Asus X99 Deluxe with Noctua NH-D14

[Expanding Man]

Very soon I'll be getting an Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard for a Core i7 5930K Haswell-E. I've recently had some bad experiences with heat (in particular, the shitty plastic feet on the stock LGA1366 cooler were popping out of the MB without my knowledge, long story short, I believe the old CPU is fried) so I decided to go with the ridiculous Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 (Might have tried liquid cooled this time around, but my residence is semi-permanent so I actually have to move the tower about once a month, so I don't want to tempt fate). I was very pleased to see that ALL LGA2011 heatsinks use actual metal screws.

Anyway, that thing is gigantic, and I'm horrified it won't fit. I have a full size case, and I'm pretty confident that the distance from the top of the board to the first PCI-E slot is standardized, so I think I'll be ok with case and video card (assuming nVidia sticks to their release date it'll be the GTX980). The board however has some pretty large heatsinks (I don't THINK larger than on older boards) but more concerning is that the board has RAM slots on both sides of the CPU. There doesn't seem to be any DDR4 RAM on the market which specifically says "low profile", but it doesn't tend to have the large heatsinks that some of the DDR3 sticks due thanks to the somewhat lower power consumption of DDR4. (I'm probably going to get the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400, looks small.)

So, if there are any early adopters out there who can give me a good idea whether this enormous heatsink will fit, I'd really appreciate it.


Update:
Ok, I have managed to find some videos with various different types of RAM I might buy. Looks pretty safe, I think only the huge ones didn't have clearance.

On the other hand, it looks like the distance from the CPU to the first PCI-E slot can vary much more than I thought from board to board. So, I am now much more concerned about the video card clearing.

I'll only have one video card. I seem to remember that when multi-PCI-E boards first came out you had to use the first slot first. Can you choose on the newer boards? Can I put the video card in a lower slot?

If not, I'd still like to try to find out if it clears. I'll be moving the machine so it will be unacceptable if the heatsink ever knocks into the card. Any clues from X79 users?

Update:
A little more research seems to reveal that since my CPU will have a ridiculous 40 PCI-E lanes, the second slot should be at 16x by default even if it couldn't be changed (which it can). That should mean I'll be perfectly safe installing the graphics card in slot 2, giving me a ton of clearance and a comically high bandwidth. Still, if anybody actually puts a NH-D14 in an Asus X99 Deluxe before I do mine next month I'd be very interested to hear about it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Are you going after the NH-D14 because you will be overclocking or are you just wanting a superior solution to the stock setup in principle? There are other coolers that work just as well as the Noctua D14 but have reliefs in the bottom of the heatsink for RAM clearance. The fans on the D14 can also be mounted slightly higher in order to clear RAM if the fan is the issue. The most helpful thing to know right now is the model number and brand of your intended case.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Also, just because there are four full time x16 PCIe slots does not necessarily mean that slots #2, 3 and 4 are capable of being primary slots. They may have support for that, many boards do, but just as many will not recognize a GPU in those slots unless there is already a GPU in slot 1. Then slot 2 will function at x16 for a second card etc, etc. The point of them all x16 is mainly that unlike many motherboards in the past that would allow x16 on slot 1 but only x8 on slot2, or x16 on the first two but only x8 on slot 3 etc., is that all installed cards will be at x16 speeds. Not necessarily that you can use slot #2 in lieu of slot #1. But it's highly probably you will be able to.

Obviously ASUS has no specifications or manual available yet on their website for this motherboard, I looked everywhere, I can neither verify nor debunk that theory.

 

[Expanding Man]

Thanks for your help.

I got the NH-D14 because I want something better than stock (by the way, according to Newegg the Haswell-E's don't even come with a stock heatsink). There aren't quite the number of options that I'd have expected, previously I have almost always used stock heatsinks but recently had a bad experience with an old one popping out of the board a bit without my realizing (thank god LGA2011 use actual SCREWS!).

What you said about the PCIe slots is more or less what I suspected. I'm going to try to figure out if the X99-Deluxe supports using the 2nd slot as primary. (I know it's possible to use 2nd at 16x).

 

[Darkbreeze]

This Noctua fan is a top flow setup that comes with dual fans but can be also used with only a single fan on top or bottom, for the purpose of RAM clearance with tall heat spreaders or small width cases that won't allow a standard height cooler to fit. Cooling is only slightly worse than the D-14 and D-15 but if you're not doing extreme overclocking, and maybe even then, it should be fine. You might also consider that if you are able to use the second slot for the GPU, many of these modern coolers can be mounted in two different directions. One way facing the back with the fan or fans pointed to the rear upper case fan and one way with the fans pointed towards the top case fan. This allows for a slightly thinner width in the RAM area.

http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&setlng=en&products_id=37