- Review -

11.08.2015 pcGameware.co.uk

Once out of the box you can feel how well made the Noctua NH-U12S actually is, the fins alone seem to be made from a stronger aluminium than most other heatsink I have come across. The whole thing feels very solid and you already get the feeling that this cooler is going to do its job well! The Noctua NH-U12S features the Secufirm2 mounting system which is in my opinion one of the best out there. The NH-U12S come complete with a NF-F12 PWM controlled fan which has a maximum rotational speed of 1500RPM. Fitting the cooler could not be easier and this is down the the SecuFirm2 mounting system that I mentioned just now. The screws can only be tightened to a certain point (still be gentle mind please!) so there is no need to worry about over or under tightening them, very useful for the heavy handed out there. The performance of the Noctua NH-U12S is very good and as you can see from the charts above the cooler does a good job of what is it designed to do… keeping your CPU cool of course! In our performance charts the NH-U12S sits just under the Reeven coolers but only by less than 0.50 degrees Celsius which is hardly worth quibbling over. The fact that the NH-U12S kept the average CPU temperature at 50 degrees Celsius in our Prime95 torture test when running at 3.5GHz and below 60 degrees Celsius at 4.0GHz is an impressive performance for a cooler of this size. The Noctua NH-U12S also comes out trumps in the acoustic department only registering a maximum dBA of 37 with the 120mm fan running at 100%. All in all the numbers are pretty good.

"The Noctua NH-U12S is well built, well designed and quite frankly a CPU tower cooler that just does its job beyond well!" (Iain Hayman, pcGameware.co.uk)