Performance

Room temperature is maintained at 20°C (68°F). Since you need EIST enabled to make use of the Turbo Boost feature with this generation of Intel Core processors, letting the machine fall back to the idle state is becoming a norm. Hence Idle (stock) refers to the machine running at 1.60 GHz (12 x 133 MHz), with vCore at 0.928 V. Idle (nominal) refers to the machine idling at the processor's nominal clock speed of 3.06 GHz (23 x 133 MHz), with EIST and C1E disabled.

Load (stock) refers to the CPU running four threads of Prime95's "In-place large FFTs" stress test for 15 minutes, with default BClk value of 133 MHz, with EIST, C1E, and Turbo Boost enabled. Turbo Boost bumps the clock speed of all four cores by 133 MHz, taking it up to 3.20 GHz (24 x 133 MHz).

Load (OC) refers to the CPU running four threads of Prime95's "In-place large FFTs" stress test for 15 minutes, with overclocked BClk value of 166 MHz (4.00 GHz, 1.38V). We chose 4.00 GHz as it's stable on just about any cooler, while giving us close to 1.4 V of vCore to test load on. Later in the review, we'll let the cooler run wild by testing the maximum stable OC achievable.

The fan is set to run at 100% speed (i.e. no motherboard-based fan-speed control was in place).

Temperatures have been taken via RealTemp. In noise testing, the sound-level meter is maintained at a distance of 1 m from the source.


The Noctua NH-C14 is off to a flying start with the lowest idle temperatures. All that weight, all those parts, and that rage-inducing installation, are beginning to pay off.


Whoosh. The NH-C14 shatters the myth that top-flow coolers are fundamentally inferior to side-flow ones. Aside from being the best performing cooler thus far on our new cooler bench, the NH-C14 should be the best performing top-flow coolers out there in the market. The air flow of top flow coolers provides some cooling for components around the CPU area, and that is good for voltage-assisted overclocking.

When overclocked, the CPU barely appears to be running hot, given that Bloomfield poses a very heavy thermal load. There should be a lot of overclocking headroom left.

Fan Noise

This is where the NH-C14 limps. The nearly perfect feature-set and design are tarnished by fans that lack PWM-based control. You can still manually control the fan using the included resistor cables. Not only are the fans loud, but also have a high-ish pitched noise, which tends to get unpleasant.