★★★★★Excellent Noctua NH-U14S: Quiet, Cool Performance on i5-13600K with Fan Upgrade
The Noctua NH-U14S is a premium CPU cooler. Upgraded fans to Noctua NF-A14x25r G2 PWM Sx2-PP. Used on Intel i5-13600K CPU and Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX WiFi 7 motherboard with Thermalright CPU Contact Frame—no compatibility issues. Keeps temps low, under 50°C while gaming. Looks awesome if you like the color scheme (which I do). Lots of airflow even at low speeds and very quiet with the older fans (though I’ve upgraded to the Noctua NF-A14x25r G2 PWM Sx2-PP). Easy installation.
Nick · 2026-02-06 · via amazon
★★★★★Great results, quiet, and quality product
My home server is running an Intel Core i7 5820x (passed down from my wife's previous media-creation rig) on an old Lepa liquid cooler. Sadly, the pump on that cooler finally died. I only knew this because the server would lock up and turn-off ungracefully after being on for ~20 minutes. After a couple iterations of this, I checked the HW temps after the next boot up and watched the CPU temps slowly climb to 105C before the computer died again. A smarter man would have shut the server off before it got that hot, but fortunately the CPU still seems ok.
I didn't want spend a small fortune on another liquid cooling solution now knowing that a water pump can fail and you won't know it until it's too late. There's no easy way of diagnosing a failed water pump; at least with an air-cooling-only solution, the only moving part is the fan and it's easy to see if it's still spinning or not. So I grabbed the first air-cooler I could get next-day that looked reliable after a few minutes of research and this is what I bought.
It arrived the next afternoon as promised and I was immediately impressed with the packaging, build, included brackets for socket compatibility, and that a tube of thermal grease was included (vs re-applied, lower-quality paste). I don't build PCs regularly, but one or two a year - enough to see the progression of CPU sockets over the years and was glad this didn't require a backing plate. Though that seems to be a feature of LGA 2011 moreso than the cooler, but still nice to know for builders that you don't have the potential struggles with gaining access to both sides of the mobo. Anyway, the instructions were well-written and clear and I was able to get the new cooler installed in a few minutes.
Most impressively, the results were clear. Now, take this with a grain of salt because dust hasn't settled in yet and the CPU hasn't been pushed yet, but at idle, it is running at 20C/70F with this cooler and I can't hear the fan - at least not over the case fans. If I hadn't watched the temps creep up over boiling the previous day, I would have doubted these numbers. I honestly didn't expect ambient-air temps were possible on a CPU on an air cooling solution. I am looking at a Ryzen 7 5800X to upgrade my gaming rig and now I'm seriously considering this as the cooler for that too.
The only downside is that because of the size, the air-duct that came with my PC's case - mounted to the side fan - had to come off, so this CPU cooler probably won't fit in smaller (thinner) PC cases.
Tim · 2021-06-22 · via amazon
★★★★★Massive beast
UPDATE: I replaced my psu because the fan was stuck in the "100%" position (thanks EVGA) and the new PSU is fanless (Seasonic TX-700) and my PC is completely silent 99% of the time. Idle temps are down to 32 degrees (with 23 ambient) and I cannot hear it even with my ear pressed against the side case window. It is literally silent with the exception of when it spins up for just a moment or two to bring temps back down below 50. Average gaming temps are in the low to mid 40's, I could not have asked for a better cooler. I am a Noctua fan for life!
Looking at this thing inside the case, it's hard to believe this was the smaller version of Noctua's air coolers that feature a 140mm fan. I initially thought I had plenty of room for the D15 but I only have a few mm to spare with this one installed, so huge relief that I opted for the U-14s instead. You do give up a few degrees of performance to the D15, but it's quite a bit less expensive, and it's less weight hanging off the side of the board. It outperforms the new U-12a in both thermal and accoustic performance, so if you can fit this in your case, save the $35 and go with one of these. I would have bought the chromax version since they don't have a sterrox 140mm yet, but they don't exist as of the time of this writing. As for the user experience, it was simple to install once you figure out what's going on, and the performance is as good as I had hoped for. At max rpm it's still quiet, and you'd never hear it if you wore headphones. Compared to every other cooler I've worked with, this was the easiest to install, and is the most performant for the size (6 heatpipes, single tower). I read every review I could find and spent weeks deciding between the different Noctua coolers or even a CLC, but realistically that's overkill. With a 95w cpu, this cooler has absolutely no trouble keeping things in check. When gaming, my cpu was pegged at 4.2ghz for all 6 cores, the fan spinning at 470 rpm kept things at 50c tops. Yes you can do better with a 280mm or 360mm clc, but it will cost double to triple, or it won't be anywhere near as quiet. You cannot get a better cpu cooler for the money, period.
