Introduction

Continuing our CPU cooler review series, today we tested Noctua NH-U12P, which uses the now standard tower design with four U-shaped heatpipes and a 120 mm fan. Will its performance be compatible to its price? Let's see!

A detail you must keep in mind with this cooler is the fact it supports only Intel socket 775 and AMD sockets AM3, AM2+ and AM2 processors. For Intel socket 1366 CPUs there is another model, U12P-SE1366, which besides being compatible with this socket comes with two fans instead of just one. If you want to use U12P with older AMD processors (sockets 939 or 754) Noctua offers a kit with the compatible clips.

U12P's box is nice and strong, and from a front window we can see part of its brown fan.

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Figure 1: Box.

Inside the box we found the heatsink, the fan (that doesn't come installed to the cooler), three plastic bags with installation hardware, an NT-H1 thermal compound tube, a Phillips screwdriver and a user manual. This manual is actually made by two folders, one explaining installation on AMD CPUs and another for Intel CPUs. There is also two adapters for connecting the fan to the motherboard, about which we will talk about later.

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Figure 2: Box contents.

The general aspect of the U12P heatsink is excellent. The fins are thick, which gives a solid constitution to the cooler. The copper base and heatpipes and the aluminum fins are nickel-plated with a golden brown aspect.

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Figure 3: Noctua NH-U12P heatsink.

Introduction (Cont’d)

Looking the heatsink from above we can have an idea of the shape of the fins and we can see the tips from the four U-shaped heatpipes. An amazing detail about this cooler is the fact it supports two fans, one at each side. Even though it comes with only one fan it comes with two extra clips and you can easily install another 120 mm fan on it.

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Figure 6: Top view.

The base of the cooler is very smooth, but it doesn't have a mirror finishing.

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Figure 7: Base.

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Figure 8: Fan.

This fan uses a miniature three-pin connector, with no PWM control. Noctua included two adapters that you can see in Figure 9, named "Low Noise Adaptor" (L.N.A.) and "Ultra Low Noise Adaptor" (U.L.N.A.). These adapters are simply resistors connected in series with the fan positive wire, so the fan receives a lower voltage and spins at a lower speed. We can't say it's an advanced noise reduction technology, can we?

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Figure 9: Fan speed reducers.

Installation

U12P installation is not simple. We will show step-by-step how we installed it on our socket 775 CPU, but  installation on AMD CPUs is pretty much alike, just using other parts in order to fit the different hole positioning.

First of all you must screw two tabs on the cooler base, as you can see in Figure 10.

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Figure 10: Tabs screwed on the base.

Before putting the fan in place you must stick two silicon strips (shown in Figure 11) on the heatsink, which help reducing noise by absorbing vibrations.

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Figure 11: Silicon strips.

Installing the fan on the heatsink is very easy, you just need to put it in place and then fasten two wire clips that hold it.

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Figure 12: Fan installed.

The next step is installing the cooler holder on the motherboard. In Figure 13, you can see the required hardware for socket 775, one metal plate that stays under the motherboard and two clips installed on component side. Clips for AMD processors are similar. In both cases it is necessary to remove the motheboard from the chassis, unless your case gives access to the bottom of the motherboard through a window cut on the motherboard tray.

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Figure 13: Motherboard clips.

Installation (Cont'd)

In Figure 14, you can see how the clips look like after installed on the motherboard. Four silicon washers must be installed on the points the upper clip touches the motherboard, avoiding damage to it when the screws are tightened. You can install the clips longitudinally or transversally, i.e., you can rotate the cooler 90 degrees if needed.

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Figure 14: Clips installed on the motherboard.

After installing the holder, you just need to apply thermal paste on the CPU, put the cooler in place and tighten two inner-thread screws that will fasten the tabs to the holding clips. These screws use small springs to make sure that everything will be firm.

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Figure 15: Cooler screwed to the holder.

Installed on the motherboard we can have an idea of the size from this cooler. It didn't interfere with any component on our motherboard, but if your chipset heatsink is too high you may face some challenge installing this cooler.

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Figure 16: Installed on the motherboard.

In Figure 17, you can see how it looks inside our case. As any other tower design cooler, it will not fit SFF cases.

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Figure 17: Installed.

How We Tested

We are adopting the following metodology on our CPU cooler reviews.

First, we chose the CPU with the highest TDP (Thermal Design Power) we had available, a Core 2 Extreme QX6850, which has a 130 W TDP. The choice for a CPU with a high TDP is obvious: as we want to measure how efficient is the tested cooler, we need a processor that gets very hot. This CPU works by default at 3.0 GHz, but we overclocked it to 3.33 GHz, in order to heat it as much as possible.

We took noise and temperature measurements with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to achieve 100% CPU load on the four processing cores we ran at the same time Prime95 in "In-place Large FFTs" option and three instances of StressCPU program.

We also compared the reviewed cooler to Intel stock cooler (with copper base), which comes with the processor we used, and also with some other coolers we have tested using the same methodology.

Temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer, with the sensor touching the base of the cooler, and also with the core temperature reading (given by the CPU thermal sensor) from SpeedFan program. For this measurement we used an arithmetic average of the four core temperature readings.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the video board cooler so it wouldn't interfere with the results, but this measurement is only for comparative purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be done inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, what we do not have.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core 2 Extreme QX6850
• Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3L
• Memory: 2 GB Corsair XMS2 DHX TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX G (DDR2-800/PC2-6400 with timings 4-4-4-12), running at 800 MHz
• Hard drive: 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST3500320AS, SATA-300, 7200 rpm, 32 MB buffer)
• Video card: PNY Verto Geforce 9600 GT
• Video resolution: 1680x1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply required: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case: 3RSystem K100
  

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional installed on FAT32 partition
• Service Pack 3
• Intel Inf driver version: 8.3.1.1009
• NVIDIA video driver version: 182.08

Software Used

• Prime95
• StressCPU
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 ^oC error margin, i.e., temperature differences below 2 ^oC are considered irrelevant.

Our Tests

On the tables below you can see our results. We ran the same tests with Intel stock cooler, Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro, Akasa Nero, Cooler Master V10, Thermaltake TMG IA1, Zalman CNPS10X Extreme, Thermaltake ISGC-100 and Noctua NH-U12P. Each test ran with the CPU idle and the with the CPU fully loaded. On BigTyp 14Pro and TMG IA1 the tests were done with the fan at full speed and at minimum speed. On Noctua NH-U12P we tested using the fan speed reducing device (U.L.N.A.) and then tested again with the fan connected directly to the motherboard (full speed). With Intel stock cooler, Akasa Nero, V10, Zalman CNPS10X Extreme and Thermaltake ISGC-100 the motherboard controls the fan speed based on CPU load level and temperature.

On the graph below you can see the temperature difference between the cooler base and the room temperature with the CPU idle and fully loaded. Values shown are in Celsius degrees. Remember that the lower the number the better is cooling performance.

On the next graph you can have an idea on how many Celsius degrees was CPU core hotter than room temperature during the tests.

Main Specifications

Noctua NH-U12P main features are:

• Application: Socket 775, AM3, AM2+ and AM2 processors.
• Fins: Aluminum.
• Base: Copper.
• Heat-pipes: Four "U" shape copper heat-pipes.
• Fan: 120 mm.
• Nominal fan speed: 1,300 rpm.
• Fan air flow: 92.3 m³/h.
• Maximum power consumption: 1.08 W.
• Nominal noise level: 19.8 dBA.
• Weight: 1.7 lbs (770 g).
• More information: http://www.noctua.at
• Average price in the US*: USD 58.00

* Researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.