Noctua NH-C14S vs Vetroo V5

You've only got about 40 millimeters, so good looking in the case. Really, really easy to install both of these Noctua coolers, the 15S and the 14S. N...

Normally I don't order pre-built, but in this time of Covid, semiconductor shortages, crypto-miners, and (insert a LOT of vulgar adjectives) scalpers, it cost barely more to order this computer than to purchase a standalone RTX 3060 Ti by itself. The new Dell came with the a crappy, dinky little stock fan, not the big tower cooler pictured in their manual. With the inadequate stock fan, I loaded up Horizon Zero Dawn, and instantly got 100+ fps.

Now with all of these modes out of the way let's go to the actually important part of this review. Benchmarks. Upon summoning the devil on the 3900X t...

Now it might seem counterintuitive that removing a chunk of the heatsink would make it more efficient and this is done for efficiency not for any fitm...

2) The video card's back is VERY close to interfering with the heat sink. It makes it, but there are only a couple millimeters (maybe 1/8th inch) separation between the two. The core v21 height is tall enough to handle this heat sink easily, even with two 140mm case fans connected to the top of the case. Thermal performance: I haven't run intensive cpu tasks or overclocking yet, but a 2-hour gaming session never sent the cpu temps above 45C

Even lower if you can get by the noisy fan (more on that later). Load temps never seem to cross 70s. I ran Cinabench R20 and maxed out at around 65.5 C

Plus the cooler really looks AWESOME in my case. **** I want to buy another one to display on a shelf in my office!!! ****

If I hadn't already left a 5 star review, I definitely would want to give this a 5 star review now. At a glance this cooler seems like a run of the mill hyper 212 clone, but it has a few noteworthy features that set it apart. The foremost of these are the 5 heat pipes rather than the normal 4, the easy mounting system (far easier than a lot of others from my experience), and the cooler coming in black and white instead of exposed aluminum. Pros: - 5 full heat pipes instead of the standard 4 or “5” on most hyper 212 clones

Fan only maxed to 976rpm but I never heard it during the quick test. Entire system spiked once to 95watts but CPUs drew no more than 40watts during the test. Anyway, you get the idea and I get the silence I always dreamed about with a computer chip that is in the middle of the road for heat production (this model normally runs cool even if overclocked 4g+). Noctua literature says this newer model 'S' was tweaked to clear an upper PCIe slot and memory size conflicts plus made this design more efficient with the use of only one fan albeit a larger 140mm, works for me

Yes it has thermal problems out of the box, but they can be remedied with a Vetroo v5 cpu cooler off amazon and a 92mm fan at the front as an intake. You’ll also need a fan splitter cable as there’s no extra fan headers on the motherboard. There’s a hard drive cage at the front that you’ll want to remove so you can put the intake fan there.

Each portion of the cooler (CPU adapter, cooler itself, thermal paste, etc) were in separate boxes that fit exactly in the main box. Everything was kept safe during shipping so no bent or damaged fins. I can say enough about the quality and ease of installation on this cooler. Definitely a top notch product I would buy again if I needed another cooler

The quick version - the fan & heatsink are excellent. Good build quality, and it absolutely drops CPU temps. I'm running an Intel i5-10400F, and this cooler dropped temps a good 7-8 c or better. Under load (Dishonored 2 at max 1440, Crysis remastered, Doom Eternal, etc

The tower is high enough to clear medium height RAM, but too tall to use a 25mm thick fan on top in space restricted cases. Thus the tower is not suitable for top mount fan OR use with tall RAM. Just a little taller and the fan would fit underneath, just a little shorter and the fan would fit on top. Noctua chose to build this in the middle making it of no use at all

Description states it's compatible with AM3 but did they ever test it on these older sockets? This experience is hopefully and likely not to be the case on the modern AM4 setup. My guess is the screws will be much closer to the OEM backplate compared to the gap on the AM3+ setup. I bought this to mainly have it ready for the AM4 future setup and figured I would replace the cheesy AM3+ FX4300 OEM cooler in the meantime. I have 20yrs experience in building computers