Noctua NH-C14s Performance Review

Keith May
•
Feb 21, 2016 at 07:00am EST

Introduction

IMG_2781

Over the past several years we’ve seen the majority of the cooling market move away from beefy tower coolers in favor of various sized radiators in the world of Close loop Coolers.  Because of this trend so many manufacturers have abandoned even worrying with traditional air cooling, Except Noctua.  Noctua holds strong to their roots of providing larger than life air coolers with arguably some of the quietest fans available.  The NH-C14s is no exception.  This is an update to Noctua’s earlier NH-C14, but what’s so different about the ‘s’ you may ask.  The original NH-C14 carried two larger diameter fans where as the ‘s’ uses a single 140mm fan in a updraft orientation as well as being slightly offset to accommodate more PCI-e slot availability.  Even with these changes the cooler maintains its mass along with all seven heat pipes to ensure it doesn’t lose any cooling capability.

So, top flow versus traditional tower style coolers? Benefits of a top flow cooler extend beyond vertical height, as that’s the most obvious, and offer direct airflow to critical areas of a motherboard.  Traditional tower style coolers leave these areas a bit left out, and while may run cooler on the cpu core, leaving components such as DDR modules and VRMs to run a bit warmer.  The NH-C14s gives you the flexibility to mount the fan on top of the heat sink blowing down across the motherboard when the DDR modules are taller, and the ability to mount the fan as an updraft style allowing the fan to draw cool air across the DDR modules and VRMs then expel the air through the heat sink and away from the motherboard.

Before we take a look at the cooler itself and the setup that we tested it with, here is a brief look at the technical specifications of the cooler

 

This is a specification sheet for the fan that is included as well as the second fan that Noctua sent along for the review

Packaging and Fans

 

This box is in true Noctua fashion sporting the unmistakable brown and white designs.

Inside the variety of mounting solutions can be found containing;

Once that is out of the way we’re show the NH-C14s cradled nicely in a cardboard cage.

Removing the cooler we see it’s in an updraft configuration and that’s how we’ll be testing it.

Along with the NH-C14s we were sent an additional NF-A14pwm to measure the benefits of a dual fan configuration.   This 1500rpm fan matches the packaged fan perfectly so this should prove to be an interesting addition, but is it worth the cost? We’ll find out soon enough.

 

Testing Method

Our Test Bench.

Component Selection
CPU Intel Core i7-4770k *
Motherboard Asus Maximus VI Hero
Power Supply Cooler Master V1200platinum
HDD Crucial MX100 512gb
Storage Disk Seagate 4TB SSHD
Memory 16gb Corsair vengeance 1600mhz
Monitor Monoprice Crystalview 4k
Video Cards Radeon R9 Nano
Operating System Window 10 64-Bit

 

***********DISCLAIMER************

Our Intel i7 4770k that we use in our test bench HAS BEEN DELID.  Why? Good question with a good answer.  Our 4770k was plagued by being a pig, meaning it overclocks poorly and gets really, really hot.  That said with the stock TIM that plagued so many early Haswell adopters affected this chip massively, to the point that no matter what cooler was used.  So we delid it and replaced the TIM with Coollabratory Liquid Pro, now it’s up to the cooler as to how well it performs, not the TIM.

 

For all the cooler tests we used Noctua’s NH-T1 thermal paste on every cooler.  We ran the CPU at and coolers through five tests;

 

Then using ROG Realbench and took the average temperature of all four cores at their peak.

 

Results

 

Stock i7 4770k, Standard Fan Curve

*Note* 22c ambient

I7 4770k 4.2ghz (1.2v) Fans = 7v

*Note* 22c ambient

I7 4770k 4.2ghz (1.2v) Fans = 12v

*Note* 22c ambient

I7 4770k 4.4ghz (1.275v) Fans 7v

No result showing indicates system was not stable and did not pass

*Note* 22c ambient

I7 4770k 4.4ghz (1.275v) Fans 12v

No result showing indicates system was not stable and did not pass

*Note* 22c ambient

 

Sound levels.

*Note* Ambient environment registers 43.8db.

Conclusion

So how does the NH-C14s with a single tower and a single 140mm fan stack up?  Not bad at all.  Adding a second fan helped when overclocked, but also added an unbearable whine to the mix (no matter the orientation).

EDIT: After being contacted by Noctua regarding the noise from two fans we followed their suggestion  "For best performance to noise efficiency in dual fan mode, Noctua recommends to run the top fan at 1200rpm or lower (using the supplied Low-Noise Adaptor)" and are happy to report that it did indeed remove the noise that we were experiencing.

Sure, it’s smaller than the NH-D15 but it’s still no small cooler, however you shouldn’t have any issues fitting this into any modern case with room to spare.  Coming in at an MSRP of $89.99USD it’s a bit of a hard pill to swallow considering the alternatives at that price.  But it’s quietness with one fan as well as the ability to hold a mild overclock puts it at a fairly good value.  But, if you’re looking for long term cooling that lowering the overall temperature of your computer this is right up your alley and has more to offer than just cooling the cpu cores.

 

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