- Review -

29.09.2008 TweakTown.com

It took a little time but Noctua has now entered the workstation and server market with their new NH-U12DO (Dual Opteron) and NH-U12DX (Dual Xeon) coolers. Since most of the coolers found in this market are very loud and set the performance bar just above the required minimum, I think Noctua will do well with the new workstation coolers. When it comes to Opterons specifically, most enthusiast coolers coming out as of late do not include hardware to mount to 939 processors; the base that Socket F is designed after, so the possibility of using most other enthusiast coolers is shrinking quickly for Socket F. Noctua is capitalizing on the short comings of others and making a real play for workstation superiority with their new coolers. I have yet to find another high quality, low noise cooler made specifically for the Opteron or Xeon. As for uses, the workstation market is comprised of heavy Photoshop users and CAD/CAM professionals. I am sure these guys would like to have a silent workstation and that is now possible. On the other side of the fence, audio/video professionals require truly silent workstations and these are the users that will really benefit from Noctua’s latest workstation line of coolers. Mixing down a sixteen track recording can be difficult when a pair of fans is raising the acoustics of a room. I have seen several studios that spend large sums of money to have the workstations wired from a different room for this reason.

"The NH-U12DO puts Noctua in the workstation market where they will see little competition from other companies producing high quality CPU coolers. With the high quality parts Noctua puts out, is there really a need for anyone else to try?" (Chris Ram, TweakTown.com)