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

I purchased a Z370 motherboard and installed an I5 8400 CPU and intended on using the stock cooler, since the chip obviously wasnt going to be overclocked, and runs pretty cool compared to the Sandy Bridge CPU it replaced. That was last November.

Perfect fit with enough clearance to access RAM. Not much else to say as its Noctua...only 2 wishes , 1 you had an option to have black a fan over there traditional beige and 2 they gave you an extra fan clip so you could purchase another fan and run push/pull setup.

Works very well, huge fan and cooling area. I bought a second one for another build.

Every CPU cooler I have ever purchased came with a back-plate, even coolers much cheaper than this one. This expensive cooler does not! They expect you to use the old back-plate that comes with your motherboard. Thats all fine, but my previous cooler is a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO which is a great cooler, but I have my old back-plate in storage someplace and it would be a nightmare to locate. Why not just include a back-plate like everyone else? They include an Intel back-plate, but not an AMD. I had to go to the hardware store to jerry-rig it to work. Aside from that, this is a good cooler, although overpriced. The reason I wanted this cooler is so it will cool the VRMs and northbridge.

first time using an after market cooler. my i5-4670k would reach temps around 80 degrees using the stock cooler i had for about 2 years. i just recently upgraded to this cooler, my first observation was how silent it was. considering the unit is much more massive i expected at least a similar sound but its really soft with my tower right next to me. i boot up around +3 degrees from room temp and i peaked 59 degrees a couple times now with a maximum load for me, playing a modern video game with a 1080p60fps stream and a file transfer between my hard drives. looking forward to overclocking

Fit perfectly on my Asus Prime z370-a mobo for an Intel i7-8700k cpu, inside a Corsair Spec-Alpha case. Super quiet. I added a second fan to it and I can still use all of the memory slots.

Fitted well in the cooler master NR200P case, although my current setup is a 65TDP chip, the cooler keeps it below 60 degrees when fully loaded with Prime95.

Mounting issue. When I lay the case flat down horizontally like a HTPC or rack server, the performance is almost as good as my Noctua D15s. Once I shift the case into normal vertical orientation, temperatures went from 63 to 72 degree Celsius real fast (Ive remounted and tested this multiple times). Ive also tested this with the heat pipes facing in every possible direction except for top-to-bottom, as instructed by Noctua. I guess this cooler is more suited towards HTPC chassis such as Fractal Node 304, because performance takes a hit if you use it in a tower case. My theory is that either the concave base loses optimal contact with the processor when positioned in a vertical orientation, or the bent heat pipes have trouble in that configuration, which might also explains the varying results from many different professional reviews on the Internet.

Works well in a 4U case (fan under). Looks nice, does a decent job cooling, not as good as my bigger DH, but is more then adequate for cpus pushing around 115W TDP.

You cant go wrong with Noctua. I bought this when I converted my old PC into a NAS and the original water cooler was end of life after 8 years! The Noctua seems to keep the temps about the same as the water cooler did. I have a big fan controller on the front and I can see the temps all the time so I know if its getting hot, which it does not. My ambient temps are around 75 max and the CPU is always below 30C, no O/C and running freenas OS. Fan is quiet but not completely silent, gets only a little louder when the fan controller kicks it into high. Still not bad. The case fans are louder.