Noctua NH-U12P: Top Performance AND Silence

Conclusion

Past test results with Noctua coolers taught us to respect Noctua's claims. Like Thermalright, Noctua has a track record of delivering what they promise. However, the two companies really come to cooling with different areas of expertise. Thermalright has a long history of top-performing coolers. Thermalright doesn't ship coolers with fans, so Thermalrights require top-performing fans to end up as top performers. You can also control noise by selecting a fan that exhibits ultra low noise. Fans than can provide good performance with low noise tend to shine on Thermalright heatsinks.

Noctua on the other hand has a sterling reputation for developing the lowest noise coolers around. Their fans are masters of low noise, with respectable performance that is always near the top but rarely challenging for first place performance. For this reason, we were a bit skeptical when Noctua claimed top performance with incredibly low published noise levels. Noctua is capable of some brilliant engineering so we did not dismiss the claim, but we really didn't expect to fully validate their claims in our testing.

We are happy to report that our skepticism was not justified in this case. Noctua really has produced a top-performing cooler with incredibly low noise in the NH-U12P. The combination of staggered Vortex Control notches, SC Drive, and SSO bearings in a nine-blade design does the trick as promised. Paired with the venerable and continually refined Noctua heatsink, performance of the stock Noctua NH-U12P mirrors the top Thermalright all the way to 3.91GHz. Noise remains below our system noise floor throughout the entire range of testing.

The Thermalright goes on to 3.94GHz with a single fan, indicating the design may be slightly more efficient. However, add a second NF-P12 to the Noctua and it also reaches 3.94GHZ and sets new records for cooling temperatures along the way. Even with two fans, noise remains below the noise floor - and you can reduce it even further with shunts if you choose. We saw no reason to do this as two fans at full speed were still as silent as we could measure in our system - with noise levels below a quiet suburban bedroom at night.

For those who don't care about overclocking, the Noctua NH-U12P is still a great choice. It cools as well as the best so far with one fan - at idle and under load at stock speeds. Add a second fan and the stock temperatures are all new records. We haven't tested a cooler that does a better job of cooling at stock speeds. However, the Noctua cooler with two fans at $90 is not cheap, and the Alpine coolers we recently tested do almost as well at about 1/6 the price. For most who won't overclock the Alpines are fine, but if you want the best stock air-cooling you can buy the Noctua NH-U12P with an extra NF-P12 fan is the ultimate.

These test results for the Noctua are truly impressive, but they do not dethrone the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme - at least not yet. The superb component here is the Noctua NF-P12 fan, which is a brilliant piece of engineering. We doubt our Thermalright or any air-cooler will top the 3.94GHz that seems to be the limit of our test bed Core 2 Duo. However, we suspect the Thermalright combined with the NF-P12 could match or even exceed the results with the Noctua heatsink. Having said that the practical reality is it is not easy to mount two NF-P12 fans on a Thermalright, whereas the Noctua heatsink is designed for push-pull and even comes with the extra wires to make it easy.

There is no doubt the Noctua NH-U12P has joined the ranks of the best performing coolers ever tested at AnandTech. With two NF-12P fans in push-pull, it turns in the best cooling results at the highest overclocks we have ever seen. We can also recommend the Noctua NF-P12 fan for performance plus silence on the Thermalright. If you want a complete cooling kit balanced for performance with silence, the NH-U12P is an excellent choice.