We all know the old ?David and Goliath? story. Not the weird claymation show from the 1960s, obviously, but the one from the Bible that has been transferred into popular culture to be synonymous with the little guy against the giant. Mind you, the 1960s show is definitely worthy of discussion, if only for how incredibly strange it was, and possibly for why they made the dog able to speak?.but only very slowly. However, this is an article about cooling, and the possible capabilities of smaller coolers, and we will not be using slingshots and stones during our testing.

It's only natural that larger coolers will have more cooling potential. You will notice that ?potential? is in italics, because that is what it is. More mass means greater potential, but the execution of the design plays a huge role in its ultimate performance. Soldering techniques, alloy composition, fin design and density, and heatpipe design all have enormous impacts on overall performance. These are areas that Noctua has consistently been nearly flawless in, and explains why coolers like the NH-D14 have had so many imitators that never quite lived up in terms of performance. Even their smaller pieces, such as the NH-U12S, have outperformed far larger competitors. When you look at truly going small, such as in rackmount builds, this attention to execution becomes even more important.