TECH ONE REVIEW: Fans & Accessories

Noctua at Computex 2015

Vienna, June 11th 2015 – At last week’s Computex Taipei trade fair, Noctua exhibited a wide range of its upcoming products and received the 1st European Hardware Award for its renowned NH-D15 dual-tower cooler. Ranging from fan and heatsink prototypes on custom designs for industrial clients to updates on its Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) project, Noctua’s line-up for this year’s show has received excellent feedback from the international press.

Awarded best cooling product of Computex 2015 by Tom’s Hardware, the highlight of the Austrians’ line-up was the upcoming next-generation 120mm A-series fan, which will succeed the award-winning NF-P12 and integrates Noctua’s latest technologies in order to provide unprecedented efficiency across a broad range of applications. Featuring an ultra-tight 0.5mm tip clearance and a pressure/airflow (P/Q) curve that has been carefully fine-tuned for mid to high impedance applications, the new fan performs exceptionally well on CPU heatsinks and water-cooling radiators. Noctua also showcased a redux version of the NF-P12 that is going to be introduced at the launch of the new 120mm A-series fan, which is currently scheduled for Q1 2016.

After updating their 92mm coolers and 14cm dual-tower model last year, Noctua gave the first preview of future updates to the renowned NH-U12 and NH-U14 single tower series. The fins of the prototypes are deeper than those of the current NH-U12S and NH-U14S, resulting in a 50% increase in surface area on the 12cm model and 30% on the 14cm model. Combined with one extra heat pipe and the next-generation 120mm A-series fan, the 12cm unit rivals the performance of the current NH-U14S. The new 14cm version provides further increased performance and is designed to work with a new 140mm A-series fan that follows the same design approach as the new 120mm model. Noctua plans to introduce both coolers when the respective fans are available in 2016.

Noctua also gave an update on its Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) project. The key milestone of last year’s development was a major reduction in controller size that makes it possible to fit the entire ANC controller directly onto the fan’s internal PCB rather than into an external box. At the same time, the aerodynamic development has been shifted to be based on the upcoming new 120mm A-series fan in order to provide the best possible starting basis.

In the industrialPPC range, Noctua displayed the upcoming NF-A9 and NF-A8 models as well as 24V versions of the NF-F12 and NF-A14. The latter can also be run at 12V in standard PC environments, providing industrialPPC features and looks at speed and noise levels comparable to Noctua’s standard line-up, which makes them attractive for noise-conscious PC users and industrial applications alike. While the 24V versions are set for launch in Q4 2015, the NF-A9 and NF-A8 versions are scheduled for Q2 2016.

Meeting the increased demand for industrialPPC fans from PC enthusiasts, Noctua also showcased its ‘project chromax’, which will give alternative colour options for anti-vibration pads and anti-vibration mounts, allowing users to colour-match their industrialPPC fans to their individual build styles. The respective accessory kits in red, green, blue, yellow, black and white should be available by Q4.

The range of new accessories was rounded off by a silicone spacer frame for 120mm radiator fans that helps to seal off the gap between the fan and the radiator, as well as a PWM fan controller that allows PWM fans to be slowed down by lowering the PWM curve with optional capping of the minimum speed at 300rpm. While the former will be released with the upcoming 120mm A-series fan, the latter is set for release in Q4. For industrial clients, Noctua showed a 10-way PWM fan splitter board with LEDs for status monitoring.

In addition to the upcoming 120x25 and 140x25mm fans, Noctua exhibited its upcoming 20cm A-series fan that is currently scheduled for launch in Q4, as well as a slim 120x15mm version targeted for a mid-2016 release. A possible update to the popular NH-L12 low-profile cooler may use either of the upcoming 120x15 and 120x25mm A-series fans and is planned for later in 2016.

Last but not least, the exhibition included a wide range of custom heatsink designs for industrial clients, showcasing Noctua’s capabilities in manufacturing premium-quality cooling solutions for a broad range of applications.

Aside from the busy show floor, Noctua’s renowned NH-D15 dual-tower cooler was voted the best CPU cooler of the year 2015 by the jury of the European Hardware Association, made up of editors of eight leading hardware publications from Europe.

Links

Noctua Computex 2015 Press-Kit
More information about RotoSub® ANC technology

Hardwareluxx.de video coverage (German)

About Noctua

Designed in Austria, Noctua's premium cooling components are internationally renowned for their superb quietness, exceptional performance and thoroughgoing quality. Having received more than 3000 awards and recommendations from leading hardware websites and magazines, Noctua's fans and heatsinks are chosen by more than a hundred thousand satisfied customers around the globe.

Unboxing & Review: Noctua NH-U9S

Sometimes, the PC in the lab doesn't need a monster rig. Yup, this one goes to the people who would need a sleek or small systems. Problem is that smaller systems tend to get quite toasty, especially on the CPU, as it may not be designed to be 'airy' so to speak. One solution is to get an efficient CPU cooler but one small enough to dissipate all the heat effectively, hence, we're back with another Noctua product! Say hello to the NH-U9S, a 95mm U-Type Tower cooler. (SRP @ RM295)

Specifications

The Packaging

The NH-U9S comes packed in Noctua's traditional white & brown cardboard box which displays the model, type and features on the front.

More features can be seen on the left side.

While the right side describes the heatsink and fan specifications as well as what's in the box.

Here is another chance to learn a new language at the back ;) here is Noctua's story of how the NH-U9S came to be.

Finally at the top, a repeat of the contents.

Since the NH-U9S only comes with a single fan, Noctua has been kind enough to supply another NF-A9 so that we could maximize the cooling potential.

The inner flap describes the technology of the fan while the contents are described on the other side with windowed view of the actual fan and rubber mounts.

Unboxing

You'll get 2 smaller packages inside, a flat rectangular one that contains the mounting hardware and other accessories.

And an open ended packaging with the heatsink and fan. Kudos to Noctua for using environmentally friendly materials, let's get them out of there.

Here are all the accessories, very much similar to other Noctua coolers I've unboxed here in Tech Critter. Nice that they kept it as a standard.

Just a quick unboxing of the extra fan, quite a package considering the various splitters and connectors accompanying the fan.

The Cooler

Out of the box, the cooler is rather small at only 125mm tall, which will fit nicely in tight enclosures such as the BitFenix Pandora.

You can see the capped ends of the 5 heatpipes at the top with Noctua's stamp at the top. That little hole at the center? it's for increasing the mounting pressure via the screw right above the baseplate.

From this angle without the fan, you can see that the heatpipes are arranged in a U-shaped configuration along different configurations through the aluminium fins.

Just when you thought that the heatsink is symetrical, the NH-U9S is actually configured to lean more to the back-side for better RAM compatibility on small motherboards.

Things are not as symetrical on the arrangements of the heatpipes either, as you can see from the image above.

Shiny nickle plated baseplate is always a nice feature.

Installation

We'll be installing the NH-U9S on an Intel i7 4770K so the Intel mounting set is needed.

After dismounting the previous cooler (The NH-C14 from Noctua) and cleaning the CPU of used thermal paste, place the backplate behind the motherboard with the threaded prongs protruding through the allocated holes around the socket.

Next, place the plastic spacers.

Proceed to place the mounting brackets, taking care to check the orientation of the cooler so that it will be facing the way you want it to.

Place the screws to secure the whole assembly, taking care not to tighten too much.

Squeeze a tiny bit of TIM as needed onto the CPU.

Place the heatsink on top, aligning the screws with the threads on the mounting brackets and tighten till you can't turn them any more.

Mount the fans with the supplied fan clips and you're done!

RAM clearance is all good! even tall RAMs will not pose a problem in this case.

Lets not forget to plug in our fans to the CPU fan header shall we?

Testing

System configuration for this test shall be as follows:

Test Rig Configuration
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U9S
CPU	Intel Core i7 4770K
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus VII Ranger
Memory	Kingston Value RAM 8GB
Primary Hard Drive	Plextor M6E M.2 256GB
Power Supply	FSP AU-650M 80+ Gold
Chassis	Vector Benchcase

Moving on to the performance test, we ran the CPU stress test utility Prime95 with the option 'In-place large FFTs' for maximum heat from the CPU. Our room temperature throughout the test is 30ºC in average and the stress test is repeated for several times in order to get a stable and consistent temperature reading. The final result is presented in the graph as below:

The results are very surprising indeed and honestly I found it hard to believe. Even though the idle temps are nothing to shout about, the load temps are amazing with the NH-U9S matching the NH-D14 and beating even the H100i from Corsair, truly incredible. Fan noise is very low and I'm glad to report that it's hardly audible over my HD7850's cooler fans even on load, they only run at about 1200RPM anyway.

Conclusion

I will have no idea what spell Noctua casted on this one but the NH-U9S is no doubt, a gem. Sure, it looks like any other 3rd party CPU cooler in the market and the fan color (as usual) will not be everyone's cuppa. The cooling ability of the NH-U9S is definitely unbelievable though, even I had to re-run the test a few times to make sure that I got it right. At load on Prime95, the NH-U9S kept the temps at 80C that matches top coolers such as the Corsair H100i and their own NH-D14 in our previous tests on the same CPU (and OC speed). And while we're talking about speed, the fans are hardly audible when they top off at 1200RPM.

Though I don't think everyone will be swapping out their NH-D14 / D15 for this, but people who are on slim-profile chassis or looking to build a PC in one will definitely rejoice with a premium offering like this, I think that the price is not too bad as well considering the good cooling performance.

Pros