Question Suggestion on cooler and contact frame

[topgun505]

I have a Core i9-14900kf (do NOT intend to do any overclocking, at least not at this time). I initally had gotten a Noctua NH-D15 air cooler but it was just not going to fit over the RAM DIMMs and the housing over the rear IO ports cover. I scaled back to a NH-U12A and that fits (barely).

Two questions.

Is that NH-U12A going to be enough for that CPU?

Would a Contact Frame help? I didn't even know these things existed until just recently. How much of a difference does one of those frames make?

 

[beyondlogic]

I have a Core i9-14900kf (do NOT intend to do any overclocking, at least not at this time). I initally had gotten a Noctua NH-D15 air cooler but it was just not going to fit over the RAM DIMMs and the housing over the rear IO ports cover. I scaled back to a NH-U12A and that fits (barely).

Two questions.

Is that NH-U12A going to be enough for that CPU?

Would a Contact Frame help? I didn't even know these things existed until just recently. How much of a difference does one of those frames make?

Contact frames help with the bending issues of these CPUs to make better contact with CPU coolers. Personally I'd go aio water 280 or 240 depending on pc case

 

[topgun505]

Contact frames help with the bending issues of these CPUs to make better contact with CPU coolers. Personally I'd go aio water 280 or 240 depending on pc case

Corsair icue 4000D Airflow

 

[geofelt]

You are good.
Noctua maintains a list of suitable coolers for different processors.
Here is the list for the 14900K:
https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/INTEL-Core-i9-14900K-1762

Small differences in cpu temperatures do not make much difference in performance.
Particularly when gaming which rarely fills all available processing threads.

Contact frames seem unnecessary unless you are looking to high overclocks.

 

[beyondlogic]

Corsair icue 4000D Airflow

280 in the top acting as exhaust. Would be fine it says up to 360 aio only see room for 2 fans though so have doubts on that so 280 aio to be safe

As for contact frames I still suggest them as it's nothing to do with overclocking i9 chips run hot the substrate of the CPU can warp as I've had to use a contact frames on one of these chips in the past because it stopped reading memory because it was a bit warped.

 

[punkncat]

With the Noctua, I would consider what your tolerance is for 'normal' temps. I would expect that under load you will likely see highest temp to throttle and loud fan speed in spite of branding. These are designed to run up to 100C so don't think you will hurt anything in that regard. This could lead to leaving a bit of performance on the table.

I tend to agree with the suggestion to use water cooling for this one.