The Noctua packaging was very glossy and high quality. They focus on the low profile nature of the cooler stating it can be reduced to just 66mm high by removing the top fan. You can also clearly see the focus on HTPCs and Small Form Factor systems.
The key features are listed below. Many are trademark features of all Noctua CPU coolers like the Noctua SecFirm2 mounting system, low noise adaptors and NT-H1 thermal paste.
Noctua are a premier brand hence the premium price but I feel it’s still too harsh on the back pocket for what you’re getting. Also you can only take this heat pipe technology so far before there’s nowhere else to go & it looks like they’re there already. If only Noctua would also do something about their god awful colour scheme…
Well if you consider its about 50mm smaller than the Shadow Rock TopFlow and is only 1 degree worse on an overclocked CPU I think that’s impressive indeed. The colour scheme is one of those age old debates, You either love it or hate it I guess. You’re right it is expensive, but lets face it, it really is a niche market and its a niche market product done very well.
are all the comparison heatsinks non-pwm? how is it that they’re oc fan noise is pretty much unchanged from stock fan noise?
“Fans are always left to operate at PWM speeds, if this is not supported then 100% fan speed is used” To my knowledge every heatsink on the graphs uses PWM. So all these comparisons are PWM. If it was non-PWM the stock/load acoustics would be identical.
it would’ve been nice to throw in some top performers like the silver arrow extreme or nh d14 just to see where this cooler stands. i’m looking for a cooler for the asrock z77e itx, but most of them do not fit because the pci-e slot sits right up against the cpu block. asymmetrical ones like the l12 seem to give some hope.
Unfortunately the NH-D14 is too old to sample. The other one is a possibility I will look into it.