Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler Review

Intel System Installation

All in all, the Intel installation is quite simple and straightforward but you have to remember that the D14 is a massive cooler which will necessitate some elbow room to get installed. As such, we highly recommend you take your motherboard out of the case, no matter what kind of fancy methods its creators envisioned for heatsink mounting.

Basically, with the motherboard inverted you then simply grab the 3 in 1 Intel backplate and roughly align it with the four mounting holes in the motherboard. Remember, since we have a 1366 system we did not have to worry about aligning notches like a 1156 system, nor worrying about installing the 775 rubber inlay.

With the Noctua Intel based backplate in position you then simply thread the four long retaining bolts through those holes in the motherboard. The heads of these bolts are octagonal shaped and fit snugly between the raised edges of the backplate which has been designed specifically to hold them in place. With all four bolts secured in place you then gently raise the motherboard up so it is on one side.


The next thing you have to do is thread a plastic spacer over the bolts (on the top side of the motherboard). This step is essential as it ensures proper mounting pressure can be applied, yet limits over tightening which can damage the CPU or motherboard. With these plastic tube like spacers in place you then gently lay the two mounting bars over the bolts, ensuring that the curve or arch of the bars is pointing out and away from the CPU. Like the backplate these bars are a 3 in 1 design, allowing for mounting on Intel 775, 1156 and 1366 socket types. Unlike most coolers which use similar setups, you need to mount these two bars in the same orientation as the cooler is going to sit. What we mean is that if you want the D14 to be mounted in a East / West orientation, these bars need to run from the back of the motherboard to the front (i.e. E/W or “ram to back IO ports).

With these bars installed you then simply thread the supplied thumb screws onto each of the bolts. When they are hand tight, you then get out the included screwdriver and tighten them down. When they are as tight as you can get them the entire top and bottom assembly is then secured to the motherboard.


The next step is to actually install the cooler itself. All you have to do is remove the centrally located NF-P14 fan from the cooler (as it comes pre-installed) and then gently lower the NH-D14 cooler into place. Those two mounting arms have threaded holes in the center which when aligned with the spring loaded bolts (located on the two tabs of the base of the cooler) allow for proper positioning of the D14. With the D14 in place all that is left is to screw down those spring loaded bolts and you’re pretty much done other than having to reinstall the fans.

To be totally honest this cooler may be designed with the capability to mount three fans, but a lot of the smaller things have been set up with only two fans in mind. Namely the lack of included vibration dampening material for a third fan, or even wire brackets to mount a third fan.


When it comes to clearance issues, there is no getting around the fact that this is a huge cooler. However, fan selection does play a surprisingly large role in the amount of issues you are going to run into. While this unit does come with two large cooling towers, both start up extremely high giving ample clearance to all but the most extreme motherboard chipset cooling towers. Since the towers start up high do the fans. To be blunt, you should not run into any issues as long as you use 120mm fans on the either end and it is only when you mount 140mm ones that things begin to get dicey.


Since we wanted to show you the worst possible situation, we are going to show you how bad it can get with THREE 140mm fans attached. As you can see in the above photo, not only is the height of your ram going to be an issue (anything above standard height is going to be a non starter) the height of your motherboard heatsinks is also going to be play a huge roll. Our Gigabyte motherboard does not have overly large heatsinks yet even with these, the bottom of the P14-FLX fan is brushing up against things it shouldn’t be.

To be totally honest we are actually impressed with how few issues you are going to run into when running three fans. Noctua clearly took the time to address any potential concerns and properly design this cooler to minimize as many as possible;.


With that being said we would strongly recommend you run (at most) dual 120mm fans on the outside of the D14 and a single P14 in the center….assuming the performance section backs this up. Even if triple 140mm fans bear better results, we truly think that the added hassle is not worth it.