Noctua NH-U14S & NH-D9 Air Cooling For The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X
For those wondering about the air cooling prospects for DIY builds with the new 350 Watt AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series processors, here's a brief look at the new Noctua heatsink options for the Socket sTR5 processors and the results in use with a Threadripper 7980X 64-core / 128-thread workstation.
Noctua recently launched the NH-U14S TR5-SP6 and NH-D9 TR5-SP6 coolers that are designed for use with the new Threadripper 7000 series as well as the new AMD EPYC 8004 "Siena" server processors. Earlier this month I already provided a look at the Noctua cooling performance with the EPYC 8534P that is a 200 Watt TDP 64-core part while now with the Threadripper 7000 series these Noctua coolers are going up against 350 Watt CPUs. The Noctua NH-D9 TR5-SP6 4U is designed to fit within 4U height requirements for rackmount systems. The NH-D9 TR5-SP6 is a dual tower heatsink with two 92mm fans and similar to other NH-D9 heatsinks. The Noctua NH-U14S TR5-SP6 is a massive heatsink with two 140mm PPWM fans (NF-A15). Due to its large size it does not fit within 4U height requirements: the total height ends up being 165mm albeit can fit within 5U rackmount systems. Both of these Noctua coolers have a cooper base and heatpipes with aluminum fins.
Air cooling with 350 Watt Threadripper processors is very much possible as we've seen similarly out of the EPYC 9004 series Genoa(X) and Bergamo processors but does require ensuring you have adequate airflow and heatsinks rated for Threadripper 7000 series use / 350 Watts. For this testing today the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X + ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI motherboard system was running within a SilverStone RM51 5U rackmount server chassis. This 5U server can handle up to 360mm liquid cooling radiators and has two Air Penetrator 184i PRO intake fans and additionally is able to fit a single 120mm fan in the rear for exhaust, to which I installed a Noctua NF-P14s Redux fan. This chassis fan configuration was maintained across all of the cooling tests in this article. The SilverStone RM51 5U rackmount case has been working out very well with the Threadripper 7000 series workstation testing and will be featured in its own review soon on Phoronix.