With the NH-U9B we send the first Noctua cooler into the race. The comparatively small tower cooler should have a lot of potential and even fits in HTPCs. Also the noise level should be on a very reasonable level.Noctua was founded as a cooperation of the Austrian Racom computer distribution G.m.b.H. and the Taiwanese Kolink International Corporation. Further they have a developmental partnership with the Austrian institute for heat transfer and ventilation technics (ÖIWV). This partnership makes the application of modern scientific measuring-, simulation- and calculating-technologies available to Noctua.
On the following pages we will show you what the Noctua NH-U9B is capable of.
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Specifications and included in delivery
Specifications
| Model | NH-U9B |
| Material | Aluminium / Copper |
| Dimension (WxDxH) | 95 x 70 x 125 mm |
| Cooling area | ca. 2400 cm2 |
| Fan dimensions | 92 x 25 mm |
| RPM | 1000 - 1600 RPM +/-10% |
| Acoustic pressure | < 18dB +/-10% |
| Connector | 3-Pin |
| Power consumption | 1.44 Watt |
| Flow rate | 37.8 CFM |
| Weight | 550 g |
Included in delivery
- CPU cooler with 92 mm fan
- Mounting kit for Socket AM2, 939, 940, 745 and 775
- Mounting components
- Thermal grease
- two Noise-Adaptor
- Manual (en)
- Mounting tool
In the huge delivery you will find the cooling block, the 92 mm fan, the mounting kits for the different socket and even tools to mount the cooler.
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Construction and design
Construction
The Noctua NH-U9B mainly consits of aluminium and copper. The groundplate is made of copper and coted with nickel as well as the heatpipes of which you'll find four. Totally you'll count 37 aluminium fins which are ventilated by a 92 mm fan which does 1750 rpm at maximum.
The very good manufacturing process shows when you take for example a closer look at the heatpipes which have a small bending radius and they aren't squeezed or anything like this at all.
Design
The fins got a special structure to enlarge the cooling area and improve the airflow. Also they are connected with eachother. This helps improving stability as well as airflow again.
The 92 mm fan comes with a very unique fin desing. On the edge of every single rotor blade you'll find cuttings to improve cooling capacity as well as reducing noise level. If you drive the cooler at 12 volts it rotates with 1750 rpm and we call it subjectively audible. If you do so with only 6 Volts the fan is subjectively silent.
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Mounting
To install the cooler you get a lot of material to do so in a perfect way. Mounting the cooler on a AMD-CPU is pretty special because also in this case you get a backplate to which you'll be able to attach the cooler.
Installing the Noctua NH-U9B is a litte time-consuming but when you've finished the cooler fits to every single socket in a very perfect way!
AMD Mounting kit
Intel Mounting kit
The cooler can be mounte in every single direction not depending on the socket platform you have.
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Testsystem and testroutine
Testsystem
| Mainboard | Gigabyte X48-DS5 |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Quad QX6800 |
| Memory | Kingston KHX 8500 D2K2 DDR2 |
| Hard disk | Maxtor 160 GByte |
| Power supply | OCZ 520 Watt |
| Thermal grease | Arctic Silver 5 |
Testroutine
In our tables we mention absolute temperatures as well as the temperature difference between CPU core and environment temperature. We further provide subjective information about the noise level of the fan the cooler comes with.
The noise level we classify as follows: very silent, silent, audible, noisy and very noisy.
The CPU temperature we evaluate with Real Temp and with Prime95 we reach a 100% CPU load.
Futher we test the different fans with different voltages and under different conditions. After one hour warm-up we perform three test runs where every single one takes one hour:
- Standard clock 12 volts load
- Standard clock 6 volts load
- Overclocking 12 volts load
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Results standard clock (2.93 GHz) 12 volts
| Cooler / fan | Temp. diff. load | Absolute temp. | RPM | Noise | Price | Review link |
| Xigmatek Achilles S1284C | 47 K | 68 °C | 1550 | silent | CHF 65.- | Xigmatek Achilles S1284C |
| Noctua NH-U9B standard | 51 K | 75 °C | 1750 | audible | CHF 94.- | Noctua NH-U9B |
| Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 | 51 K | 74 °C | 2120 | very noisy | CHF 74.- | Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 |
| EKL Gross Clock'ner Blue Edition | 52K | 75 °C | 1400 | audible | CHF 59.- | EKL Gross Clock'ner Blue Edition |
| EKL Gross Clock'ner | 57 K | 80 °C | 1100 | silent | CHF 59.- | EKL Gross Clock'ner |
| Gelid Silent Spirit | 59 K | 83 °C | 2500 | noisy | EUR 27 USD 35 | Gelid Silent Spirit |
| Zerotherm BTF-90 | 59 K | 72 °C | 2700 | noisy | CHF 49.- | |
| Xigmatek Apache EP-CD901 | >80 K (crash) | >100 °C (crash) | 2570 | noisy, hum | CHF 19.- | Xigmatek Apache EP-CD901 |
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Results standard clock 6 volts
| Cooler / fan | Temp. diff. load | Absolute temp. | RPM | Noise | Price | Review link |
| Xigmatek Achilles S1284C | 55 K | 76 °C | 1000 | silent | CHF 65.- | Xigmatek Achilles S1284C |
| Noctua NH-U9B standard | 57 K | 81 °C | 1450 | silent | CHF 94.- | Noctua NH-U9B |
| EKL Gross Clock'ner Blue Edition | 60 K | 83 °C | 950 | silent | CHF 59.- | EKL Gross Clock'ner Blue Edition |
| Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 | 61 K | 85 °C | 970 | silent | CHF 74.- | Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 |
| EKL Gross Clock'ner | 62 K | 85 °C | 900 | silent | CHF 59.- | EKL Gross Clock'ner |
| Zerotherm BTF-90 | 65 K | 82 °C | 1200 | audible | CHF 49.- | |
| Gelid Silent Spirit | 71 K | 95 °C | 1900 | audible | EUR 27 USD 35 | Gelid Silent Spirit |
| Xigmatek Apache EP-CD901 | >80 K (crash) | >100 °C (crash) | 1540 | audible | CHF 19.- | Xigmatek Apache EP-CD901 |
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Results overclocking (3,66 GHz) 12 volts
| Cooler / fan | Temp. diff. load | Absolute temp. | RPM | Noise | Price | Review link |
| Noctua NH-U9B standard | 54 K | 78 °C | 1750 | audible | CHF 94.- | Noctua NH-U9B |
| Xigmatek Achilles S1284C | 56 K | 77 °C | 1550 | silent | CHF 65.- | Xigmatek Achilles S1284C |
| Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 | 56 K | 80 °C | 2100 | very noisy | CHF 74.- | Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 |
| EKL Gross Clock'ner Blue Edition | 57 K | 80 °C | 1400 | audible | CHF 59.- | EKL Gross Clock'ner Blue Edition |
| EKL Gross Clock'ner | 61 K | 84 °C | 1100 | silent | CHF 59.- | EKL Gross Clock'ner |
| Gelid Silent Spirit | 64 K | 88 °C | 2500 | noisy | EUR 27 USD 35 | Gelid Silent Spirit |
| Zerotherm BTF-90 | 64 K | 76 °C | 2700 | noisy | CHF 49.- | |
| Xigmatek Apache EP-CD901 | >80 K (crash) | >100 °C (crash) | 2570 | noisy | CHF 19.- | Xigmatek Apache EP-CD901 |
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Conclusion
With the NH-U9B Noctua developed a very good performing cooler and considering the compact size of the thing the performance is even better!
The very well thought mounting concept allows the installation of the NH-U9B with backplate not only on Intel platform it also provides AMD platforms with the feature. Like this the cooler fits perfect on both platforms.
The well thought design of the aluminium fins gives you an adequate performance for standard PC systems.
Subjectively we categorise the fan at 12 volts as audible and under 6 volt conditions it is subjectively silent. With the Noctua NH-U9B you can easily drive the fan with only 6 Volts and there is still plenty of performance.
We can recommend the Noctua NH-U9B for every single purpose! If there is plenty of space we can even recommend using it in a HTPC at 6 volt. Only the not so low price tag is damping our euphoria but considering the the very high quality of every single piece included in the delivery it is absolutely legitimate.
You can buy the Noctua HN-U9B for CHF 94.- at Digitec.ch.
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Author: i.gigier@ocaholic.ch Revised by: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch