- Review -

20.03.2012 DreamwareComputers.com

Given how thin the heatsink on the NH-L12 is, it's quad heatpipe and dual fan design go a long way towards boosting it's performance. Graphed above are the CPU temperature results I achieved with each possible configuration of the NH-L12. I was surprised to see only slightly under a 4 degree difference between both fans running at full speed and only a single fan with the L.N.A adapter installed. To see where the NH-L12 stood against some competition I decided to face it off against the Silenx EFZ-120HA5 tower cooler and the Noctua NH-D14. The EFZ-120HA5 is a single tower, single fan cooler which will cost you around $33 CDN (half the price of the NH-L12) and the NH-D14 is a large dual tower, dual fan cooler with a hefty $99 CDN price tag. As you can see, the smaller heatsink design of the NH-L12 didn't hold it too far back from the larger coolers it was tested against. At CPU idle there was less than a two degree temperature difference between the NH-L12 and the competition. At load, the large NH-D14 did take the lead, but surprisingly the Silenx cooler could only compete with the NH-L12 when the NH-L12 was running in single fan mode. In dual fan mode the NH-L12's dual fan configuration seemed to show a strong advantage over the EFZ-120HA5 despite the larger larger fan and heatsink tower design f the EFZ-120HA5.

"With the NH-L12 Noctua has shown that they can pack their legendary CPU cooler performance into a smaller package without having to cut back on the performance or silence found in their full size models. The NH-L12 performed great in my testing with incredibly quiet operation and CPU temperatures that were surprisingly lower than I would have expected (given it's small heatsink size). If you're building a small form factor system and don't want to compromise on cooling performance then the Noctua NH-L12 is well worth it's money." (Steve Blackwell, DreamwareComputers.com)