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Today we’ll be taking a look at yet another fine cooling solution from the good folks at Noctua; a company whom, if you’ve read our cooling reports before, you should be quite familiar with by now. However, if you haven’t, all you need to know is that they specialize in making top quality and acoustically fine-tuned PC cooling solutions.
While we’ve reviewed quite a few Noctua products recently, today we’ll be looking at one of their more compact cooling solutions, the Noctua NH-U9S, which is a single tower asymmetrical design, in a compact 9cm form-factor.
PACKAGING, PRICING AND SPECIFICATIONS
Taking a look at the front of the packaging, we are once again greeted by the classic Noctua color scheme, which they use on all of their packaging. It’s an elegant design, which we can’t take much issue with, except for the lack of a detailed image of the actual cooler, which we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past when reviewing their other products.
We have some key features, and specifications on either side, as well as a multilingual product description around back. The silver seal on the front of the package indicates that the cooler is the “S version, with better compatibility” what that means is this cooler features a design revision over the older Noctua NH-U9B, which makes it much more compact, and therefore more compatible with certain configurations.
Like the NH-D9L we previously reviewed, the NH-U9S comes with a single 92mm NF-A9 premium PWM fan, and features support for a second, which is sold separately. The cooler also uses Noctua’s SecuFirm2™ mounting system which features support for Intel’s LGA115x, 2011/2011-v3, and AMD’s AM2/AM2+, AM3/AM3+, FM1, FM2/FM2+ sockets.
A quick search on Amazon will bring us a current pricing of $59.99, putting this cooler in line with other premium low-profile coolers.
Inside the box we’ll find the mounting kit and accessories box packed neatly at the top, underneath that we’ll find the cooler itself with the fan pre-installed, encased in some thick cardboard packaging which should have no issues protecting it in shipping.
Inside the accessories box we’ll find the Intel and AMD installation sets packaged separately in easy tear plastic bags, a set of installation manuals, and a backplate for Intel 115x motherboards. We’ll also find the low-noise adapter for the fan which changes its maximum RPM from 2000 down to 1550, as well as a 4-pin PWM y-splitter for powering a second fan. Noctua also includes their signature Noctua case badge, a tube of Noctua’s NT-H1 thermal compound and a Phillips head screwdriver to help with installation.