*DESCRIPTION:* Its been a while since our last review of a Noctua heatsink. Part of that has to do with their patients and dedication to make their products perfect before introducing anything. The other reason its been so long is just plain delay on our part. We have actually had one of their heatsinks here in the office for quite a while. In fact, some of our more dedicated readers may recognize this one from our test rig. Noctuas NH-C14 is a top flow cooler design that both helps cool your ram and motherboard while also being shorter than most high end traditional tower designs. How does that effect cooling? Lets jump in and take a look.

Quote: The Noctua NH-C14 is a C shaped cooling solution that uses a total of six heat pipes to transfer the the thermal load from the nickel plated copper base plate up to the large aluminum fin array. In a direct comparison to the NH-C12P SE14, the NH-C14 is taller by 16mm at 130mm, wider without the NF-P14 fan by a total of 14mm and deeper by again 14mm without the fan. This added size increases the cooling capacity of the NH-C14 and also the weight by a total of 150g driving the weight of the cooler to 700g without the fans attached. Weight creeps up to 1000g with both fans installed. Part of this added weight comes in the form of a brace used to help support the aluminum fin array. The NH-C14 has several modes it can be used in to fit a variety of installation scenarios. Both fans can be used for the best cooling while the bottom fan can be removed to address clearance issues while the top fan can be removed to fit the cooler into a tight chassis.

*Today we have a cooler from the award winning Noctua. The NH-C14 is a C-Type cooler meaning it takes up a lot less space above the CPU than the usual tower type coolers while also providing airflow over nearby motherboard components and RAM modules. Included are two of Noctuas NF-P14 FLX fans. Its an impressive package but can it live up to expectations? Well soon find out.