Noctua NH-D14 Heatsink Review

The Noctua NH-D14 is designed for Intel Socket LGA1366 / 1156 / 775 and Athlon 64 processors. Here is an overview of the system and testing methodology.

EVGA X58 LE Intel X58 Chipset
Core i7 920 (2.66Ghz) 4 x 256KB L2, 8MB L3 Cache 4.8GT/s QPI
Noctua NH-D14
OEM Heatsink

The E-LEET tuning utility was used to obtain and record system temperature data and being that this is a quad core processor we need something that will work across all of the cores at once.  For this task we're using a new version of Prime95 (p95v255a) that will allow you to spawn (n) instances to test with.

Editors note: Even though the Windows 7 task manager reported 100% processor usage we could never attain a 100% of the rated heat output as documented by Intel (see below) when using Prime95 as a basis for that heat production. Knowing this we ran the stress test until the maximum temperature was attainted and stabilized.

Other things to consider when judging software induced heat output.
a) Clock throttling by the processor at high temperatures.
b) Normal software isn't designed to produce maximum heat output.
c) Variances of cooling temperature.
d) Variances in CPU load.
e) Inaccuracies in thermal diode readouts.
Of course the list goes on..

Our testing methodology is aimed to provide a real world look into this heatsink given the test system provided.

A C/W rating can quickly be calculated using this formula.

C/W = (CPU temp - Ambient temp)/(Variance(%) * CPU Watts)
Allowed variance for this test = 85%
CPU Watts = 130W

0.16 C/W = (39C - 21C)/(.85(130W))

For this next test the FSB was cranked up to 160Mhz and the test was re-run.

To calculate a new C/W rating for this test we will need to factor in the increased processor wattage. The formula and constants for this are listed below.

ocC/W = dCPU Watts * (ocMhz / dMhz) * (ocVcore / dVcore)2
ocMhz = 3400
dMhz = 2660
ocVcore = 1.30
dVcore = 1.20
The variance still applies for our C/W calculation
Allowed variance for this test = 85%
CPU Watts = 229W

0.15 C/W = (50C - 21C)/(.85(229W))

In our heatsink and waterblock tests we don't really focus on overall load temperatures but rather how well the product can remove heat given a specified heat load. Since this is a real world testing method we need to take into consideration real world variables and estimate tolerances. This is why we normally only apply 85% of the total wattage output to our heat calculations.

The resulting C/W number is used to rate how efficient a heatsink or waterblock is based on the given heat load. These numbers can be used to determine heat capacity, the larger the difference the less efficient the heatsink is. (aka not good for overclocking)

Here we have a heatsink that can clearly handle more than our system can dish out.  All too often we find a rather pronounced variance between the default and overclocked speeds which is sometimes good and sometimes bad.  For these tests you'll see that the resulting C/W numbers are almost identical meaning that we have not even gotten close to the thermal limit of this cooler.

It should also be noted that we did test this heatsink using only the center 140mm fan and in both instances we saw only a 2c increase in processor temperature under full load with the fan only spinning at 1142rpm!

Keep in mind these calculations are provided for demonstration purposes only and may not reflect the actual lab tested C/W rating, but we're pretty close.