Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 Quiet CPU Cooler for Intel LGA 2011 Socket with 6 Heatpipes, 140/120mm SSO Bearing PWM Fans NH-D14 SE2011

This heat disbursement system is incredible. I don't have any desire to deal with water cooling and the risks and maintenance therein so when I built my latest i7 computer, I decided to try and find the best cooling system I could find that is not water based. Based on reviews here, I bought this heat sink. When it came, I thought they had to be joking.The box it comes in is about 2 feet square. This cooler takes up 80% of it. I opened the box and seeing that it is two full size fans sandwiched between two heat sinks of the same size, I could not fathom how I was going to get it seated on the chip. But, it goes right on and you can even still close your case...The unit is so large, that if I ever want to change my memory, I will have to remove the cooler to do so. It easily covers all 8 of my memory slots. I put 32 GB of RAM in this computer so I don't expect to be messing with memory any time soon but still, it's that big. The window of the panel opposing my board in my NZT 410 case is almost completely taken up with the top of this cooler. There is maybe a quarter inch of space between that panel and the cooler.As to the performance of this unit, it seems incredible. It's super quiet and yet moves serious air. My chip never seems to breach 118 ferinheight. In my experience, that's pretty cool for a microprocessor doing any sort of non-trivial work.

It cools better than a lot of the liquid coolers on the market today and without the worry about a coolant leak. On the okay side are the following things. 1) if you move your PC you must first uninstall the CPU cooler as the warning label says Noctua cannot be held responsible should damage occur to your CPU socket from leaving the CPU cooler installed while moving your PC around. 2) the fan clips extend beyond the advertised dimensions of the cooler and so careful measurements you might have made before hand become useless. The fan clips will come into contact with the back side of any video card installed in PCIe slot 1, which is where all video cards must be installed. In order to not have the metal fan clips short out components on your video card you must install electrical tape on the fan clip and on the back side of the video card. 3) Some DRAM will not fit under the CPU cooler or you may need to modify the heat sinks on the DRAM to make the installation work. Monitoring DRAM temperature after the heat sink modifications I noted the temp of the DRAM was about the same as the temp of the CPU with the CPU cooler installed. So I do not anticipate the heat sink mods I made on the DRAM to be a problem down the road. 4) Noctua expects the case fan behind the cooler to pick up the air flow and continue it through and out of the PC casing. For proper air flow you need to plug that case fan into the CPU optional PWM header. This way the fan speeds will all match up and air flow will be proper. This may cause you to replace the rear case fan with a Noctua PWM fan. With all of these things in place it works great. Just be aware, pay attention to all the details and make special modifications as needed and its an okay product, out performing most liquid coolers.

This cooling system is probably the very best air cooled solution available. I am running this on an Intel 2600k Over clocked to 4.5ghz in an obsidian 650d.I had to purchase the adapter so it would work on an lga 1155 socket. It comes only with the mounting solution for SE2011 sockets. But for the cost of the adapter its worth it for PWM fans. Im using the sabertooth p67 and letting BIOS and AI suite II control the fans. I set it so below 30c it idles at 20% which is about 250 RPM which is plenty to keep an idle CPU cool (heck it would probably work just fine passive at idle loads)The fans are not silent at full power but they dont make an annoying hum or wine its a nice smooth sound. At idle 250 RPM they are silent at a distance greater than 6 inches with the side cover off I can not them and that's after shutting down all the fans except the PSU fan (corsair 750 HX)Using real temp idle temps are 34c and max temps get about 55 to 60c with ambient temps of 75 deg FAs for looks I think its pretty sweet looking it has nice aluminum fins that look mean and are well constructed. I never really had a problem with the fan color until I noticed they are the same color as the female model on the Noctua web page... humm now for some reason its slightly creepy.These fans are large but the mounting solution is well designed and very ridged. I had 0 issue installing it in my corsair 650d with sabertooth p67 and Gskill sniper series ram.If you are looking to build a powerful PC that idles silently like I did then the Noctua NH-D14 se2011 is a must. I run the fans off a single 4 pin CPU fan header on the mobo the necessary Y cable is included.

I am using this with a Xeon E5-2650 in an  Intel Extreme Series Desktop Motherboard BOXDX79TO  mounted in an  Antec Sonata Series SOLO II Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case  with a  Seasonic SS-1050XM ATX 1050 Power Supply . It is quite big but it fits in the Antec case with a 3/4" gap between it and the side panel. Because of the layout of the memory slots on the motherboard and the size of the cooler, it is a bit tricky to install memory but it is possible to do it without removing the cooler or motherboard from the case. The gap between the bottom of the cooler and the MB is not very big so you have to use low profile memory. I am using the  Corsair Vengeance LP Blue 32 GB (4x8 GB) DDR3 1600MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory CML32GX3M4A1600C10B  kit.At idle, I am getting about 42C and at full load it goes up to about 53C with room ambient temp of about 25C. I am not using the low noise adapters. I also have two additional case fans on the front of the Antec case. Also I have the Fan Speed duty cycle setting for the CPU and case fans in the BIOS manually set to 100%. Despite this I am quite pleased at how quiet the fans are. It is not silent but I have no issues with the noise which is the main reason I bought this cooler as I dont like loud annoying systems!