Noctua NH-U12F HSF review



As I've already mentioned the NH-U12F heatsink can be installed in two orientations.

On the next picture you can see how it looks like in the 90-degrees orientation:



I decided to go for the other orientation because it looks a bit better and because this allows most of the air to be blown out of the case immediately instead of going through the power supply first.



I then used the test system for a couple of days so the thermal compound could break in a bit before I measured the temperatures under idle/load conditions.

Testing
The Noctua NH-U12F was tested on the following system: The heatsink will be compared to the stock Intel HSF that ships with the Core 2 Duo E6400 processor and the ThermalTake BlueOrb FX cooler. I will test the cooling performance in a similar fashion as I did on the other two heatsinks: by measuring the temperatures during idle and full load modes. I first test the temperatures at stock clockspeed and then I also do some overclocking to see how well this cooler handles an overclocked system.

The temperature of the processor is measured with the Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT). To get the idle temperatures I just boot into Windows XP and let the system rest for 15 minutes. To get the load temperatures I ran Prime 95's Torture test while simulating a workload level of 100% for both cores in the Intel Temperature Analysis Tool. This combination really stresses the processor to a maximum workload. Under normal heavy load conditions the system will almost never reach such high temperatures but this test gives us a good idea of how well the heatsink can handle extreme temperatures. For the overclocking test I boosted the FSB of the E6400 processor from 266MHz to 333MHz, bringing it from 2.13GHz to 2.67GHz

Temperatures:
Here's the first set of temperatures. These were measured with the E6400 processor running at stock frequency. All temperatures are in degrees Celsius.



As you can see the Noctua NH-U12F outperformed the other two coolers. At idle the temperature of the processor rose only 1.6°C above the room temperature with the NH-U12F. During load the processor got 10°C less hot with the NH-U12F than with the stock Intel HSF.

Besides cooling much better, the NH-U12F was also a lot more silent than both other coolers.

Now lets check out how well the NH-U12F cools the overclocked test system:



During the overclocking test the temperature rose quite a lot. The NH-U12F still managed to cool the system pretty well. During the load test the processor got 10°C less hot with the NH-U12F than with the standard Intel heatsink and 5°C less hot than with the ThermalTake BlueOrb FX.

Now that I've compared the heatsink to some other coolers I decided to do some more testing. I was interested to see how the U.L.N.A. would influence the temperature and I also did another test with the fan removed to see if you could use this heatsink without a fan at all:



Much to my surprise the Ultra Low Noise Adapter barely increased the temperatures. The processor only got 1° hotter with the U.L.N.A. and that's almost negligible if you take the higher room temperature into account. It seems the NH-U12F needs very little airflow to keep the temperatures low.

The temperatures without the fan are also still OK. In fact, when you compare the results from this chart with the first chart in which I compared this cooler to the standard Intel heatsink you can see that the NH-U12F without active cooling gets 2°C less hot than the actively cooled Intel heatsink!

I then did the same test again, but now with the processor overclocked:



Once again I noticed the temperatures barely increased with the U.L.N.A. Without the fan attached the heatsink didn't manage to keep the processor cool, temperatures rose to a staggering 67°C during the load test. However, that's still not that bad considering the temperature rose to 66°C on the standard Intel HSF with a room temperature of 20.8°C

Noise
The Noctua NH-U12F is very quiet, this HSF produces a lot less sound than the ThermalTake BlueOrb FX and the standard Intel HSF.

When I tested the heatsink with the U.L.N.A. and without the fan attached I couldn't really notice a big difference in noise levels. I suppose this is because other components in my case like the power supply's fan were too noisy so the overall noise levels didn't drop all that much.


Conclusion
I'm very impressed with the Noctua NH-U12F. The cooler is really big and heavy but it's build quality is excellent and it keeps the processor very cool. Additionally, the noise levels of the Noctua NH-U12F fan are exceptionally low and the package also includes anti-vibration pads and an Ultra Low Noise Adapter to further decrease the noise levels.

There are only two small drawbacks with the NH-U12F. The first one is the price. The Noctua NH-U12F is, like most high-performance coolers, pretty expensive but it's well worth it. The second drawback is its weight and its size. The cooler will fit without a problem in most standard midi or full-tower desktop cases but I doubt it will fit in most small form factor cases. Memory modules with big heatsinks or motherboards with big heatsinks to cool the northbridge and voltage regulators may also cause compatibility issues but fortunately, you can install the heatsink in two different orientations.

The Good Stuff
- Excellent cooling performance
- Very silent
- Can be installed in 2 different orientations
- Detailed installation guide

The Bad Stuff
- Expensive
- Very big

For its very good and silent cooling performance I give the Noctua NH-U12F a 9/10 and our Editor's Choice award.



Added: June 1st 2007
Product reviewed: Noctua NH-U12F HSF
Reviewer: Thomas De Maesschalck
Score: 9/10
Page: 4/4



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About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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