When upgrading my current PC, I knew that I was going for the AMD Ryzen 5900X. This beast of a CPU has 12 cores and 24 threads.
But I didn’t know how I wanted to cool it. So I went hunting online, and firstly looked at AIO liquid coolers.
However I soon went off the idea, so I started browsing Noctua’s website instead. They have some amazing coolers and awesome cooling performance, and I ended up buying the Noctua NH-C14S cooler – which fits perfectly inside my micro ATX case.
This video explains my thought process in full, and covers the cooling performance that I’ve had so far.
Video Transcript
Hello, I’m Tristan. When I specced out my current machine, I knew that I wanted to go with a Ryzen 5900X. It’s a beast of a CPU – it’s got 12 cores, 24 threads… I mean, I don’t even have enough fingers (or toes) to show that many threads.
But whilst I was sure about the CPU, I… wasn’t so sure about how to cool it. After all, a BEAST of a CPU needs an awesome cooler, right?
So I immediately went looking for liquid coolers online. However since I was new to liquid cooling and my case (a Corsair Carbide 88R) doesn’t support custom liquid cooling setups, I naturally looked at “all in one” liquid coolers instead.
These appealed to me because they WOULD fit in my micro ATX case, but there’s two downsides. I would lose one or two chassis fans, and many budget all in one coolers don’t actually have great reviews. I mean, they generally have good reviews on Amazon, but some people complain that they leak after a few years, plus their actual cooling performance wasn’t great.
To get a genuinely good liquid cooler (that was durable, and had awesome cooling performance) would have been really, really expensive. As a result, I started considering air coolers. I already knew that Noctua products were the bees knees (I’m so cool…) so I went on their website.
I started looking for coolers which were compatible with my micro ATX case – and as expected, many of their best coolers were NOT compatible. Yay. But there did seem to be SOME good options at least, which I then cross referenced with Noctua’s Standardised Performance Ratings. Yes I know they could be biased, so I also cross-referenced with independent reviews elsewhere, but from the ratings it was clear that the Noctua NH-C14S cooler was probably my best option.
It had pretty good cooling performance, and it actually fit inside my small case which was a bonus. I’m really glad that I purchased this particular cooler. It felt really robust when I was installing it, and it was quite straightforward to install too.
It also keeps my temperatures quite low. With Chrome, Photoshop and a few other programs open, the CPU is around 40-45 degrees celsius (with 22 degree celsius ambient temperatures). If I run Prime95, I then hit 70 degrees celsius after a few minutes, which tops out around 75-80 degrees when running for a longer amount of time.
And when I cancel the test, CPU temps drop pretty quickly. In short, I love this Noctua air cooler. It’s brilliant, and the fact that it fits inside my fairly small case AND outperforms many all in one liquid coolers is quite awesome.
And that wraps up this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please click the thumbs up button. Please also don’t forget to subscribe, and click the bell icon which will notify you when I release new videos. Thank you!
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