NoctuaNH-U14S TR4-SP3, Premium-Grade CPU Cooler for AMD sTRX4/TR4/SP3 (140mm, Brown)

The media could not be loaded. I have a high-end Workstation (purchased in 2020) that has a Threadripper 3960x, 3080 FE GPU, m.2 SSD expander and 1600W power supply. When I bought the system, I really didn't consider the fans/ cooling because the cooling for the CPU was a ENERMAX solution which came with fans as well as the case a Lian Li Mesh Cool II and used those. This was the first desktop I've had since early 2000's and had been using laptops (workstations) for the past 8 years +/- since I graduated college/ grad school.Last week the ENERMAX cooler gave signs it was dying, had the pump ramped up to max and all fans to max and my CPU was still hot at 70-90C... Because I remember the attendant at Micro Center saying ENERMAX AIO had issues, but it was the only cooling solution in store that would be adequate with the CPU, I rolled the dice. It lasted me 3 yrs, I honesty thought it would have died earlier, so I wasn't caught off guard completely.So I decided to go all out with air coolers and found that the best was a Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3, Premium-Grade CPU Cooler for AMD sTRX4/TR4/SP3 (140mm, Brown) which brought me to research the Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWM, Heavy Duty Cooling Fan, 4-Pin, 3000 RPM (120mm, Black) for the case as I wanted new and better ones that had no RGB. I considered the NF-F12 over the other Noctua alternatives for the sheer power, 3000 RPM and the volume of air it pushed just was un matched. I rather have the power and not needed than need it and not have it. So my biggest concern was that to keep all this hot hardware cool, all fans would have to run at high speeds and this would mean noise.To my delight after installing them, the entire system runs at 40C and below and the noise is not an issue as I can run these at 1k RPM and no real noise. I have 6 of these fans, 3 at the front (push-config - 800-1200 RPM +-300), 2 on top (push-config- 800-1200 RPM +-300) and 1 at the back (pull-config - 700-1000 RPM +-300) as well as having the NH-U14S with a 2x fans push-pull config 1500/1200 RPM.I probably get temps even further down if I tweak it further. But as it is... I'm very happy with the results in terms of both performance and noise levels. Yes if you run these at full 3000 RPM they are loud (not as bad as I feared either, but obviously loud) but the volume of air is also incredible.One little difference is because these are "industrial" the fans only come with 4 screws and that's it.I believe it was a good investment, specially because this machine is my daily driver for work (I'm a Data Scientist & Developer for SAS solutions). I got reliability and simplicity of air cooling as well as the brute power of massive air-flow if I need.I will definitely consider using Noctua cooling solutions on my next build when I decide to upgrade this machine sometime in the next couple of years.

The pictures do NOT do justice to how HUGE this thing is. I've installed it in an enormous full-tower case, and even so, I was worried about it having enough room. It barely fits!Installed with the optional second fan in push-pull configuration. Installed thermal paste exactly according to Noctua's instructions, which is nine small dots in a grid of three rows, then four larger dots in the gaps between those. Its performance may be helped by the fact that I'm running 6 case fans, providing plenty of airflow and plenty of cool air for this CPU cooler to work with. Top, front, and bottom of the case are all intake, with the rear of the case for exhaust. The CPU cooler blows front to rear, which plays very nicely with that airflow arrangement.But that massive size gets you extremely impressive cooling. People told me that my Threadripper 3970x had to have water cooling, that no air cooler could keep it from thermal throttling. People were wrong. I've done benchmarks, games, rendering, CPU crypto mining ... nothing I've thrown at it can get the CPU temps above 65C, even with this massive 250W CPU churning at 100% all night, the CPU temp usually hovers around 53-56C well below the thermal throttling cutoff of 90C. When at idle or doing non-intensive tasks, it's usually down at 31-46C. I never overclock anything, of course. Not worth it. But if I wanted to, I'd definitely have plenty of thermal headroom to play around with given this incredible heatsink!The size does have drawbacks, though. I did have RAM clearance issues, which forced me to relocate the two fans higher on the heatsink than they were intended to go. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to have hampered thermal performance much, as temps are still extremely good. I didn't have to adjust it for GPU clearance. It comes very close to the nearest pcie slot, but still stays far enough away that there's a couple millimeters of clearance.Overall, HIGHLY recommended to anyone looking to keep one of these Threadripper monsters cool. Not for small cases, though, and be prepared to deal with some RAM interference. I wish now that I'd gone with fewer modules of a larger size each, rather than mostly filling the banks. Then I wouldn't have had to relocate the fans.