Noctua NH-U9B CPU Cooler Review

Heatsink Construction & Design

On first glance one could easily mistake the U9B for its bigger brother the NH-U12P (or maybe even a Thermalright Ultima 90, but that is stretching things a bit), and it is only upon close inspection that the only real difference between the two becomes obvious. What we are alluding to is that while the U9 really does look like a scaled down U12, when you put them next to each other the difference in size becomes very noticeable. The U12 is a rather large and tall example of the tower style genre; whereas the U9 is down right pocket-sized in comparison. To be more specific the U9 is 33mm shorter (125 mm high), 31mm narrower (95 mm wide), 1mm shallower (70mm deep) and even weighs 140grams less (460 grams without the fan) than its bigger brother. While it may not be as big as the U12, it is by no means a small cooler and fitting it inside some of the smaller Small Form Factor / HTPC cases out there may be difficult (so if you are buying it for this reason, do your homework and make sure the case can handle it).

While both the U9 and U12 coolers come with four heatpipes, the U12 has its four heatpipes positioned at about a quarter of the way in from both edges but clustered tightly together into two groups; whereas the U9's heatpipes are clustered at the edges. Neither approach is right or wrong, per say, it just would have been nice to have seen the Noctua positioned their heatpipes a bit more staggered so more air actually hits all four heatpipes, instead of clustering them close together into groups of two.


As mentioned, the Noctua NH-U9B is a fairly standard “double 4” heatpipe tower design cooler which is designed to accommodate a 92mm fan only. While some people would call the U9 an 8 heatpipe system, it is in reality only 4 large “U” shaped heatpipes that start at the top right side of the heatsink, go down and through the copper & aluminum base and then terminate at the top left side of the heatsink.


As with many similarly designed coolers, the fins are made of aluminum to help radiate heat, yet keep overall weight to a manageable level. More importantly, the layout of the fins is just like the U12: they are tightly packed together. To overcome the inherent high static pressure of this design Noctua’s engineers have taken a page from other tower heatsinks and have given the fins a textured multi-faceted “face” with an indented center. This approach has been proven to help reduce back pressure allowing the fan to keep the air moving efficiently over the fins.


Even though it may not look it, the base of the U9 is even but exhibits some of the most extensive tool marks we have seen in a while. Worse still, and just like the other Noctua CPU cooling solutions we have reviewed in the past, there were some minor tool marks that can’t easily be seen but are deep enough to be felt with your fingernail. Overall, it is certainly not the most polished base we have seen and while not the worst either, it was a little disappointing as this is a Noctua cooler and we have come to expect better than this from this high quality company. It will be interesting to see if this has a negative impact on its performance.