Noctua NH D14 Cooler review – The ‘Austrian Sandwich’

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. The Noctua NH D14 cooler4. Installation5. Testing the cooler6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

This design is not a new concept for Noctua, I have used their NH-U12P 1366SE in the past and found it delivered exceptional performance with a push pull low noise design ethic.

The heatpipe design incorporates a row of six pipes fed directly to the base cooling block in the attempt to transfer as much heat as possible upwards through the fins. These are nickel plated copper pipes running right through the moulded copper base. There is still some debate as to whether direct contact heatpipes work better with groups of enthusiast user on either side protesting their specific benefits. Me? Well I think its a close call and depends largely on the rest of the cooler design.

We can see the ‘Austrian sandwich' (as I call it) with two aluminum cooling arrays and two high quality Noctua fans beside them. In an unusual move they have decided to use two different sized fans – a 120mm NF12 as the primary and a 140mm NF P14 FLX as a secondary, between the two blocks.

Noctua use highest quality SSO bearings with a focus on noise – or should I say a lack of noise. The large sizes obviously help as they can fine tune the rotation to reach low levels however if you find the rated 18.9db too high then they also offer a pair of their ULNA cables to reduce the speeds from 1,200rpm and 1,300rpm to 900rpm.

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