Noctua NH-U14S TR5-SP6 & NH-D9 TR5-SP6 4U Great For Cooling AMD EPYC 8004 "Siena" CPUs

While the embargo hasn't passed yet for the Threadripper 7000 series, a later review will look at the cooling performance there for those AMD HEDT CPUs. This initial review of the NH-U14S TR5-SP6 and NH-D9 TR5-SP6 is looking at these coolers for keeping cool custom built AMD EPYC 8004 "Siena" processors. In particular, the flagship AMD EPYC 8534P 64-core processor. The AMD EPYC 8534P has a 200 Watt default TDP and clocks up to 3.1GHz.

I compared both of these Noctua Socket SP6 heatsinks to a Dynatron A54 SP6 heatsink while running the AMD EPYC 8534P.

With the AMD EPYC 8534P system I ran 190 different benchmarks that spanned 14+ hours of testing per heatsink. During that time the AMD EPYC Siena CPU temperature was polled every second as well as also recording the reported CPU power use.

To not much surprise, the Noctua heatsinks did a great job cooling the AMD EPYC 8534P flagship Siena processor. The two heatsinks both allowed the EPYC 8534P to operate noticeably cooler than the Dynatron A54 heatsink, which is smaller for being able to fit within 2U height requirements. The Dynatron A54 during the 14+ hours of varying benchmarks ran with a 63 degree average and 87 degree peak. Both of the tested Noctua heatsinks led to a 41~42 degree average and a ~64 degree peak. The Noctua NH-U14S TR5-SP5 did perform slightly better than the NH-D9 TR5-SP6 4U due to the slightly larger size and larger fans, but overall both heatsinks worked great for cooling the AMD EPYC 8004 series 64-core processor.

The processor during testing peaked at 230 Watts with all of the coolers tested while on average for the mix of workloads benchmarked was around 120~126 Watts.

When taking the geometric mean of all 190 benchmarks, the performance when using the Noctua coolers was just ever so slightly faster with the ~20 degree lower CPU temperature allowing for some boosting advantages, but the overall was very small with even 2U passive heatsinks being suitable for cooling Siena on some servers with sufficient case fans.

If you are looking for a heatsink fan for cooling an AMD EPYC 8004 series processor or upcoming Threadripper 7000 series, the NH-D9 TR5-SP6 is a great option if looking to fit within 4U height requirements or otherwise a small chassis. If building a larger server or workstation with 5U or a tower, the Noctua NH-U14S is quite large and it will be interesting to see how its performance pans out with the Threadripper 7000 series that go up to a 350 Watt TDP.

For those building a workstation or server where noise is important, both of these Noctua heatsinks were very quiet during operation. Even at load these PWM fans were quite quiet as we've come to love with Noctua cooling... Certainly much better than Dynatron heatsinks and other conventional server cooling. The build quality of these Noctua heatsinks were also wonderful as always for Noctua products. About the only downside is that these Noctua heatsinks are expensive at $120~130 USD.

Thanks to Noctua for providing these heatsink review samples for this EPYC Siena cooler testing and will be followed-up with Threadripper 7000 series testing after launch.