Noctua NH-U12DXi4 vs NH-U9DXi4 vs ?

[Audioaficionado]

I'm looking at getting two Noctua CPU heat pipe Xeon LGA 1366 coolers. They are quite spendy, but good. The U12 will fit, but it's huge. The U9 is more reasonably sized. They will eventually be used on two 130W TDP Xeon X5690 six core processors. These have very solid mounting through the Xeon back plates on the SuperMicro server board.

If not Noctua, what else would be good and be solidly mounted? Don't want any system that tends to rock under stress or gravity. Coolermaster Hyper 212+ heatsinks look good, but will need to have the mounting hardware modified to work.

Since these aren't 'C' type coolers, I'll need effective side panel mounted case fans to blow onto the motherboard's hot components and the graphic cards. 200mm or more sound good?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

I would go for Noctua every time.
And since you'll be getting 130W chips, get the big ones.

 

[Audioaficionado]

I'll have to make sure the large case fans will clear the tops of the cooler towers.

 

[Mandrake4565]

What about the Noctua or Thermalright here?

 

[Audioaficionado]

Need two matching units.