From what I've seen, C1 4 allows you to turn off Luminance NR COMPLETELY, unlike version 3.x.x, where even if you have luminance NR at zero, there's still *something* going on there with the NR.
You said you're using default settings: I believe the default luminance NR is set to 35. If you turn it off to zero, you'll get more detail. The only reason these crops don't look that great is because of the color noise.
The only thing I don't like about C14 is it's chrominance NR. If you set it to MAX, the color in other areas of the image become REALLY messed up. If you set just a little, or set the slider to the middle, it still doesn't do a great job, IMO.
I use Canon DPP RAW convertor to remove color noise, believe it or not. I think it does the BEST job of any software (uh, and it's free if you have a Canon camera).
Just bring in the 16 bit TIFF from the converted RAW into DPP, and remove that nasty color noise. Or use a NR program, but make sure the NR software you use doesn't remove detail.