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

CPU:Ryzen 9 5900X

Returned for a stronger product.

Im pretty consistently happy with Noctua coolers in general. Im not sure its worth posting a review on this because I dont really have anything to add beyond whats been said before.

As with any Noctua product, its excellent. A little lighter than my D14, and I like that you can change the orientation to assist with avoiding other components on the motherboard. The ability to mount the fan (or 2) in low profile or high clearance is nice as well. Running games, the temperature only goes around 15-20C above ambient, which is great! I just wish Noctua would go away from the bland beige colour.

First Noctua cooler and very easy to install. One recommendation would be to verify if there are any compatibility with motherboard, case and ram. During the installation in Fractal Design Torrent Nano, needed to rotate the cooler 180 degrees BUT cannot install an exhaust fan in the case due to the size of the cooler.

The tower is high enough to clear medium height RAM, but too tall to use a 25mm thick fan on top in space restricted cases. Thus the tower is not suitable for top mount fan OR use with tall RAM. Just a little taller and the fan would fit underneath, just a little shorter and the fan would fit on top. Noctua chose to build this in the middle making it of no use at all. Noctua! Pick one, high or low, and go with it. In the case of compact cases the middle ground fails for both.

Its huge and quite. Please prepare a big computer case.

Easy to install, keeps 8700k cool with little effort. Fan is pretty quiet on it. Ability to have the fan mount above, below or both is great for tall ram or smaller pc cases

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.

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.