Thermalright IFX-14 heatsink plates are shaped as flames, which is pretty symbolic considering the cooler name:

The aluminum plates are soldered to the nickel-plated copper heatpipes. They sit very tightly on the heatpipes, so you will not detect any shifting or jingling when the cooler is equipped with fans.

The copper base is also nickel-plated:

The heatpipes lie in special grooves. The thinnest part of the base measures 3mm. To insure better contact between the heatpipes and the base they are soldered to the base grooves:

The base finish quality remained the same as by the previously discussed models. You can feel the machine marks on it:

Frankly speaking, the base quality led to a very funny (or tragic?) incident. The very first Thermalright IFX-14 sample that we received about a month ago had such uneven base that when we put it on the desk it stood there like a tilting doll rocking smoothly from one side to another. Of course, we couldn’t anticipate any efficiency from a cooler with such bent base. Our express test showed that this sample lost not only to Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, but also to cheaper cooling solutions. I was about to start fixing the base myself, when our lab received another sample of Thermalright IFX-14.

Luckily, the second cooler turned out much more even than the first sample, although the thermal compound imprint on the CPU heat-spreader also wasn’t ideal: