Installation and Testing:

Note: All testing was done with the fan blowing air into the heatsink. Pictures with the fan label facing outward were done for display purposes only.

First, the manual was read through to get familiar with the installation process. It's similar to other methods out there, but a little different in the fastening methods. There is a back plate and plenty of screws. The difference is mainly in the brackets that hold the cooler in place. Noctua's manual has clean, easy to understand illustrations to follow.

Bracket Arm, Cooler Plate, & Spring-Screw

Same Components

Typically, the cooling fan is the first thing to mount, but not in this case. It will get in the way of one of the final torsion springs and screws. And since the fan mounts with only the use of two wires, it's no big deal to wait till after.

Mounted Fan

Room For Another Fan

The LGA 775 components were located as well as the Common components. Following the directions, two base plates were pre-attached to the cooler's base. Next, the motherboard back plate and two mounting arms were installed on the motherboard. (Thermal paste was applied at this time.) Then the cooler was simply lowered over the CPU and centered over the two bracket bolts. Two included torsion springs and screws were tightened a couple turns each side at a time.

Ready For The Fan

That's all there is to mounting the NH-U12P to your motherboard. Sure, you have to remove your motherboard, but then you pretty have to with most coolers out there aside from the stock heat sinks and the very few aftermarket coolers like the OCZ Vindicator. The fan is held in to place by two wires and are quite strong enough to stay in place.

Fan Mounted

Just Covers The Chipset

The cooler was given a solid 24 hours to settle on the test rig by running Orthos off and on to ensure the thermal paste had properly settled. Afterwards, the system was left to idle for 3 hours to get the official idle temperature.

The Test System

Since many game users are going to purchase this cooler, the system was stressed with several 3DMark06 passes as well as a good 45 minutes of Call of Duty 4 on high settings to make sure temps were as high as possible. Temperatures reached an average 32 C only occasionally reaching 33 C for a brief couple seconds.

Once again, both Orthos and Prime 95 were alternately used to get a full load on the dual processors. The programs were left to run 2 hours each which produced a solid 42 C temp. Once satisfied with the tests, it was time to overclock the CPU.

The processor was overclocked to 400 MHz BUS, or 1600 MHz (FSB) Front Side Bus. This increases the E6600's stock 1066 MHz FSB to 1600 Mhz, about 500 MHz difference. This will produce some more serious heat no matter what kind of system it is.

NH-U12P = Noctua          SK II = ASUS Silent Knight II

And the results speak for themselves. The Noctua NH-U12P does a surprisingly excellent job of handling the CPU temps. To be honest, this is actually pretty impressive results for such a silent fan which is equally impressive.

Actual..

Testing...

Fan Position.

As for noise, well, there really isn't much at all. The NF-P12 Cooling Fan emits very low noise at 20 dB while pushing 92 meters of air per hour. And there is absolutely no vibration coming from the fan. There is also no odd pitch or noises typically caused by an unbalanced fan. It really is a nice fan.

NH-U12P = Noctua          SK II = ASUS Silent Knight II

Conclusion:

There are two sides to the Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler which shouldn't disappoint anyone. One side, we have a very well fabricated cooler that didn't have one blemish. Typically, I like coolers with a bit of shine especially if you can see it in the case. But, shiny doesn't always accompany good performance. And most the time it's too dark to notice anyways.

A Job Well Done!

And I thought the tower design was too cliché, but it seems to look fine once it's installed. It just shows that you can't really judge the book till you've opened it to take a look. Surprisingly, it's a good looking beast of a cooler.

What the cooler could use is the option for a fan with a little more shine or even an LED. I realize that the fan is suppose to match Noctua's company colors which is fine and dandy. Perhaps, an optional fan with an LED to dress such a sweet CPU cooler would suffice. And if that doesn't happen, just stick your own choice of 120mm fan on there like the Enermax Everest.

All it's splendor aside, it's a fantastic performer. It's easily the best, most capable cooler to cross this test bench. While it carries over the commonly seen tower design, the performance will easily be the deciding factor for the user who literally wants nothing but the coolest CPU possible. The Noctua NH-U12P is a great performer, it's cool, it's recommended, and it's my current top choice of CPU coolers.

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