Noctua NH-C14S, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A14 PWM 140mm Fan (Brown)

Pros:

Noctua. Cant go wrong. Period.

Very expensive, but really great quality. it is quiet and keeps my processor cool. I switched from a closed loop liquid cooler which had lost its coolant due to permeation over around 8 years. Its really nice not having to worry about leaks with this air cooler. It may not be quite as cool as the liquid cooler, but air coolers have less to worry about. it is very heavy, so its recommended not to transport it with the heatsink on. If you do a lot of transporting, you may want to pick a lighter one if possible. I did transport mine over an hour and it was okay when I got back to my apartment. Definitely be careful and think about the orientation of the heatsink when you transport the computer. But overall really great cooler. It keeps my cpu cool without any noise.

It was a bit difficult to install in my mid size case but work the effort. It has dropped CPU temp 20 degree C and is almost silent.

Love noctua products. It works perfectly

I am giving the product 5 stars but not the customer experience. I received this, bought brand new, and gave as a gift. I was extremely embarrassed when the recipient opened the box and parts were free floating in the box. Two of the plastic bags parts were supposed to be in were ripped open. There was heat compound all over the metal plate. This was an obvious return no one bothered to check. While the part itself is great it took an additional 30 minutes to clean it and make sure all parts were in the box. Installation was fairly simple. I was impressed with that. My partial refund has yet to be credited to my account 24 hours later but that is an amazi problem, not a product problem.

I purchased a Z370 motherboard and installed an I5 8400 CPU and intended on using the stock cooler, since the chip obviously wasnt going to be overclocked, and runs pretty cool compared to the Sandy Bridge CPU it replaced. That was last November.

Every CPU cooler I have ever purchased came with a back-plate, even coolers much cheaper than this one. This expensive cooler does not! They expect you to use the old back-plate that comes with your motherboard. Thats all fine, but my previous cooler is a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO which is a great cooler, but I have my old back-plate in storage someplace and it would be a nightmare to locate. Why not just include a back-plate like everyone else? They include an Intel back-plate, but not an AMD. I had to go to the hardware store to jerry-rig it to work. Aside from that, this is a good cooler, although overpriced. The reason I wanted this cooler is so it will cool the VRMs and northbridge.

Used this for an Intel i7-12700K. Works well to keep the CPU cool, even under intense gaming, or running several virtual machines, video processing, etc.

Used on a AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU in a Cooler Master NR200 case. Substantially lower temps on both idle/low load and stress test.