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Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler

Submitted by jwhitakr on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 09:59.

Cases/Coolers

Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler Review

(3.5 star rating)

Written by: William Ford

With todays high end processors, heat has become a major problem. Noctua has designed the NH-U12P CPU cooler to get the best performance out of your computer by keeping the CPU as cool as possible so that it can function at its highest efficiency. One of the best known ways to cool your processor is by heat dispersal using a large heat-sink to draw the heat from the processor and a large fan to blow the heat away from the heat-sink. This type of cooling is nothing new and has been in use since the first x86 based computers were created. The reason it is still in use today is because, quite simply, it works.

Design and Installation

The Noctua NH-U12P is a beast of a heat-sink with a large 120mm fan. It uses the well designed NF-P12 fan as part of the design to keep your CPU nice and cool even under extremely high loads. The design is more actually more complex than it looks. Installation takes a little skill but not so much that a person of elementary education and good direction following skills could not handle. Still, it is not one of the easier CPU cooler installations I have done. There are two separate sets of parts and instructions for Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs. The CPU I used was the Pentium Core 2 Duo 3.16, and so I used the Intel parts.

The CPU cooler also comes with a full syringe of Noctua NT-H1 which is a very effective thermal paste on par with Arctic Silver and other popular brands. It only requires a small dab of the thermal paste to help transfer the heat from the processor to the heat-sink more effectively. There is literally enough left over to install four or five more processor coolers.

The Austrian designed NH-U12P is not the most aesthetically pleasing computer component - but with four dual heat pipes it certainly gets the job done. I would recommend it more for a non-windowed case where it can do its job without being seen. I also had concerns about the weight pulling down on the motherboard but it held rather solid and there have been no incidents from the weight. At 600g, it is a fairly heavy cooler once it’s all assembled.

Specifications