Noctua NH-U9S CPU Cooler Review: Undersized but Over-performs
Test System and Benchmark Results of the Noctua NH-U9S
Ambient temperature monitored at case intake and temperature Delta was used. All case and heat sink fans were benchmarked with fan control settings disabled and running at 100% unless otherwise specified. Intel integrated video is utilized to eliminate additional ambient heat source from discrete graphics cards. Temperatures are averaged (last minute) from individual core temperature results monitored by AIDA64 after 15 minutes. FPU load average is used to simulate worst case scenario load levels similar to Intel Burn Test or OCCT, results marked “0″ means thermal limit was reached and the CPU was throttled and thus the results were discarded. Stock settings have all power saving features enabled in the motherboard with Vcore set static to 1.1V and set to “Balanced” in the OS. Overclocked settings have Vcore voltage manually set to 1.2V at 4.2GHz with EIST disabled. All tests were taken at least three times to get the final result. Note that performance results on this setup are not directly comparable with any benchmarks from previous reviews as the UEFI BIOS on the motherboard has been updated and now has a much tighter control on the Vcore voltage.
| Processor | Intel Core i7-4770K (Retail) |
| Motherboard | ASUS Maximus VI Gene Z87 Motherboard (1603 BIOS) |
| Memory | Mushkin Stealth 1600MHz DDR3 |
| Drive | OCZ Agility 4 256GB SSD |
| Video Card | Intel Integrated Graphics |
| Thermal Compound | Noctua NT-H1 |
| Case | DimasTech Mini v1 |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX850W |
| Operating System | Windows 7 x64 Pro |
| Fans(s) |
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| Comparison Heatsinks | Noctua NH-U9S |
Noctua NH-U9B SE2 | Noctua NH-D9L | Noctua NH-U12S |
| Fan Size (mm) | 1×92 | 2×92 | 1×92 | 1×120 |
| Max fan RPM | 2000 | 1600 | 2000 | 1500 |
| PWM | YES | NO | YES | YES |
| Fan Bearing Type | SSO2 | SSO | SSO2 | SSO2 |
| SLIM | YES* | NO | YES | YES |
| Direct-Heatpipe | NO | NO | NO | NO |
| Heatpipe Thickness (mm) | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Heatpipe Count | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Price (in USD) | 54.90 | 59.99 | 49.90 | 69.99 |
Benchmarks:
Results marked “0″ means thermal limit was reached and the CPU was throttled.
As of January 2014, Modders-Inc will use Enermax Twister Storm 120mm 3500 RPM fan(s) for direct apples-to-apples heatsink performance comparison. In this review, it is between the previous generation Noctua NH-U9B SE2 and the new NH-U9S. The NF-B9 fan was also outfitted on to the NH-U9S to see how much performance improvement the NF-A9 fan brings in comparison as well as an additional NF-A9 fan for users who are curious about performance gain from the additional “pull” fan.
Performance Summary:
The NH-U9B SE2 comes with a pair of NF-B9 fans out of the box but the NH-U9S easily bests its thermal performance with its single NF-A9 fan. Granted, it is a faster 2000 RPM fan compared to the NF-B9’s 1600 RPM but when both fans were outfitted a 3500 RPM Enermax Twister Storm fan which has a static pressure of 11.125 mm-H2O, the NH-U9S pulls way ahead in performance with a 5C difference in stock and 7C difference in 4.2GHz FPU-only load. When the NH-U9S was provided an additional NF-A9 fan, it was able to outperform the larger Noctua NH-U12S under overclocked conditions.
