We take the Noctua NH-U12P for a spin and see just how cool a cooler it is when strapped to our overclocked Q6600 at 3GHz.
While Noctua has been around for a while, we’ve only recently seen their products show up in the local market. Mainly known for their heatsinks, the company also has a line of fans, along with other cooling accessories including its own thermal paste and chipset coolers for your motherboard, giving you a number of cooling solutions for your computer.
The particular cooler we’re looking at today is the NH-U12P, which uses a tower design and sits quite tall at 158mm. Implemented into the cooler are a number of cooling technologies such as dual heat pipes, the award-winning NH-U design
– which helps give excellent air flow direction
– and one of Noctua’s premium 120mm fans, the NF-P12. If you’re interested in adding a second fan to the cooler, you will be glad to know that Noctua includes another set of brackets in the box so you can add one with ease.
Out of the box, the NH-U12P supports all current processors on the market, including the LGA775 design from Intel and the AM2 and AM2+ sockets from AMD. While not included in the package, you are able to buy a Xeon mount separately for the cooler if you’re looking for some higher-end aftermarket cooling for your server.
While there are a number of aluminium fins running up the tower, both the base of the heatsink and the heat pipes that run up the centre of the cooler are made of copper to help heat extraction. The use of copper and the decision to nickel-plate it does add a bit more weight to the cooler, making it come in at a quite heavy 770g. But there’s no denying the overall look is fantastic.
As mentioned, Noctua uses one of its premium 120mm fans, which has some pretty impressive specs. The fan spins between 900rpm and 1,300rpm, putting out a very peaceful noise level as low as 12.6dBA and as high as 19.8dBA. This makes it really whisper-quiet, and it’s something you actually notice when you turn your system on for the first time with the NH-U12P installed (or don’t notice, rather).
However, what really matters when it comes to CPU coolers is performance. Fortunately, the U12P isn’t just a bunch of marketing talk. Throwing it onto our testbed gave us some pretty impressive results. Idle temps for our Q6600 at 3GHz came in at 27c/30c/26c/22c, while firing up
World in Conflict and running a few loops of the benchmark brings temps up to 41c/45c/44c/40c
– still very reasonable indeed.
While the noise levels are, of course, above the 19.8dBA rating Noctua gives us, this is due mainly to the graphics card which runs at a much louder 50dBA. Where you do notice the peace, though, is when you’re just sitting there typing away in Word or cruising the internet.
The NH-U12P isn’t a cheap cooler by any standards, with an RRP tipping almost $100. Fortunately, with a bit of hunting around you shouldn’t have much trouble shaving at least $10 off that price tag. The old saying that you get what you pay for really does come into play here. While it’s one of the most expensive air coolers we’ve tested, its excellent design and features make it well worth the money if you’re happy to spend it.
The NH-U12P is really suited for a number of different users. If you’re looking for some active cooling that is going to be extremely quiet, it’s an excellent choice. At the same time, if you want to do a bit of overclocking then it’s going to handle most things you throw at it. It could easily cool our Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 3GHz without any dramas. If you’re happy to spend the money, there aren’t many other coolers that can perform as well as the U12P.