The NH-U9F is the newest version of the NH-U9, which won over 50 awards and recommendations from leading international web sites and magazines. The NH-U9F can be rotated by 90° on all sockets, boasts full compatibility with AMD’s new AM2 socket and comes equipped with a Noctua 92mm fan, which has a minimum noise rating of only 7dB(A)*. Thanks to the 4 Dual-Heat-Pipes, 37 aluminium cooling fins with a total surface area of more than 3800cm² and soldered joints for optimal heat-transfer, the Noctua NH-U9F achieves superior cooling performance at minimum noise levels.

This is really a great CPU cooler
I got this cpu cooler last year and it is great, it’s still in use off and on between testing new ones I get... but the bad review that is here is way off...
-from what I read, and he doesn’t know what a heatpipe is apprently, he has no clue what he’s doing with his installation, that’s why he has had so many problems, installation is easy if you have some skill, and it seems the motherboard he has is where the problem lies..
-everyone knows that every single product made is not compatible with everything, this is why there are revisions of them...
- as for debris and metal chips etc, I call lies on that one, I own Noctua products and they are excellent quality and design

-also there was a second revision of this cooler, he must have gotten old stock and received the first revision to run into compatibilty problems

Sorry but NO!!!
I installed the Noctua NF-9U CPU cooler on an Intel DX38BT motherboard. I HATE THIS COOLER. Here’s why.

* A lot of little parts. The mounting tabs could have been part of the base unit for all it matters. Instead you have two additional metal tabs and four tiny screws to deal with. There are no fewer than 28 parts to put this thing together on an 775 socket motherboard. (1 fan, 2 wire clips, 1 brace under the mobo, 1 insulator for the brace, 2 brackets, 2 mounting bars, 10 screws, 2 springs, 4 washers, 2 anti-vibration strips, 1 cpu cooler)

* The brace that mounts on the underside of the motherboard is not flat but instead is curved. It makes it really hard to line up more than 2 screws at any one time when you have to get four screws through the motherboard and into this x-shaped brace. Once the first two screws are in, the other two legs of the "x" are curved away from the back of the motherboard. Some pressure is needed to bring the last two legs of the "x" up against the mother board so the final two screws can be put in place. Use one hand to hold the "x" up against the motherboard, one hand to hold the mounting bar in place on the top of the motherboard, and one hand to put the screws in and tighten them up. This makes this a two person job!

* The mounting bars that attach to the top of the motherboard by screwing into the x-shaped brace are TOO CLOSE to the CPU retainer. With the mounting bars in place, you cannot open the retainer to put the CPU in or take it out!. The retainer hits the mounting bar as it lifts up and it won’t get past the mounting bar so it’s stuck in the closed position. You have to remove the mounting bar to get the CPU retainer to open which means taking the motherboard out of the case so you can get the mounting bar attached to the "X" shaped bracket again.

* The cooler cannot be "rotated" 90 degrees because the cooling fins of the northbridge chip will block the space where the fan gets mounted. Maybe on other motherboards there’s more room between the CPU and the northbridge, but the Intel DX38BT did not look dramatically different than other boards I’ve seen lately. The only option is to exhaust the hot air out the back of the case, not up and out the top. I was hoping to vent CPU heat out the top of the case and let the fan in the back of the case pick up the air coming off the video card cooler. It should not be a problem but it failed to meet my expectations.

* The brackets that screw onto the base of the CPU cooler and attach to the mounting bars are too wide. They stick out like airplane wings from the base of the cooler. On the Intel DX38BT motherboard, they hit the heatsink between the CPU and the back of the motherboard. This prevents the CPU cooler from sitting down properly on the CPU. The CPU cooler does not make clean contact with the cpu. It sits up too high on one side because the "wing" can’t clear the heatsink - it’s very obvious. You can’t slide the CPU cooler and it’s attached wings toward the back of the CPU far enough for the wings to clear the heatsink before the CPU cooler rides up on the opposite mounting bracket. I had to take out the dremmel and cut off a good chunk of the wing so it would not bump the heatsink and the cooler would sit level and flat across the CPU.

* The springs that are used to keep tension and allow for expansion/contraction of the parts between the top and bottom of the assembly are too long and too stiff. I found that I had to put a LOT of pressure on the screwdriver to get the spring to compress enough for the screw to seat into the mounting bar attached to the motherboard. Once one side was in, it lifted the opposite side so that even more pressure needed to be applied to drive the assembly down enough for the final screw to catch. I was worried about the screwdriver slipping out and scratching the motherboard. I was also worried about all the force being applied to the motherboard as I pushed down hoping for the screws to catch in the mounting bar’s threaded sockets. I wound up taking the screws out, and putting the springs in my vice-grips and compressing them until they were somewhat shorter and the need for exerting so much force was eliminated. Now the springs were not in the way of the screws reaching the threaded sockets but could still provide some tension.

* The cutting of the aluminum cooling fins at the factory resulted in a lot of little, tiny aluminum fragments. These metal slivers were all over me and the couch where I was sitting when I opened the packaging. I can’t imagine how much grief the metal fragments would have caused if they’d fallen out over the motherboard. I had to take a can of compressed air to the cooler to help ensure there was no more metallic debris left to fall into the case once assembled.

* The heatpipes lack a finished look. One end of the pipe has a smooth rounded closure. The other looks like a rudely crimped and soldered closure. I’m guessing they are fluid-filled, sealed, and able to take the vapor pressure when put in service. Still they lack the polished look of good workmanship I’ve seen on other coolers (Thermalright and ZeroTherm) and I don’t get a warm-fuzzy over on their integrity.

* The screw that holds the CPU cooler down on the rear-most side of the case will descend and hit the motherboard capacitors that the Noctua mounting bar installed on the motherboard covers. Anybody who gets carried away in running the screw down will destroy their motherboard by breaking one or two capacitors hiding under the Noctua’s mounting bar - especially true if you don’t compress the springs beforehand as you’ll be exerting so much force just to get the springs to compress you probably won’t notice the screw hitting the capacitor(s).

* The fan has three leads. Not four. All the motherboards I’ve seen lately use a four-pin connector for the CPU cooler so the fan speed can be controlled. In this case you get only one speed. Even if you slow the fan down with the supplied ultra low noise adapter, it’s still one speed. Just slower.

* The wire-clips used to put the 92mm fan on the Noctua were not easy to put on. Not hard, but not easy. They keep slipping in between the cooling fins as you work with them. I wound up leaving off the vibration dampening strips as they kept falling off the cooing fins while I struggled with the fan and the clips. I could not install the fan while the cooler was out of the box because it covers one of the screws that go into the mounting bar. If I could have attached the fan outside the case, gravity would have helped keep the dampening strips on instead of pulling them off inside the case. The wire clips can be turned end-for end. One way they fit much better and closer to the cooling fins and fans. The other way they protrude away from the fins.

For something that mounts over such a precision piece of equipment, I think this cooler is sloppy and poorly executed. I can see how there might be a compatibility problem with a motherboard that had not been on the market until just recently but even dropping the need to dremmel the bracket and not drive the screw through the capacitors, there’s still too much going on here that I don’t like.