Closer Look / Product Photos
It’s not a surprise that also the NH-U14S TR4-SP3 cooler from Noctua shares the same box design as other products. All parts of the set are well protected and well described. It’s hard to make anything wrong and we can just feel the high quality of the product.
Inside the package we will find everything required for installation so we don’t have to worry about any tools, TIM or mounting elements.
The NH-U14S is uses 140mm fan and the total height of the cooler is 165mm. This can cause issues with some new PC cases as many of them support up to 160mm coolers. Even though enthusiasts who decide on the X399 motherboards usually also buy large cases to install all other components, then it’s still good to remember how big cooler can be installed inside. If we have problems with cooler’s height, then Noctua has smaller options in its offer.
Noctua NH-U14S is specified to support above 180W TDP processors as the only one from the available coolers. It’s a lot but at the same time about maximum we can count on using air cooling. TDP means thermal limits but wattage of the processor can be higher. In our case, used Threadripper 1920X after overclocking was passing 300W under full load but I will tell you some more about it a bit later.
Noctua coolers look amazing. Just take a look at the base with six large heatpipes. All is perfect and designed to provide maximum performance.
The base is made of nickel plated copper so also the same as in other Noctua TR4 coolers. The base is also flat and has nearly mirror finish. It helps to spread thermal grease on this huge surface.
On the photos below you can see installed Ballistix Elite memory modules. They’re pretty tall but there are no issues with fan or anything else. There is also some space for airflow.
Noctua NH-U14S is really quiet. To hear it in a closed case is required to set manual mode and higher than automatic fan speed. Our ASRock motherboard is not forcing it to spin at maximum speed and keeps it in silent mode even under higher load. There are of course multiple fan speed modes but it’s worth to mention that this cooler handles 180W TDP processors and still keeps you PC quiet.
The NH-U14S TR4-SP3 looks great but the most important is the performance which we will show you on the next page of this review.
