Noctua NH-C14S, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A14 PWM 140mm Fan (Brown)

Product Information

The added bonus is that, with the fan on top config, air blows down on your motherboard, keeping other components cooler (in addition to the CPU).

The NH-C14S has a single 140 mm NF-A14 PWM fan installed. The major twist with the design of the NH-C14S is the position of the fan, which is underneath the fin array and is pushing the air upwards through it. Still, standard RAM modules will fit underneath the NH-C14S. The user has the option to place the fan (or another fan) at the top of the fin array, increasing the clearance of the RAM modules by 25 mm but adding the same height to the overall height of the cooler. With the fan at the top of the array, RAM modules up to 70 mm tall can fit, allowing greater hardware compatibility if the case can support a cooler that is 142 mm tall. I recently built a i5-13600KF system going into the exact same type of case and was alarmed at how hot the CPU was getting. Even with the cover off the case for testing, the physical cores were peaking out at 100C under not a very heavy load (see image). I didn't even stress test the chips because I knew it would be too much for the cooler, the attached screenshot is just after running MSFS2020 on medium settings for an hour. Yes I used adequate but not excessive paste and confirmed it had spread properly. I've been building systems since the 90s, work in IT professionally, and know what I'm doing. Hold onto your receipts. From my own interactions with customer support and the interactions of others, I can tell you that Noctua provides world class support to their customers. Noctua ships the NH-C14S with SecuFirm 2 mounting kit that makes the installation process a breeze.The original NH-C14 had a steel support column in the center that was used to help protect the heatpipes from bending but the NH-C14S has replaced that with one 6mm heatpipe. Ambient room temp is 22C, and at idle the CPU is 34C (With the dust filter still installed). This is a very reasonable temp for such a compact cooler, in a compact case, and honestly, a 5950X is not the ideal choice for such a compact build.

You don’t have to buy an additional fan to get the most out of the NH-C14S. However, buying a second NF-A14 PWM and running them both with Low Noise Adapters can reduce the noise they make to almost nothing while keeping up the cooling. NH-C14S Pros RealTemp will be used to monitor the temperature of the CPU and Prime95 (Large FFTs) will be used to deliver the full load to the CPU for 20 minutes. Noctua has an outstanding customer service so if the fan ever stops working, they will send you a new one for free.

Thermal & Noise Level Results

Intel LGA1700, LGA1200, LGA1150, LGA1151, LGA1155, LGA1156, LGA2011, LGA2066 and AMD AM5, AM4, AM3, AM2, FM1, FM2 * Each test run was 60 minutes in duration. The last 50 minutes of each run was measured, and the temperature logs were analyzed in Open Office spreadsheets. An Intel chip reports its temps in one degree increments, so for best accuracy these reports should be averaged in aggregate. Here the core temps were measured once a second, resulting in 3000-line spreadsheets. The digital thermometer measuring air temp reported its measurements in increments of 0.1 °C. The ambient temperature was measured every five seconds, resulting in 600-line spreadsheets. The mean ambient temp was subtracted from the mean core temps, resulting in a net temp for each run. The net temps were then averaged. One item I did not cover in this review is the orientation of the installed heatsink. As I discussed in a review on the NH-L12, whether you orient the heatpipes horizontally or vertically makes a difference. So, it would behoove you to test the cooling power of your heatsink mounted with the heatpipes horizontally or mounted with the heatpipes vertically to see which is better. The Airflow of the fan is measured in CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute) and the higher the CFM value, the more air the fan is moving but also the higher the dB.