NZXT Havik vs Noctua NH-D14 Review

just watched the video and really good stuff from NZXT but I have some pointers:

1 - Would have liked to see black fans for an all black scheme.

2 - Fan speed reducers are a must for all coolers these days.

3 - There is a problem with the mount and the cooler should not move easily over the CPU.

4 - Tom should not say fu--k in the end of the video even if the mic goes up his backside because there are children watching not like they don't use the word anyway.

5 - Today has been a horrible day in UK and I feel really depressed but Tom has put a smile on my face.

biggrin.gif


 
do the rubber fan mounts work with 120x38mm fans?

seems like an interesting new choice for peeps with tall ram.. besides the thermalright archon
 
just watched the video and really good stuff from NZXT but I have some pointers:

1 - Would have liked to see black fans for an all black scheme.

2 - Fan speed reducers are a must for all coolers these days.

3 - There is a problem with the mount and the cooler should not move easily over the CPU.

4 - Tom should not say fu--k in the end of the video even if the mic goes up his backside because there are children watching not like they don't use the word anyway.

5 - Today has been a horrible day in UK and I feel really depressed but Tom has put a smile on my face.

biggrin.gif



The mount is great, i am guessing that he (tom) used the wrong side (AMD instead if Intel)

Mine doesnt move at all, especially as it has guards which ensure the tower is always aligned to the mount before you can even tighten it.

Today has been abismal, 80mph in Leeds and none stop rain
 
Man I've been waiting for this review and I am going to be buying one soon
biggrin.gif


I hope they make a dual tower one soon too.
 
I wonder if you could use wire framed fan clips, such as those used for mounting on Thermalright and Noctua coolers, on the Havik? It would be interesting to see how well it'll perform with the Thermalright or Noctua fans.
smile.gif

I think the nzxt fans are ugly time for some enermax ones, sadly the dont do a 140mm gold
 
I wonder if you could use wire framed fan clips, such as those used for mounting on Thermalright and Noctua coolers, on the Havik? It would be interesting to see how well it'll perform with the Thermalright or Noctua fans.
smile.gif

Why wouldn't you be able to use the rubber mounting thingies that come with the cooler?
 
Right. Afternoon all. I shan't be sticking around but I figured I would have my 2p.

O.K. NZXT eh? terrible. Throwing a sulk were they? aww, diddums.

Now given that the world has gone completely capitalist and the truth is not welcome I'll hazard a guess this post will last a few seconds before being deleted. It's O.K, I don't blame Tom or anyone else. Recently Custom PC gave NFS : The run 90% so it's obvious companies like a bit of corruption, as it sells bad products.

Right then, NZXT? I would rather have a part made from dog crap.

Three years ago I bought a Sentry fan controller. The buttons rattled around in it, the backlight was so uneven and bad that unless you put your face within a few cm of the thing you couldn't read it (would just look like a blue blob) and it was hardly readable.

Go to fit it in your case? you had issues. It seems some one who designs for NZXT didn't have a ruler handy to get the 5.25 dimension right so just drew around a CD rom drive.

In other words, it didn't fit. Not only did it not fit but you couldn't bend the sides inward as there was a stiffening pole going across. This left you playing twister with your case on the floor desperately trying to bend the bay open to make it go in. I got it in eventually, but sadly it took all the black anodising off of my case. Literally scraped down to the metal.

OK, so that was November 2007. We could be excused for thinking that their products had gotten better yeah? hah ! fat chance.

Let's move onto the Phantom. A very popular case, that was supposed to be good. Yeah, right. Worst case I have witnessed.

It looks OK, bit tacky but I suppose if that's what you like to look at then awesome. Ain't gonna judge it on looks, because my taste could be considered garish at best. I like luminous colours mixed with black, or simply white and black (but I wasn't too hot on the Phantom's styling.

Any way, enough of that twaddle, let's move onto why the Phantom is rubbbish.

Airflow. It doesn't have any.

Sure, the hard drives are taken care of with the 120mm/s fans that go in the side, but sadly they are in the side bringing air over the hdds. None of that air reaches the case. And sure, there is a fan in the front, but again that goes over the hard drives. The case is large inside which is nice, but like the Corsair D cases there isn't enough air making it to the important parts.

We all know that in this day and age the two hottest components in a computer are the GPU/S and CPU. So why is there no fans for either? Oh sure, there are a couple of slow fans in the roof expelling air, but what feeds the cold air into the case?

NOTHING

Yeah yeah, there is a 200mm fan mount in the side panel that you can screw a fan into right? erm, no ! you can't.

Firstly that fan mount has oddly placed holes. Hmmm ! Houston we have a problem ! "Ahhhh wait, I see it now yes, you can only put a NZXT fan in there ! WOW that's clever NZXT ! make people go and buy your fans eh !"

So you stump up $20 or whatever the crap costs, and you screw it in. Then you go to replace the side panel on your PC and you have another problem !

You have a NH-D14 because they are the best air cooler in the world, or a Phanteks because they look nice, but the fan is 30mm thick so it fouls the cooler !

By this stage your GTX 460 2win (pictured here)

photo.jpg


Is starting to get hot. Not hot like 80c hot, but 110c shutdown hot. OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

Said card powers three monitors and needs cooling properly, but said case has no air being fed to the GPU at all, so shutdowns are common place, especially in a heavy game like Crysis 2. It's so bad that every five minutes your buddy drops idle in Left 4 Dead 2 and you have to wait for him to reboot his PC and come back.

Not to worry, you go out and buy another $20 fan. This time you get a Xigmatek because NZXT don't even make a 20mm deep fan to fit their monopolised mounts

Only, it doesn't fit. Sadly the guy that owns the Phantom isn't very adept with a Dremel (and nor should he be) so he has to botch the fan in using the rubber dampeners. Only problem is they snap and the fan falls into the floor of the case.

So unless he takes apart the side panel and drills in standard placed holes he can't have any air for his GPUs.

So do you know what he does? he bins the case and goes out and buys a real one, designed by a company that make it clear they're there for gamers and not just to sell things.

So NZXT my friends and I decided to give you an award. You can show this one off like an OC3D gold badge.

-snip-

It's called the "screw you award".
 
So guys I've got a i5 2500k I do gaming and when I get my cooler I want to do some heavy overclocking, will the havik be able cope with high vaults on the 2500k ( i know its cooler than 1366) or should I got for the Noctua nh d-14?

I haven't got space or RAM clearence problems.

cheers
wink.gif
 
Nice one. To the guy asking about temps. I have a 1090t oc'd @ 4ghz and it doesn't go over 55.c on full load. Is a very good cooler, i highly recommend it.
 
Right. Afternoon all. I shan't be sticking around but I figured I would have my 2p.

O.K. NZXT eh? terrible. Throwing a sulk were they? aww, diddums.

Now given that the world has gone completely capitalist and the truth is not welcome I'll hazard a guess this post will last a few seconds before being deleted. It's O.K, I don't blame Tom or anyone else. Recently Custom PC gave NFS : The run 90% so it's obvious companies like a bit of corruption, as it sells bad products.

Right then, NZXT? I would rather have a part made from dog crap.

Three years ago I bought a Sentry fan controller. The buttons rattled around in it, the backlight was so uneven and bad that unless you put your face within a few cm of the thing you couldn't read it (would just look like a blue blob) and it was hardly readable.

Go to fit it in your case? you had issues. It seems some one who designs for NZXT didn't have a ruler handy to get the 5.25 dimension right so just drew around a CD rom drive.

In other words, it didn't fit. Not only did it not fit but you couldn't bend the sides inward as there was a stiffening pole going across. This left you playing twister with your case on the floor desperately trying to bend the bay open to make it go in. I got it in eventually, but sadly it took all the black anodising off of my case. Literally scraped down to the metal.

OK, so that was November 2007. We could be excused for thinking that their products had gotten better yeah? hah ! fat chance.

Let's move onto the Phantom. A very popular case, that was supposed to be good. Yeah, right. Worst case I have witnessed.

It looks OK, bit tacky but I suppose if that's what you like to look at then awesome. Ain't gonna judge it on looks, because my taste could be considered garish at best. I like luminous colours mixed with black, or simply white and black (but I wasn't too hot on the Phantom's styling.

Any way, enough of that twaddle, let's move onto why the Phantom is rubbbish.

Airflow. It doesn't have any.

Sure, the hard drives are taken care of with the 120mm/s fans that go in the side, but sadly they are in the side bringing air over the hdds. None of that air reaches the case. And sure, there is a fan in the front, but again that goes over the hard drives. The case is large inside which is nice, but like the Corsair D cases there isn't enough air making it to the important parts.

We all know that in this day and age the two hottest components in a computer are the GPU/S and CPU. So why is there no fans for either? Oh sure, there are a couple of slow fans in the roof expelling air, but what feeds the cold air into the case?

NOTHING

Yeah yeah, there is a 200mm fan mount in the side panel that you can screw a fan into right? erm, no ! you can't.

Firstly that fan mount has oddly placed holes. Hmmm ! Houston we have a problem ! "Ahhhh wait, I see it now yes, you can only put a NZXT fan in there ! WOW that's clever NZXT ! make people go and buy your fans eh !"

So you stump up $20 or whatever the crap costs, and you screw it in. Then you go to replace the side panel on your PC and you have another problem !

You have a NH-D14 because they are the best air cooler in the world, or a Phanteks because they look nice, but the fan is 30mm thick so it fouls the cooler !

By this stage your GTX 460 2win (pictured here)

photo.jpg


Is starting to get hot. Not hot like 80c hot, but 110c shutdown hot. OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

Said card powers three monitors and needs cooling properly, but said case has no air being fed to the GPU at all, so shutdowns are common place, especially in a heavy game like Crysis 2. It's so bad that every five minutes your buddy drops idle in Left 4 Dead 2 and you have to wait for him to reboot his PC and come back.

Not to worry, you go out and buy another $20 fan. This time you get a Xigmatek because NZXT don't even make a 20mm deep fan to fit their monopolised mounts

Only, it doesn't fit. Sadly the guy that owns the Phantom isn't very adept with a Dremel (and nor should he be) so he has to botch the fan in using the rubber dampeners. Only problem is they snap and the fan falls into the floor of the case.

So unless he takes apart the side panel and drills in standard placed holes he can't have any air for his GPUs.

So do you know what he does? he bins the case and goes out and buys a real one, designed by a company that make it clear they're there for gamers and not just to sell things.

So NZXT my friends and I decided to give you an award. You can show this one off like an OC3D gold badge.

-snip-

It's called the "screw you award".

This review is for The Havik 140mm so i dont why you have posted this massive essay displaying your hatred for the Phantom case. This is a great cooler, as Tom said himself it is on a par and performs as well as the D-14
 
Pleasantly surprised by the results. For a long time now, the NH-D14 from Noctua has been the leading king of Air Coolers. Okay, so the NZXT didn't beat it, but it came pretty damn close! And that's saying something with a single tower and the size compared to the D14.

I wonder if a dual/tri tower version would finally beat the D14? Then again, I don't think NZXT would be able to pull that off, unfortunately.

Nice review guys.
 
Right. Afternoon all. I shan't be sticking around but I figured I would have my 2p.

'quote'

It's called the "screw you award".

Everything i have said about the phantom on other forums but apparently they so loooove the Phantom for it's 'thick and heavy plastic'
 
Keep on topic guys, this is about the cooler not the other products NZXT make. Would be like looking at a Corsair cooler and talking about the ram fans they make.
 
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