I think it's a good decision that the 8700K was delidded for testing how effective coolers perform - as the review says it exposes the true ability of the coolers and distinguishes performance differences between the coolers more clearly. Also, a lot of us here are enthusiasts who would delid their CPU anyway (I'm one, which I did to my 6700K), so there's some even more direct validity there. Essentially you'd just choose the best cooler for whatever budget you're willing to spend, so these reviews will help you do that. I'm impressed that this new single tower cooler was nearly as good as the dual tower NH-D15. I like that the Noctua air coolers are really quite silent in their operation while retaining good performance - I get the impression that they're quieter than most AIO water coolers, while cooling almost as well or better in some cases. Plus you don't have as many parts that can fail when it comes to an air cooler. It's for all those reasons I've got a Noctua NH-D14.

I have the NH-U12S on my 8700K and it works great. I've not overclocked the total frequency of the CPU, but I have toggled to have ALL cores boost to 4.7ghz in the MSI bios. Temps are pretty low and had zero problems with it even in the summer when it was very warm. Noctua make good stuff and recommend them.

smashmambo:

I have the NH-U12S on my 8700K and it works great. I've not overclocked the total frequency of the CPU, but I have toggled to have ALL cores boost to 4.7ghz in the MSI bios. Temps are pretty low and had zero problems with it even in the summer when it was very warm. Noctua make good stuff and recommend them.

You could pull 4.7GHz off on a 8700K with pretty much any cooler. It's nice to have that OC headroom since you're going to need it. You essentially don't have an upgrade path for just the CPU, and you'll be losing performance with the onslaught of security patches. I really do believe Intel knew exactly what they were doing. I said it during the Mesozoic Era, and I'll say it again now: Noctua need to stop being smug stubborn assholes, stop mocking potential customers, and sell their items REGULARLY (not "Okay, pay us $400 for a colour mod.") with options aside from grandpa diarrhea brown. No company other than the literal best would have gotten away with it. They remind me so much of Research in Motion (Blackberry). I have an NH-D15 AM4 Asshole Edition, and I'm satisfied with it, but I absolutely would NOT have bought it if there was literally any other high end AM4 cooler available at that time. It was the only high end one which came with the mounting, all the others required separate shipping for mounting with unknown delivery time if they had it at all. It's so ugly that I bought the "Chromax" cover for it in white to reflect the case lights off it. For $100 you'd think they'd include the entire cooler and not just the bare bones.

the Rolls-Royce of air coolers:D:D:D

Captain_Hook:

Soon 😉 https://www.overclock3d.net/news/cases_cooling/noctua_s_all-black_chromax_cpu_coolers_and_fans_are_ready_for_production/1 Well, NH-U14S is a bigger one, so for some it can be an issue (especially in mATX) What do you mean by a better template? That's the whole idea 🙂 Thank you 😉 . Look closely here https://www.guru3d.com/articles-categories/cooling.html for the authors. Also I do some chassis, RAM and other stuff reviews for over a year now 🙂

I meant tier list lol, no idea why I typed template. Overall I want to find the best sub $70 cooler for a zen2 8core.