- Review -

06.02.2014 hardCOREware.net

At 160W, the NH-U12S with an extra fan is second only to the U14S, and actually beats the NH-D14 in dual fan mode. When I first received these results during testing, I thought something may be wrong – I did not expect either of these single tower coolers to beat the venerable D14. I contacted Noctua, and they explained that this level of performance is expected with their new heatpipe design, at least in “certain scenarios”. My guess would be that these scenarios include open bench testing. In any case, even in single fan mode, the NH-U12S performs extremely well, beating many of the dual fan, dual tower coolers we tested. [...] In its stock form, the NH-U12S falls behind the 140mm dual tower coolers like the Dark Rock Pro 2, Noctua NH-D14, and so on. However if you don’t have the room to accommodate such huge coolers, the choice is made somewhat easier. The NH-U12S may not be able to take a CPU past 200W of thermal dissipation with a single fan, but if you are in the 160W range, it will suit your needs perfectly well.

"If you have a very specific amount of space to work with, and the NH-U12S fits within those constraints, it is probably a better choice than just about any closed loop cooler that would otherwise fit. Adding a second fan improves performance dramatically, allowing more overclocking headroom while maintaining a relatively low noise level." (Carl Nelson, hardCOREware.net)