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Noctua NH-U12S and NH-U14S CPU Cooler Review

Cooling/CPU Cooling by leeghoofd @ 2013-08-06

Austrian Cooler giant Noctua released a while back two new additions to their popular CPU cooling line-up. Two single slim design tower coolers in two different versions: the NH-U12S utilizing a 120mm fan and it's bigger brother the NH-U14S, sporting a bigger 140mm fan. Both coolers are designed for uncompromising performance, however not at the cost of mainboard and RAM compatibility. Unlike other cooler manufacturers Noctua isn't updating it's product range on the fly, a clear sign that the design and technology behind their products is reflected in great lasting performance and reliability. The latter statement is backed up by a 6 year warranty on the cooler and included Fan.

Temperature Results and Noise Measurements

Let's start off with the i7-3960X running at the default Turbo speed of 3900MHz. Our ASUS X79 Sabretooth board is pumping 1.25Vcore on AUTO setting. Notice that at idle, the CPU is not dropping back to a lower multiplier. After 15 minutes of idling we got the following results with the Noctua coolers:

The NH-U12S manages to remain cooler than most previously tested air coolers we have in our lineup. Only the Scythe Ashura with it's 140mm Fan manages to stay ahead. If we install the 2nd Fan, the IDLE temps come close to it's bigger brother the UH-U14S.

The NH-U14S is the best single fan or dual Fan cooler in the roundup, plus offering good enclosure, mainboard and RAM compatibility. Now let's see what happens when we start Priming.

Once the heat is crancked up we see that both the Noctua coolers give the competition a good run for their money. Impressive nevertheless to see the humble NH-U12S battle it out with the far bigger Scythe Ashura. A clear indication that a good heatsink design bundled with a powerful, yet silent Fan can be very effective. The NH-U14S has no issues to stay well in front, no matter if in single or dual fan configuration.

Time to throw our air coolers in the AIO pool. This time we overclocked the CPU to 4500MHz at 1.35Vcore. Higher clocks are possible, but not on all air coolers as the setup would crash or lock up as temperatures went out of bounce.

The NH-U14S even manages to come close to the CORSAIR H80 and the H80i, the latter operating in quiet mode. The NH-U12S is just trailing with 1°C. Not bad at all for a slim Tower cooler.

When priming at 4500MHz the i7-3960X CPU pumps out massive heat. The NH-U12S is able to keep thing running sub 80°C. Installing the 2nd Fan nibbles of half a degree. The limited cooling surface doesn't benefit that much from the Push and Pull setup on our particular test bed... The bigger NH-U14s, out of the box, is cooler then Scythe's Ashura in PnP configuration. Once we add the 2nd Noctua Fan, temps drop almost another degree, again coming close to the Corsair H80 and H80i in quiet mode. And even in quiet mode the CORSAIR H80i is far more audible then both Noctua solutions.

These powerfull fans are dead silent too, logic to see the slightly higher in RPM A12 PWM version being a tad more louder then the NF-A15 PWM Fan. Note that the test is conducted at full blast !

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