Noctua NH-L12 L-Type Low Profile CPU Cooler Review
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
The first thing to note is when we did our testing we kept the 120mm fan on top. If you were to remove it you would see higher temperatures but for most people a height of 93mm will be low enough so we saw no need to remove it.
As you can see for such a ridiculously small unit, the NH-L12 actually posted some decent temperatures. Yes it was the hottest cooler in terms of all of those we have tested but for such a compact unit its still a decent set of temperatures. In theory we would expect to see it fall even further behind as we introduce overclocking, right?
Well no quite the opposite happened. The NH-L12 gained ground on all other CPU coolers and it beat a tower heatsink, the Reeven Kelveros, by 3 degrees. This is truly impressive stuff. It also came within 1 degree of the Be Quiet! Shadow Rock TopFlow which is also a top down CPU cooler but is around 150mm tall so can’t really claim the low profile moniker.
Given the extremely low height these temperatures are absolutely brilliant. So did the acoustics suffer in order to keep the temperatures competitive? Let’s find out.
