Date:
Tuesday , April 01, 2008
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Noctua NH-U12P Processor Cooler

Four heatpipes, thirty-six fins, SSO bearings, Vortex Control notches, and psycho-acoustic optimizations...wait just a damn minute. Let's find out if Noctua spent more money on marketing or engineering. It's just a CPU heatsink, right?

INTRODUCTION

Noctua is a company that almost every hardcore cooling enthusiast has heard of at one point or another. Rather than attempt to follow the crowd by designing a heat sink based solely for cooling, Noctua decided to make their heat sinks as quiet as possible. Anyone who has used a Noctua heat sink knows that while they are no slouch in the cooling department, the few degrees they give up in performance is paid back in the form of a very comfortable computing experience as it would pertain to system noise. It is this dedication to “silent” computing that has earned Noctua their notoriety.

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Noctua is sharing with us today its newest processor heat sink on the retail market, affectionately named the “NH-U12P.” Well, lack of creative naming aside, this is an updated version of Noctua’s successful NH-U12F cooler and the new U12P promises to offer better cooling than its predecessor at the same noise levels. We love promises here at the [H]ardOCP. Mainly we love exposing the “marketing” that so often props them up while begging for your hard earned cash. That said, let’s take a look at Noctua’s newest offering and see if it can keep its promises and keep up with the leaders in the marketplace.

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