Noctua NH-U12P
PrintCool and quietly competent
At first glance, the Noctua NH-U12P is nearly identical to another tower-of-power CPU cooler: Thermalright’s Ultra-120 eXtreme (reviewed July 09). Like that cooler, the NH-U12P consists of a copper heat exchanger and four dual-heat pipes, topped with a tall stack of aluminum cooling fins with a front-mounted fan. At 6.2 inches high, 5 inches wide, and 2.8 inches deep, the NH-U12P is nearly the same height as the Thermalright, not quite as wide, but quite a bit deeper.
Noctua ships its cooler with a top-of-the-line brown-and-beige NH-P12 fan with nine slightly beveled blades, which is held onto the cooling fin stack by a set of rather flimsy wire clips. The fan itself comes with three 3-pin power options: regular, low-noise, and ultra-low noise, which set the fan to spin at 1,300rpm, 1,100rpm, and 900rpm, respectively. The fan is impressively quiet even at top speed.
The Noctua NH-U12P is one of the best coolers we've ever tested, and quite quiet at that.
We like Noctua’s SecuFirm mounting system—two mounting brackets screw into a backplate and the cooler is fastened to the brackets via a pair of spring screws. This makes installation considerably easier than on similar models, in which the whole cooler must be mounted directly to the backplate, although the position of the mounting screws means fans must be attached after the cooler is mounted.
In our tests, we found that the NH-U12P, paired (as shipped) with a single NH-P12, performed to within a few degrees of the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme at both idle and full burn. Noctua shipped ours with an extra $20 NH-P12 to clip to the other side of the heatsink, but we saw no reduction in temperatures when we used two fans instead of one.
A few gripes: The wire clips that attach the fan to the heat dissipaters are flimsy and difficult to attach, especially with the cooler already mounted to the motherboard. And the cooler just plain takes up a lot of room. But for all that, it offers powerful, quiet cooling with performance and price nearly identical to our champion Thermaltake U-120 eXtreme, with an easier install process to boot.
Noctua NH-U12P
Nocturnal
Great performance, multiple speed options, quiet at any setting.
Noxious
Flimsy fan clips; bulky. Additional fans don't give better performance.
9
Benchmarks
| Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme | Noctua NH-U12P | Stock Cooler | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Idle (C) | 24.75 | 25.25 | 38.25 |
| 100% Burn (C) | 40.75 | 42.25 | 69.5 |
Best scores are bolded. Idle temperatures were measured after an hour of inactivity; load temperatures were measured after an hour's worth of CPU Burn-in (four instances). Test system consists of a stock-clock Q6700 processor on an EVGA 680i motherboard inside a Cooler Master ATCS 840 case with stock fans.
More like this
pratt
September 04, 2009 at 3:41pm
I'm curious as to why Maximum PC has yet to include a Core i7 test bed.
Core i7 thermals are much higher than C2Q's and it would be nice to see how well these coolers perform on i7 platforms. Granted the old Q6700 isn't the coolest of processors, but an i7 950 would be a better thermal test of these heat sinks because often these things work great with C2Q's but can't quite handle the high end thermals of an i7.
Pureoverclocking
September 04, 2009 at 12:56pm
you guys need to review Prolimatech Megahalems is the best cpu cooler in the market.
BlazePC
September 04, 2009 at 11:35am
I used this cooler in it's available 1366 configuration and it keeps my X58 Classified/ i7 975 well under 30'C at idle and below 50'C when working really hard. I used the second fan to replace the noisey a$$ fan that came standard in my case, so that extra fan was a nice bonus as my overall case noise is way down now and it is a pleasant sounding white noise ta boot.
The spring clips to hold the fan onto the sink are designed that way for a reason and I personally found them easy to install and remove if you need to, to make adjustments and such.
I can't recommend this cooler enough;
Great value for the money, and from what I've read, great service after the sale - if you need it.
Go get one!
ETNPNYS
September 04, 2009 at 11:18am
I must say, I'm very impressed with Noctua's fans. I put an NF-B9 as a replacement into my CPU cooler and it's amazingly quiet at full speed. A review of the NF-B9 that I read somewhere stated that the guy's hard drive is now his loudest component - and, quite frankly, he's absolutely right... The max RPM is a lot lower than my old fan, but somehow this thing still flows enough air to keep the CPU at the same temp as my old fan - but while being completely silent.
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WFUJay
September 04, 2009 at 10:55am
Why haven't you guys reviewed the Prolimatech Megahalems CPU cooler? IMO it's the best on the market and receives very little exposure. If anyone needs it, they do.
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