alienware
Banned
So, at last it is finally here. At last the rather fun squabbles and debates between Tom and I can come to a close and we can finally close the book on whether the NH-D14 actually does on AMD chips what it does on Intel chips.
Now a lot of people (myself included) would think that a £60+ish cooler would be overkill on an AMD cpu. Well, let me rephrase that, on a quad core 45nm AMD chip. This cooler would surely be worth it on a hex cored Thuban but is it worth spending half of what your CPU cost to put one of these on it?
Over the course of my banal bantering you should be able to make your own mind up. And, you'll also be able to get the word from some one who is not under NDA, doesn't have to be polite and therefore can be sickeningly blood thirstily brutal when talking about products.
As you guys and ladies have probably learned by now I am probably one of the most critical people on earth. And not just of products I do not own or I can not afford but with all of them . If I find a hole I will pick it, pull it and heave on it until it opens into a wound and then for good measure throw in some salt and vinegar. Basically what I am trying to say is I am an Ahole.
Now when Tom reviewed the NH-D14 on Intel I was skeptical. So skeptical that he and I engaged in forum fisticuffs numerous times. I had been through a good few coolers and no matter what one or how much they cost nothing really seemed to make much of a difference.
Let me explain that briefly. The first cooler I tried to tame this Phenom 2 with was the 92mm Noctua cooler running twin fans. It was far better than a stock cooler but with some Prime goodness it would always get worryingly close to what is considered the thermal limits of my CPU. And I don't like to push things.
So then I put on a Corsair H50. And the temps dropped to a level I had not seen from my CPU before. However those temps were a bit of a mixed blessing because the wee thing could just not keep up over time. Basically for the first hour or so the temps were great. Give it a few hours to warm up the coolant and it could not cope. Temps would start to increase and would not come back down until I switched off the PC and let the coolant go back to room temps.
This improved with dual fans on, but then it became a white elephant. Gone was the silence, temps were still OK-ish and it cost a fortune and made the same if not more noise (due to the rad being far more resistant with letting air go through) than an air cooler costing half the price.
However, being the sort of person who will never ever truly believe in something until he has actually seen it I was still not convinced by Tom's obvious excitment and idolisation of the Noctua.
So, it was time to get physical. Here is my CPU setting that was used for today's test proceedure.
So as you can see there is an overclock there and it is very real. It's not enormous however but it's there. It's over 10% and it causes more heat and needs more voltage than a Phenom 2 does out of the box. Now I can't remember what temps this CPU ran at when I got it because I never fitted the stock cooler. However, taking what has been said they usually idle at around 40-42c and max out at temps you don't want to see from one of these chips.
OK. Now, today's cooler comparisson comes by way of the NH-C12P cooler from Noctua. However, this is the one running their 140mm fan. I originally got this cooler because the NH-92 or whatever it is called was simply not good enough and the Corsair was beginning to get on my nerves. Temps were too unpredictable over lengthy runs and I was sick of constantly checking my temps.
Here is/was the NH-C12p fitted onto the CPU.
So now it was time for the removal and refit.
Fitting the NH-D14.
Is not as easy as I thought it would be, but only down to my being a stupid idiot and making assumptions. See the NH-92 or whatever it's called used this mounting.
And because the NH-C12P did also I took for granted that the NH-D14 would use the same fittings. So after taking a look at the cooler (the D14) I saw some short sprung screws that looked like the shorter 775 Intel ones on my other coolers.
So, I figured those will need to come off. What a bloody idiot I can be
They're held on with circlips which I thought was a nice touch. Seeing as how on the other two I have the screws can fall out and annoy greatly. So I pulled the clips off (what an even more stupid idiot) and put the cooler onto the thermal paste. Then I realised the screws did not line up. So off it all came again and this time I read the manual. I then discovered that Noctua had redesigned the mounting system completely. And, for the greater good too.
So, the best had become even better.
However due to me being a complete idiot I now had to get down on my hands and knees and find the clips that I had yanked off in a moment of frenzy and put them back. Cue lots of swearing and belittling myself in ways that only I know how.
The new mounting system looks a little something like this.
And the cooler itself then remains able to use the same locked on screws that can't fall off unless you're a bloody stupid idiot like me and you pull them off yourself. Put back on it was time to fit the thing in. But before that, and without further ado let's rewind shall we? It's time for some temps.
Now consider that the NH-C12P manages to cool pretty much on level terms with a Corsair H50 and then you can see the comparisson. You can also see why I was so happy with it because it is virtually silent.
Idle temp after the PC being on since 10am until I switched it off at 3pm.
Infact, on a single fan that beats the H50. My H50 idled at around 40 with a single fan on. And that would be the most fair comparisson.
So now let's kick this into gear and have some fun shall we? My weapon of choice was Prime 95. Please bear in mind that I only run this for about 30 minutes. Not because I don't want to test my overclock with all of the different tests it goes through, but because after half an hour my CPU never gets any hotter. I don't need to check for stability because I already know it's stable at these clocks because I've ran it all night before.
Load temps, NH-C12P after thirty minutes of Prime 95.
Which when you consider that AMD gurus reakon 62 is the limit is very respectable out of a low profile cooler. On the Corsair I was getting 52. After an hour on the Corsair (see coolant getting warmer) I was getting 55. Still nothing to worry about then.
So let's step back a moment.
Here is the NH-D14 fitted with the middle fan removed. You do not need to remove the one on the end and I haven't deliberately set it higher to clear my ram, this is out of the box here.
Again I would like to pause for a moment and congratulate Noctua on their new fan holding system. It's bloody brilliant. You pull two levers and off comes the fan. No more yanking with pliers, no more it twanging and flying accross the room. I absolutely love them for sorting that out.
Why have I got a stupid Power Rangers ruler going accross the top? Because it fits. This cooler actually fits in my case and I can put the side on. Which I am indeed very happy about, and you're about to find out why.
There it is. Lead time? five minutes. And three of those were removing the old brackets.
So, it's time to round this up.
NH-D14 idle. God I hate you Tom.
NH-D14 load Did I say that I hate you Tom? Oh yeah, I did. Well now I hate you ever more.
Forty degrees with a 11% or so overclock, at higher volts than stock, after thirty minutes of Prime.
Now what I could have done here was gone to the review of the NH-D14 by Tom, cut it, pasted it and then gone through it replacing the name Intel with AMD.
Conclusion
This is a sad day my friends. Firstly because it stops Tom and myself's funny antics and squabbles over the H50 vs the NH-D14. But secondly because I am wrong. And I absolutely !*!$*!! hate being wrong. Whether or not this will lead to bigger overclocks? Well, I just don't know. But that is no fault of the cooler and I suspect my chip is just from a crappy batch unless I have missed something very obvious.
Temps are disgusting. It looks disgusting. It feels disgusting and god dammit I hate Tom.
Positives.
It's big.
It' quiet.
It's cooler than a penguins bum.
It's gorgeous.
It fits my case.
It's cheap.
Negatives.
Tom was right.
I was wrong.
Tom sucks.
The Corsair H50 is a complete waste of money.
Global warming.
V.A.T
The final word.
Well, it was obvious that the lack of venom flying from my mouth meant something. It meant that for once in a blue moon I could not tear something limb from limb. And I'm kind of annoyed about that. You may be wondering why I said this cooler is cheap, so as a final word I am going to tell you why.
The Prolimatech Megahalems costs around £40. However, it comes with no fans. By the time you add those fans you are looking at £80. The Noctua costs (give or take a few quid) sixty pounds. If you deducted the price of the Noctuas from the cooler you would end up paying £20 for this cooler. The fans on the Noctua are twenty quid a pop and I know that only too well because I just bought four of them for my case. So, like for like I would put £20 fans on the Megahalems. And after spending £80 you would then realise it's not as good as the NH-D14.
So, to quote a very good chum of mine.
It's epic. It's BRILLIANT. It's gobsmackingly good.
Now a lot of people (myself included) would think that a £60+ish cooler would be overkill on an AMD cpu. Well, let me rephrase that, on a quad core 45nm AMD chip. This cooler would surely be worth it on a hex cored Thuban but is it worth spending half of what your CPU cost to put one of these on it?
Over the course of my banal bantering you should be able to make your own mind up. And, you'll also be able to get the word from some one who is not under NDA, doesn't have to be polite and therefore can be sickeningly blood thirstily brutal when talking about products.
As you guys and ladies have probably learned by now I am probably one of the most critical people on earth. And not just of products I do not own or I can not afford but with all of them . If I find a hole I will pick it, pull it and heave on it until it opens into a wound and then for good measure throw in some salt and vinegar. Basically what I am trying to say is I am an Ahole.
Now when Tom reviewed the NH-D14 on Intel I was skeptical. So skeptical that he and I engaged in forum fisticuffs numerous times. I had been through a good few coolers and no matter what one or how much they cost nothing really seemed to make much of a difference.
Let me explain that briefly. The first cooler I tried to tame this Phenom 2 with was the 92mm Noctua cooler running twin fans. It was far better than a stock cooler but with some Prime goodness it would always get worryingly close to what is considered the thermal limits of my CPU. And I don't like to push things.
So then I put on a Corsair H50. And the temps dropped to a level I had not seen from my CPU before. However those temps were a bit of a mixed blessing because the wee thing could just not keep up over time. Basically for the first hour or so the temps were great. Give it a few hours to warm up the coolant and it could not cope. Temps would start to increase and would not come back down until I switched off the PC and let the coolant go back to room temps.
This improved with dual fans on, but then it became a white elephant. Gone was the silence, temps were still OK-ish and it cost a fortune and made the same if not more noise (due to the rad being far more resistant with letting air go through) than an air cooler costing half the price.
However, being the sort of person who will never ever truly believe in something until he has actually seen it I was still not convinced by Tom's obvious excitment and idolisation of the Noctua.
So, it was time to get physical. Here is my CPU setting that was used for today's test proceedure.
So as you can see there is an overclock there and it is very real. It's not enormous however but it's there. It's over 10% and it causes more heat and needs more voltage than a Phenom 2 does out of the box. Now I can't remember what temps this CPU ran at when I got it because I never fitted the stock cooler. However, taking what has been said they usually idle at around 40-42c and max out at temps you don't want to see from one of these chips.
OK. Now, today's cooler comparisson comes by way of the NH-C12P cooler from Noctua. However, this is the one running their 140mm fan. I originally got this cooler because the NH-92 or whatever it is called was simply not good enough and the Corsair was beginning to get on my nerves. Temps were too unpredictable over lengthy runs and I was sick of constantly checking my temps.
Here is/was the NH-C12p fitted onto the CPU.
So now it was time for the removal and refit.
Fitting the NH-D14.
Is not as easy as I thought it would be, but only down to my being a stupid idiot and making assumptions. See the NH-92 or whatever it's called used this mounting.
And because the NH-C12P did also I took for granted that the NH-D14 would use the same fittings. So after taking a look at the cooler (the D14) I saw some short sprung screws that looked like the shorter 775 Intel ones on my other coolers.
So, I figured those will need to come off. What a bloody idiot I can be
They're held on with circlips which I thought was a nice touch. Seeing as how on the other two I have the screws can fall out and annoy greatly. So I pulled the clips off (what an even more stupid idiot) and put the cooler onto the thermal paste. Then I realised the screws did not line up. So off it all came again and this time I read the manual. I then discovered that Noctua had redesigned the mounting system completely. And, for the greater good too.
So, the best had become even better.
However due to me being a complete idiot I now had to get down on my hands and knees and find the clips that I had yanked off in a moment of frenzy and put them back. Cue lots of swearing and belittling myself in ways that only I know how.
The new mounting system looks a little something like this.
And the cooler itself then remains able to use the same locked on screws that can't fall off unless you're a bloody stupid idiot like me and you pull them off yourself. Put back on it was time to fit the thing in. But before that, and without further ado let's rewind shall we? It's time for some temps.
Now consider that the NH-C12P manages to cool pretty much on level terms with a Corsair H50 and then you can see the comparisson. You can also see why I was so happy with it because it is virtually silent.
Idle temp after the PC being on since 10am until I switched it off at 3pm.
Infact, on a single fan that beats the H50. My H50 idled at around 40 with a single fan on. And that would be the most fair comparisson.
So now let's kick this into gear and have some fun shall we? My weapon of choice was Prime 95. Please bear in mind that I only run this for about 30 minutes. Not because I don't want to test my overclock with all of the different tests it goes through, but because after half an hour my CPU never gets any hotter. I don't need to check for stability because I already know it's stable at these clocks because I've ran it all night before.
Load temps, NH-C12P after thirty minutes of Prime 95.
Which when you consider that AMD gurus reakon 62 is the limit is very respectable out of a low profile cooler. On the Corsair I was getting 52. After an hour on the Corsair (see coolant getting warmer) I was getting 55. Still nothing to worry about then.
So let's step back a moment.
Here is the NH-D14 fitted with the middle fan removed. You do not need to remove the one on the end and I haven't deliberately set it higher to clear my ram, this is out of the box here.
Again I would like to pause for a moment and congratulate Noctua on their new fan holding system. It's bloody brilliant. You pull two levers and off comes the fan. No more yanking with pliers, no more it twanging and flying accross the room. I absolutely love them for sorting that out.
Why have I got a stupid Power Rangers ruler going accross the top? Because it fits. This cooler actually fits in my case and I can put the side on. Which I am indeed very happy about, and you're about to find out why.
There it is. Lead time? five minutes. And three of those were removing the old brackets.
So, it's time to round this up.
NH-D14 idle. God I hate you Tom.
NH-D14 load Did I say that I hate you Tom? Oh yeah, I did. Well now I hate you ever more.
Forty degrees with a 11% or so overclock, at higher volts than stock, after thirty minutes of Prime.
Now what I could have done here was gone to the review of the NH-D14 by Tom, cut it, pasted it and then gone through it replacing the name Intel with AMD.
Conclusion
This is a sad day my friends. Firstly because it stops Tom and myself's funny antics and squabbles over the H50 vs the NH-D14. But secondly because I am wrong. And I absolutely !*!$*!! hate being wrong. Whether or not this will lead to bigger overclocks? Well, I just don't know. But that is no fault of the cooler and I suspect my chip is just from a crappy batch unless I have missed something very obvious.
Temps are disgusting. It looks disgusting. It feels disgusting and god dammit I hate Tom.
Positives.
It's big.
It' quiet.
It's cooler than a penguins bum.
It's gorgeous.
It fits my case.
It's cheap.
Negatives.
Tom was right.
I was wrong.
Tom sucks.
The Corsair H50 is a complete waste of money.
Global warming.
V.A.T
The final word.
Well, it was obvious that the lack of venom flying from my mouth meant something. It meant that for once in a blue moon I could not tear something limb from limb. And I'm kind of annoyed about that. You may be wondering why I said this cooler is cheap, so as a final word I am going to tell you why.
The Prolimatech Megahalems costs around £40. However, it comes with no fans. By the time you add those fans you are looking at £80. The Noctua costs (give or take a few quid) sixty pounds. If you deducted the price of the Noctuas from the cooler you would end up paying £20 for this cooler. The fans on the Noctua are twenty quid a pop and I know that only too well because I just bought four of them for my case. So, like for like I would put £20 fans on the Megahalems. And after spending £80 you would then realise it's not as good as the NH-D14.
So, to quote a very good chum of mine.
It's epic. It's BRILLIANT. It's gobsmackingly good.
