The days of seeing heatsinks that are made up of fins and small fans are gone, now due to the heat generated by the faster running processors the need for a refined cooling solution has come about. Now it is standard fare to see a heatsink with large area copper plate which matches up with the base of the processor, the fin area on most modern heatsink is large enough on most heatsinks to mount either an 80mm or larger fan.

One additional trick that a large number of companies have began to implement is to add heatpipes to their heatsinks. This step alone can usually take and average heatsink and convert it into a good heatsink. We shall see if it hold true for the Noctua NH-U9 we are about to review.