Noctua NH-U9S vs NZXT Kraken X63 280mm

Hey there and welcome to Machines More. I just took a stab at making my own semi-chromax U12A cooler and today we're taking a look at a bonafide refre...

There is no performance difference between Gen 6 and Gen 5. And Gen 7 versus Gen 5 testing, X62, X63 with the same fans, same fan speeds, everything. ...

I didn't use any of the noise-limiter dongles as I want this build to run as cool as possible and what other fans would I want? I did lust after the Chromax fans (this would have been an epic build with them), but they're as rare as hen's teeth and I was in a hurry. So, how good is this kit? I see temps in the low 50s (Centigrade) w/ an Intel i-7 10700K OC'd to 5Ghz. I hardly ever hear the fans run up to full speed when gaming (Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 - both cranked up to 11) and when I running on the desktop things are rarely above 35 degrees Centigrade. Installation is a snap as long as you remember to not torque down the mounting screws more than just enough to hold the first side into place as you first attach the fans to the brackets

In case you do have an issue, contact NZXT support and they'll provide a usb hub that works as a workaround until they can roll out Krakens with the permanent fix built in or whatever. One more thing to be aware of is that unlike what the manual says there are only 2 viable installation directions if you are planning on the screen facing right side up. It's true that there is a way to rotate the image through the NZXT CAM software but if it isn't installed in one of the aforementioned orientations then unfortunately it wont be able to rotate it to the correct orientation which seems like an odd limitation but it is what it is. Okay so the performance of this cpu cooler is good, but I was honestly expecting just a bit more cooling efficiency from this latest pump design but it misses the mark by a non-insignificant amount