- Review -

24.12.2009 Overclockers.com

Before moving to the U12P, I was cooling my Phenom II 955 with a Thermaltake SpinQ. My SpinQ did alright, but it was inhibiting my chip from clocking past about 3.8 GHz. The cooler was fine handling the heat of stock voltages with the Phenom II, but once I tried to up it to around 1.4v, the cooler started to get a lot hotter than I was comfortable with. The NH-U12P-SE2 has fixed that problem for me, I am very happy to say. Here are the differences between the two coolers. Ambient room temperatures are about 18°C during both tests. My PII 955 was clocked at 3.6 GHz, with stock voltages. I used this to simulate a mild overclock that an average user might have. I was also using both fans with the U12P, and both were set to 900 RPM, which were near silent. As you can see above, the U12P lowered my idle temperatures by 6°C on average, and my load temperatures by 10°C. Eventually, after a few tweaks, this did allow me to safely reach 4 GHz, which was a goal of mine for the processor.

"For about $65, it is competing right up there with the TRUE and Megahalems, and it includes two fans, whereas the TRUE and Mega don’t include any, and it is necessary to buy mounting kits for them if you aren’t using a certain socket." (James Temple, Overclockers.com)