Noctua NH-DH14 & Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K – in Pursuit of 5.0GHz

The Unboxing and Installation

The Noctua NH-DH14 arrives in a cardboard box packed with everything necessary to cool any modern CPU that you may buy. These coolers are “universal” – engineered to fit any modern Intel or AMD CPU’s cooling needs – overclocked or stock.

The Noctua NH-DH-14

Here is the Noctua box that advertises its features at retail.

The box also displays its features on the other side as it is sold at retail.

Here are the specifications from Noctua’s site:

The extreme quietness of the fans stand out as well as the 6-year warranty.  The specifications of Noctua’s NH-DH14 are impressive.  Let’s unbox it.

The cooler and its accessories are safely packaged within the smaller boxes inside the shipping/display box

There are common parts and also separate packages with parts included specifically for Intel and AMD CPUs.  Even the screwdriver is included.Adapters are included to make the fans even quieter.  Of course they accomplish this by slowing the fan’s rotation and thus offering more quiet but less cooling with the step down from 1300 to 900 rpm.

We had no difficulty following tthe instructions for installing the NH-DH14 CPU cooler on either an Intel or AMD CPU platform. Above is our Noctua NH-DH14 CPU cooler out of the case and ready for installation. The plastic protector needs to be removed and thermal compound added to the cooling surface.  Notice how the cooler’s hardware is ready to screw down securely to the mounting brackets with just two screws.  The Noctua coolers share the same type of mounting – here is the NH-U12P SE’s mounting bracket.

The X-shaped bracket sits on the other side of the motherboard with bolts that protrude through to the CPU side and the two mounting brackets are securely tightened down.

The entire CPU cooler is then placed so the two screws of the CPU cooler line up with bolts on the pre-prepared motherboard Noctua brackets and they are easily tightened down by simply removing the center fan.

 Thiis a very simple and straightforward installation that requires the end user to install the fans after the CPU cooling radiator is installed, and so we connect the fan leads. There is no frustration with this CPU cooler’s installation as the center fan is removed to tighten down the heatsink securely to the mounting hardware.  The outside fan is easily removed to access the system memory.

Removing the NH-DH14 cooler is just as straightforward and as easy as installation.  The clips that hold the fans to the cooler are easy to take on and off.  Remove the fan leads, pop off the clips and remove the center fan; loosen and remove the two screws that secure the cooler to its mounting base and remove it from the PC.    But is it quiet and effective?   We turn it on.  Yes.  Very quiet.

Here is the Noctua NH-DH14 in our Thermaltake tower, the Overseer RX-I on a Golden Series ECS MB.  The only issue we have is that the cooler covers up so much of a really beautiful motherboard.  As you can see, the cooler is huge and the easily removable side fan allows you to access the system memory without removing the cooler.  For its bulk, the NH-DH14 is easy to install and work around.

To cool well, there has to be a great contact surface. The Noctua NH-DH14 has a very smooth mirror-like surface. The end user should only use a dab of Noctua’s thermal compound; specifically, a drop 4-5 mm in diameter in the center of the heat sink contact plate. Applying too much compound will lower the thermal conductivity and it may adversely affect the cooling performance of your CPU cooler.

We do not recommend polishing this cooler as it already has a mirror-like surface that mates perfectly with the CPU’s surface. It looks like we may have a performance cool and quiet winner by the specifications and by the look and feel of this precision-built CPU cooler. The NH-DH14 cooler looks great. Let’s check our test bed and then see how far we can push our Core i7-3770K over its stock speed of 3.5GHz.  5.0GHz is our goal.