Performance
The test setup is the same for all coolers and it includes the TR 1920X CPU, ASRock X399M Taichi motherboard and 32GB of Patriot Viper 4 DDR4-3733 memory ( even though on the photos is Ballistix Elite memory kit ).
The NH-U14S TR4-SP3 is the only cooler which is rated at above 180W TDP. As we can see, it performs a bit better than other two Noctua coolers. Between every cooler is about 2-3°C difference what may be higher on other processors.
The NH-U14S TR4-SP3, as expected, offers great performance and I don’t think there is any other air cooling solution on the market which is better. There are single AIO water cooling kits which should perform about as good but cost more so you may think what would be a better option. I guess that a lot depends on space in the case and airflow.
I already mentioned about overclocking limits in our last Noctua TR4 cooler review. Even though the NH-U14S performs better than other coolers and we can see a couple of degrees lower temperature then maximum stable frequency remains about the same. We were able to set 50MHz higher frequency for quick benchmarks but the stable clock is still 4.1GHz at 1.4125V. It doesn’t change fact that result is really good, especially that we are overclocking 12 core processor at really high TDP.
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 is clearly the best cooler designed for AMD Threadripper. I guess there isn’t much more that can be done on ambient cooling, especially using only air cooling. If you are looking for a top performing air cooling solution and you have large enough PC case then it’s clear answer what to pick.
