In Depth Look at the Noctua NH-U14S CPU Cooler

The first couple of shots we took I wanted to show the Noctua NH-U14S right out of the box. It came installed with one NH-A15 fan already and Noctua sent us another one so we could do some test with a push, pull, or push/pull configuration as you will be able to see in the picture below.

Here is a top view of the cooler installed in a Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 case on an ASRock FM2A85X Extreme4-M motherboard. The cooler fit very nicely in this mid tower. I would say that the only thing is that when installing the heat sink you cannot have fans installed so if you do not have a lot of top room in a case, which this case does not, then it may take a minute to get the clips right installing the fans to the heat sink. Overall it was very straight forward and easy to do but can be frustrating if you plan on taking them on and off as I did to run some test.

 

I wanted to show the top two photos to show that Noctua really goes the extra mile with their products. The packaging is top notch and keep everything in place so damage during shipping is minimized. Included in the packaging is everything you would need to install this cooler, so anything you need is minimized. When I installed the Noctua NH-U14S all I needed was what I used to clean off the CPU from using the stock cooler, everything else was covered down to the thermal paste. If you use Intel or an AMD motherboard you are covered for pretty much every socket. I personally was disappointed this cooler did not support my 1366 socket i7-920 but considering the age I really cannot complain but the Noctua NH-U14S does support everything from 2nd generation Intel core processors and all the way back to AM2 socket and both AMD APU sockets.