Date: February 8th, 2007
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Noctua
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PRODUCT PICTORIAL AND WALKTHROUGH
The instruction sheet has clear instructions, with pictures, for installing the NC-U6. Thermal paste and an adhesive backed foam cushion are included, should the user wish to use them. Two cleverly designed, articulated clips allow the NC-U6 to be installed on the vast majority of motherboards with either loop or through-hole mounting. This simple, elegant solution, which also allows such wide compatibility, is really quite impressive. It also allows the cooler to be rotated up to 120 degrees to avoid any obstructions that would otherwise preclude its use. Nice job, Noctua!
PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
The testbed I used for this review consists of the following components.
-DFI Infinity 975X/G motherboard
-Intel E6600 Conroe CPU (overclocked to 3.0 GHz, stock voltages)
-OCZ2G8002GK RAM (2 x 1024)
-Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU HSF
-Antec Nine Hundred case (stock fans set to low speed)
-EVGA 6800 XT graphics card (Zalman VF700-Cu cooler)
-Zalman ZM600-HP PSU
-Western Digital Raptor 150, Seagate Barracuda 320
The stock Northbridge cooler on my DFI Infinity 975X/G mobo is a passive aluminum affair, to which I added a 40mm fan some time ago. To level the playing field as much as possible, I removed the stocker, cleaned the base and applied some Arctic Silver 5 compound before re-installing it for baseline testing. (I was a bit surprised to find that the OEM compound had performed quite well, within 1-2C of the AS5.)
After establishing some baseline results, the stock cooler was removed, the chipset and cooler base cleaned with alcohol and fresh thermal compound and the foam cushion were applied.
