Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look at the NH-D14 cont.

In most single tower coolers or even the dual tower affairs from Prolimatech, the heatpipes are clustered at each end of the fin array and rely heavily on the aluminum fins to disperse the heat. To put this another way, the heatpipes are not actively cooled by the fan per say, as even in a “diamond” pattern only the heatpipes facing the fan get hit by air. While the D14’s heatpipes will of course still rely on the fins heavily to cool them, each part of the heatpipe which resides in the fin array WILL be actively cooled by the fan’s air movement and the fins are there to help out to a lesser extent.


Continuing this trend of bucking the norm is the fact that the towers have been laid out in such a way which guarantees that the center fan will be sandwiched between them. The only other time we have seen this setup was with the Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme and Cooler Master V8, both of which were found to be lacking in cooling prowess at higher heat loads. Even the mighty Prolimatech with its dual tower scheme, is designed so its towers are on only one side of the fan.


To be honest though, the failure of past cooler which featured this “sandwich design” does not overly concern us since they forgot the main ingredient in this type of CPU cooling solution: AIR! Those coolers could only be equipped with a single fan so it wasn’t the heatsink that let us down; it was the lack of air movement that caused lacklustre performance numbers.

Meanwhile, Noctua seems to have done it right since the D14 is not only dual fan capable (and comes with two fans) but can actually mount THREE fans. We believe this push-pull (or push-pull/push-pull) setup will make the innovative design work or at least that is our theory which we will put to the test later in the testing stage.


A good or bad face can hinder the efficiency of the cooler and here is another way in which the D14 distinguishes itself from other companies past attempts. Unlike those less than optimally designed coolers, this cooler sports dual fin arrays which are not slab-sided affairs. All four sides of the D14’s fin array are a multi-faceted with a saw toothed looking design which will help decrease static pressure and make the fans’ job that much easier .


When you look closely at the sides of each of the cooling towers, a distinct U-shape slowly becomes evident. This is of course necessitated by the fan mounting scheme that Noctua employs and the fact you can mount fans on both sides of each fin array. In a nut shell a wire retention clip can run the entire length of the fin array and thus ensure that the fan does not slip off. This setup is also a carry over from previous coolers and is a simple, easy and well established way of securing fans to the fin array.

However, as we will see during the installation phase, Noctua has taken their tried and true retention method and tweaked the hell out of it. The resulting butterfly which has emerged from its chrysalis looks (on paper) to be a vastly superior setup.


As we have said in the past, you can have the best cooling fin array(s) ever invented, but if the base is lacklustre the cooler is going to be unimpressive to say the least. As expected, this is another area the D14 excels at and the base is extremely well polished much like the Zalman CNPS10X we looked at earlier.

In order to speed up heat transfer between the heatpipes and the base, Noctua has gone with an extremely thin base which is interesting considering the number of companies which are going with HDT (Heatpipe Direct Touch) bases. This is supposed to distribute heat more evenly over the heatpipes rather than certain heatpipes taking a higher thermal load as sometimes happens with HDT coolers.