctua offers its dual 92mm-fan, single-tower cooler in a variety of model numbers, including the desktop NH-U9B with universal mounting kit, a dual-fan SE2 version of the U9B, the NH-U9DX i4 with Square and Narrow ILM brackets for LGA 2011 and 1356, and the NH-U9D0 A3 for AMD’s sockets G34, C32 and F. Mounting brackets are the only things that separate these three variations. The company offered us the NH-U9DX i4, but ended up sending the NH-U9B SE2 with all the brackets needed to convert it into the U9DX i4 or U9D0 A3.
Knowing that NH-U9DX i4 buyers won’t get all those other brackets, I turned the box around backwards to hide the model number and put only the parts they will receive in the photo. These include:
- Square ILM mounting bracket set that also fits standard desktop LGA 2011 and 2011-v3 boards
- longitudinal Narrow ILM bracket set
- transverse Narrow ILM bracket set
- fan splitter cable
- two resistor wires for reducing fan speed
- tube of Noctua’s NT-H1 thermal compound
- screwdriver
Photos we’ve seen have shown this version of the cooler delivered with the Square ILM brackets pre-attached, but we took the base photo before adding those, so you can see how well Noctua polishes the mating surface, and how flat it is by the minimal ripples in its reflection.
We selected the longitudinal brackets for our installation, since transverse mounting doesn’t work as well with most cases. Motherboard and case design are both factors in this decision though, and some boards even have the socket turned sideways.
Noctua admits that 32mm of DIMM clearance is the biggest limitation for the NH-U9DX i4, but that’s not much of a limit since most sever and workstation memory is standard profile. We’re likewise using standard profile desktop memory in this motherboard, and a comparison of our own DIMM height to the remaining space shows that users get 35mm of clearance.
