Noctua NH-U12S Redux

This cooler is made by Noctua. This is my first purchase from them, and they live up the their reputation for excellent quality and performance! I was using the stock AMD cooler (Wraith?) that came with my Ryzen 3600. While the stock cooler was adequate for simple tasks such as word processing or the Internet, it fell short for intensive tasks such as video encoding. Starting an encode would immediately shoot temperatures up to 95°C and stay there, severely throttling the CPU. After installing this cooler (it comes with a tube of Noctua's own quality NT-H1 thermal paste) and a fan curve adjustment to accommodate the greater cooling performance, the CPU temperatures are much lower and the computer is much quieter! Idle temperatures are about 32°–36°C. Testing the performance with some video encoding, temperatures where at 70°–75° after an hour and the CPU never throttled once—Full boost throughout the entire process! Mounting the cooler was simple and straightforward with excellent instructions and diagrams. All necessary parts are included in the box. The AMD and Intel components are separate to avoid mixing them up. Extra mounting pads and brackets where provided in case you wanted to install a second fan in a push/pull configuration. The black color looks great, as black goes with everything! (No, I am not just saying that because the rest of my build is black as well.) I also used the included paste to reapply the thermal compound on my PS4 Pro, with more left over for future applications as well! Overall, Noctua has earned a costumer in me and a spot on my recommendation list.

Raymond · 2021-08-14 · via amazon

I bought this to replace the stock cooler for the i7 9700f that came in my prebuilt. The product was packaged beautifully, with a small box for mounting hardware, thermal paste and a few other accessories in the top. There was a large box containing the cooler itself in the bottom. (edited) The installation took about 2 hours (mind you, I am new at upgrading computers)  and would have taken a lot less time if I had realized initially that the back panel of my PC case was removable and had a cutout allowing me to access the rear of my motherboard. Noctua provides very well written and clear instructions for how to mount this cooler. In the box, you will find instructions for both Intel and AMD platforms. If you're building a system and you know what you're doing, it'll probably take no more than 10-15 minutes for you to put this cooler in. If you're swapping a cooler like me and have no clue what to do, you'll get by with the instructions in 1-2 hours, maybe faster. (edited) As for noise, when my system is idling, I don't hear this cooler at all. At full load, it ramps up to about 1200RPM, but the noise level remains minimal and it is certainly a huge improvement over my original cooler. Sound tests show it peaking at around 30 decibels, whereas my old cooler would top out around 55. The performance of this cooler is beyond anything I could have expected. My CPU used to idle at around 55C and would heat up to 88+ with my old stock cooler. Thanks to the NHU 12 S I am now seeing idle temps at 33C and peak temps no higher than 55. Overall , my system feels much more stable thanks to this upgrade. Lastly, this cooler is absolutely gorgeous. I've made a few upgrades since purchasing my prebuilt and I think it really pulls them all together. I did make the mistake of not measuring the inside of my case, however, and I failed to account for the raised position of the body of the cooler over the CPU. The heatsink has a couple of protrusions on the top of it which have prevented me from being able to place the glass panel back onto my case once I finished swapping coolers. My case is 19.61" x 7.28" x 16.57", so if your case has a similar width 7.28", you might want to consider buying the smaller NHU 9S cooler.

Amazon Customer · 2021-01-25 · via amazon

I purchased this cooler to cool an AMD Ryzen R5 3600 in a Fractal Design Meshify C case. The stock cooler for the 3600 is anemic (and loud) and the goal for this build was quiet operation. After reading a bunch of reviews, I opted for this cooler (even though it was more expensive than some of the Scythe options I was looking at and I love Scythe products) as the black color would look nice in the case and the emphasis in reviews on how silent it operated. The install was extremely easy. The only complaint I have is that you have to remove the fan from the cooling tower to install it; in contrast I can pull and install my Scythe Fuma 2 without having to do so (though I often remove the middle fan for ease when blowing apart my build for various reasons). I found the spring clips on the Noctua for securing fan to be a bit more temperamental than Scythe's, but no so much that it warrants giving this cooler anything less than 5 stars. The cooler comes with Noctua's NT-H1 thermal paste, which is my go-to paste for my builds, so that's a nice feature if you don't already have a syringe of this lying around (and would set you back about $13 US to buy separately). The real proof of what a gem this cooler is appears when you first power on your system. The fan spins to life without so much as a whisper. Even under load you can barely notice it running. I repeatedly had to look at the cooler to make sure the fan was spinning (the case fans are also very quiet as is the EVGA 2060 SC Ultra GPU in the case). I was very impressed at the noise level. What's even more astonishing is how effective this thin tower, single fan cooler is at cooling the CPU at such a low noise level. Noctua really knows what they are doing with their cooler and fan designs. The recipient absolutely loves the performance and noise level of the build as well as the aesthetics of the components (cooler included), so thanks for making me look good, Noctua!

isaki · 2020-01-19 · via amazon

Best Buy

Not tracked at this retailer

MSI

Not tracked at this retailer

Newegg

Not tracked at this retailer

Newegg (Open Box)

Not tracked at this retailer

VALUE SCORE

Price

$20

Price

$20