Noctua NH-U9S CPU Cooler Review

UPDATE: As you may have noticed, despite being published on 6th January 2015, we here at pcG had to remove our review of the Noctua NH-U9S. This was nothing to do with Noctua or the CPU cooler itself, but due to the unforeseen circumstances surrounding a failing CPU (yep, Mike’s i5-4690K has found its way to Silicon Heaven…). We aren’t exactly sure what the problem was, but it lead to Core0 running significantly hotter than any other CPU Core, therefore polluting the thermal results. Luckily pcG James was at hand to save the day, providing his CPU for testing purposes…

 

If you don’t already know by now who Noctua are, you’re either new to the world of Gaming and performance PCs or been living the life of a hermit in a cave in the middle of nowhere for some time. Luckily for all you newbies and cave dwellers, pcG is here to bring you up to speed. 😉

Having formed back in 2005, Noctua have slowly grown through innovation and high quality products into one of the most recognisable faces in CPU cooling today. With the launch of one of the most famous of all air CPU coolers back in 2009, the NH-D14 literally took the industry by storm with its immense cooling performance. In fact it was so good that Noctua didn’t feel the need to replace it as their flagship cooler until 2014 with an even better cooler in the form of the NH-D15. So you’d think Noctua were all about massive high performance air coolers with a price to match right? Wrong! In fact Noctua pretty much cover the needs of anyone needing a CPU Cooler and I’m in need of a smaller cooler which I just so happen to have here right now in the form of the Noctua NH-U9S.

What sets the Noctua NH-U9S apart from the myriad of other CPU coolers? We best take a closer look!

 

 

 

On the front of a rather classically styled white and brown box that is typical of Noctua products, we see the product name, mobile tag, Noctua logo and a partial image of the NH-U9S inside. The front also highlights the following features:

• NF-A9 premium fan
• Award-winning NH-U series
• 100% RAM compatibility
• 100% compatibility with PCIe cards on mini-ITX
• PWM support and Low-Noise Adaptor
• SecureFirm2 mounting system
• Compatibility with past and future sockets
• 6 years warranty

While over on the back and in the same styling we have the model name and a brief description of the product inside, in eight different languages.

 

 

Again, the left and right sides of the NH-U9S box follow the same classic styling as the front and back (the top too). The left gives us pretty detailed descriptions of all the NH-U9S key features (see Specifications/Features below), whilst over on the right we have the heatsink and fan specifications as well as a list of the box contents (see below).

 

 

As we’ve seen from Noctua products before, the NH-U9S is well packaged, with each group of fittings (Intel, AMD & Universal) bagged up separately and stored in a their own box. The heatsink is very well protected by cardboard bumpers and has a plastic cover to prevents any damage to the baseplate, whilst the 92mm Noctua NF-A9 PWM is already pre-installed.

 

Box Contents

• Noctua NH-U9S
• NF-A9 PWM premium fan
• Low-Noise Adaptor (L.N.A.)
• NT-H1 high-grade thermal compound
• SecuFirm2™ Mounting Kit
• Fan-clips for second NF-A9
• Noctua Screwdriver
• Noctua Metal Case-Badge

At the time of writing the Noctua NH-U9S CPU Cooler is available from Amazon for £46.95 or OverclockersUK for £47.99 and comes with a mammoth 6 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Noctua

 

SPECIAL FEATURES

 

Cooler Specifications

 

 

Fan Specifications

 

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

Now it’s out of the box, we can get a much closer look at the Noctua NH-U9S. Something of a surprise is the weight, at 618g (including fan) the cooler is a lot heavier than you’d expect from a small CPU Cooler measuring just 125mm(H) x 95mm(W) x 95mm(D). It does however follow the usual Noctua high build quality.

 

 

From the top (the bit you’ll most likely see) we can see the capping fin of the heatsink, which has a bare aluminium finish and features an embossed Noctua logo in the centre. Looking to the sides we can see the NH-U9S is built asymmetrically, with the ends of all five nickel plated copper heat-pipes being clearly visible. Towards the front and back of the NH-U9S, we can see hook-mounts for two 92mm fans affixed by fan-clips, one 92mm Noctua NF-A9 PWM is pre-fitted, but a second set of fan-clips is included should you choose to add a second. The heatsink itself is 68mm deep without the included fan or 95mm with.

Something I hadn’t noticed until typing up this review, is that towards the back of the heatsink and in the centre, there’s a small cut-out which runs from top to bottom through the fin stack, which is a necessary design feature to allow access to the mounting bracket, it also has the side effect of making the top of the cooler look very similar to the furrowed brow of the Noctua owl logo! Was this intentional? Who knows…

 

 

From the side we can see a total count of 43 layers of fins within the NH-U9S. The cooler has a depth of 68mm (without fan) or 95mm (with fan) and if you take a look at the front of the cooler, you can see the heatsink is slightly staggered back from the base plate. This has purposely been done to ensue ultimate compatibility with RAM of any size/height.

 

 

From the front we can see the NH-U9S measures 95mm across its width (both with or without the fan). Which is typically brown and beige, Noctua’s signature colours.

 

 

From beneath we get to see the heat-pipes and base plate more clearly. All of which are made of copper and nickel plated. You can also see the base is very nicely milled and reflective, but it doesn’t have the same mirror finish as many other CPU coolers out there.

 

 

Here are some comparisons of the Noctua NH-U9S and our regular test CPU cooler the Raijintek Themis. The NH-U9S as mentioned before, is 125mm(H) x 95mm(W) x 95mm(D) Vs 158mm(H) x 122mm(W) x 50mm(D) of the Themis. Despite the smaller size, the NH-U9S is actually heavier weighing it at 524g (without fan) Vs 448g (without fan) for the Themis.

 

 

All in all, the Noctua NH-U9S is a nice and tidy little CPU cooler, with a typically high build quality and pretty easy on the eye. We best get it in the Test Rig to see how it performs!

 

Hardware Installation

 

Test Rig Setup

Case	Cooler Master HAF XB	Power Supply	Corsair Professional Series AX 760i
Motherboard	ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer	CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U9S	RAM	HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
Graphics Card	XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition	SSD	HyperX FURY 120GB

 

 

Installation of the Noctua NH-U9S was dead simple. This was largely due to the incredibly fast and easy to fit SecureFirm2 mounting system, the fittings being grouped and bagged individually, the cooler itself being well designed as well as the trademark Noctua screwdriver.

First up is the backplate. This has the uprights pre-installed, so all you need to do is line them up with and guide them through the motherboard CPU mount holes, a nylon spacer is then placed over each upright, the two mounting plates are then placed over each pair of uprights (left & right), then secured using the included thumb-screw nuts. That’s the SecureFirm2 mounting system taken care of and it’s literally just a five minute job!

Then we add a little thermal compound (Arctic Cooling MX-4) to the top of the i5-4690K, the NH-U9S heatsink is lined up above it and then slowly fixed into place using the two pre-fitted and sprung loaded screws either side. The Noctua NF-A9 PWM fan is then hooked onto the front of the heatsink using one set of the included fan-clips, then plugged into the CPU_FAN1 header of the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer motherboard.

That’s it! Not even a ten minute job. Let’s see how it performs in the Test Rig!

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

* Please note: To ascertain the maximum and minimum noise levels produced by our CPU test coolers. The dB is recorded at a distance of 1 metre from the cooler, with all case fans unplugged to isolate the sound in question.

 

Processor speed is set using the OC Tweaker tab of the BIOS, “Disabled” for stock speeds (3.5GHz) and “Turbo 4.0GHz” for the minor overclock tests. It should be noted that changing the OC settings resets the Fan Speeds, so these are checked on the next reboot and reset to “Full Speed” (see below).

All the fans installed in the system are set to 100% speed using the displayed settings, this is simple with the ASROCK BIOS with the option of “Full Speed” being available for all system fans (bar the Power Supply Fan header).

 

Hardware Performance

 

As stated above, to make our performance tests easier to follow and to get the most accurate recordings, all of the following tests have been carried out with case fans set at 100% and the Noctua NH-U9S fan also set at 100%.

 

• Intel Core i5-4690K – 3.5GHz (stock)

 

 

CPU Cooler	Fan Speed	Ambient Temperature	Max CPU Temperature (core average)	Delta Temperature	Noise Level
Scythe Mugen Max	100%	22.00	47.00	25.00	36db
Noctua NH-U9S	100%	24.00	50.00	26.00	38db
Raijintek Themis	100%	21.50	50.75	29.25	47db
SilverStone Argon AR06	100%	23.50	79.50	56.00	28db

* Thermals Explained

 

Given it’s tiny size, I wasn’t expecting the Noctua NH-U9S to break any records in the area of cooling, but it does a far better job than I was personally expecting. With a maximum average core temperature of 50.00C (26.00C Delta), it does a pretty good job of competing with the cooling ability of the bigger Raijintek Themis test rig cooler, running 0.75C (3.25C Delta) cooler. As it is considerably smaller and 9dB quieter with the fan at 100%, producing 38dB (32dB at the lowest setting), I’m surprised all the more!

 

• Intel Core i5-4690K – 4.0GHz (OC Tweaker)

 

 

CPU Cooler	Fan Speed	Ambient Temperature	Max CPU Temperature (core average)	Delta Temperature	Noise Level
Scythe Mugen Max	100%	22.00	55.75	33.75	36db
Noctua NH-U9S	100%	23.50	60.25	36.75	38db
Raijintek Themis	100%	21.00	59.50	38.50	47db
SilverStone Argon AR06	100%	23.50	92.50	69.00	28db

* Thermals Explained

 

With a relatively minor overclock courtesy of the ASROCK OC Tweaker in the UEFI and the i5-4690K set to 4.0GHz, the little Noctua NH-U9S starts to get its cooling abilities pushed that much harder. Yet it still offers up some surprisingly good results when compared to our Themis test coolers. With a maximum average core temperature of 60.25C (36.75C Delta), it may run 0.75C warmer than the Themis, but factor in the warmer ambient temperature and you’ll see it actually runs 1.75C cooler! Not bad for a 92mm cooler eh!?

 

Final Thoughts

 

With its classically styled brown and white box, it was pretty clear the Noctua NH-U9S was a product from none other than Noctua. Which also means just one thing, yep that’s right! It’s a CPU Cooler. Yet it’s no ordinary cooler either, measuring just 125mm(H) x 95mm(W) x 95mm(D), it is sure to fit in all but the very smallest of cases, but at 618g (including fan) its weight belies its tiny size. On the whole it offers a build of high quality, with industrious looks to match. When viewed from above it even kinda looks like the furrowed brow of the Noctua owl logo! Although I realise that Noctua have made the brown and beige colour scheme of their fans very much their own over the years, it isn’t a scheme that ties in with many rigs (unless you want them to stand out of course), so it would be nice if Noctua offered an alternative in the form of the two-tone grey REDUX fans or even the awesome looking brown and black IndustrialPPC series.

Installation of the Noctua NH-U9S was an incredibly quick and easy task, due to the SecureFirm2 mounting system which is easily one of the best in the industry. Which of course is made all the easier by the small stature of the Noctua NH-U9S itself.

Then we have performance, where the little Noctua NH-U9S proves it isn’t a slouch either. With a maximum average core temperature of 50.00C (26.00C Delta) with the Intel Core i5-4690K at its 3.5GHz stock speed, then with a gentle 4.0GHz overclock rising to 60.25C (36.75C Delta), the NH-U9S shows it is suitable for keeping your CPU suitably cool. All whilst producing a rather ear friendly 38dB of noise with the 92mm NF-A9 PWM set at its maximum. All of which I personally find both surprising and brilliant for such a small cooler.

At £46.95 the Noctua NH-U9S finds itself just shy of the price of many larger performance CPU coolers, but it does so with a far more compact design that’ll fit in almost any case and it’s nice and quiet too. Whilst it can’t quite match the cooling performance of the bigger competition, I personally think its flexibility makes it a worthwhile choice.

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Noctua for providing this sample for review