Considering the PH-TC14S's synthetic thermal test results, I think it's safe to say; 1) this heatsink is best suited to 95W TDP processors, 2) painting the aluminum fins black may improve aesthetics but also increases thermal resistance which is not desirable, 3) the slightly convex nickel plated copper base plate will bottleneck heat transfer from the IHS, unless the CPU IHS is slightly concave too.

While it's commendable that Phanteks have produced a narrow CPU heatsink for the increasingly constrained space on Intel LGA2011-3 and LGA115x motherboards, it's a crying shame the designers opted to paint the aluminum fins black. To add insult to injury, the painted aluminum fin-to-nickel plated heatpipe joints are loose to the extent the bottom fins can be shifted back and forth!

Ideally, cooling fins should be swaged onto the heatpipes with a firm metal-to-metal joint, or better yet, soldered in place. Given these perplexing thermal design choices we can only conclude the Phanteks PH-TC14S is a vanity heatsink... it takes one step forward with the much needed narrow profile and two steps back with questionable fin to heatpipe bonding and other manufacturing choices. While the Phanteks PH-TC14S heatsink does yield good sub-95W TDP thermal performance, it's a heatsink we do not recommend for higher wattage processors.

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