The front of the Noctua NH-U12S is dominated by the aesthetic of the NF-F12 120mm fan.
From the side you can see more closely the width of 71mm which is 25mm for the fan and 45mm for the heatsink (1mm margin of error for those mathematicians out there).
The back gives you a glimpse at how dense the heat sink design is. You can also fully see the nickel plated heat pipes more closely.
From the top you can see the tops of the five 6mm heat pipes.
The bottom features a machined flat nickel plated copper base. The mounting hardware comes partially pre-installed on the CPU contact plate.
I also want to quickly go over the accessories and mounting hardware too. You can see they come beautifully presented in individual boxes.
You get anti-vibration mounts, a metal Noctua case sticker, a full sized tube of NT-H1, extra fan clips for a second optional fan, a low noise adapter and a screwdriver.
Intel mounting hardware includes one set of brackets, a backplate and two different types of mounting kits for LGA 2011 and LGA 115X. Two very detailed mounting instructions are included which we had no trouble with following.
The AMD mounting box contained just brackets, screws and a manual.
Just ask a simple question, what’s the best liquid or air cooled, I have a vantage liquid cooled the last leaked on me, which blew my XFX 6870, now have a 7970, edit to many zero’s lol
All out performance with no budget constraints, water cooling. You can get £200 watercooling kits that will far outperform everything. Balance between performance and price, air cooling wins every time.
I thank your reply, but need more feedback
what do you want to know? you aren’t asking specific enough questions for me to give you a useful answer
Best air? Noctua NH-D14. Other may get better temp, but overall the NH-D14 get best temp to noise ratio 🙂
beat without any constraint in budget?? Go for custom liquid cooled setup. 🙂
Component price will vary from country to country.
Great review, Ryan.
And this sleek, low profile cooler is awesome. I wonder how good that 140mm version will be..
Will be waiting for that review too.
Nice review, Ryan.
Are you planning to make a review for the NH-U14S as well?
In that case it would be nice to see how the NF-A15 performs at 8V.
Actually there is a sweet spot in noice and performance level at 8V@800RPM.
http://www.coolingtechnique.com/recensioni/74-ventole-rheobus/1153-recensione-ventole-noctua-a-series.html?start=7
In your latest Noctua fan review when you tested the NF-A15 on the Thermalright Macho, you made the impression that the Thermalright fan is a bit more quiet at 900RPM.
It might be true, however according to the chart below the NF-A15 at 797RPM is a lot quiter and there is only a slight performance decrease over the tested 900RPM. It should pretty much match the noise level of the NF-A14 ULN at 800RPM, while still offer a better performance.
At 7V or 700RPM it is still very close to the noise level of the NF-A14 ULN@650RPM.
Basically the NF-A15 PWM is smarter choice overall, so I’m glad Noctua releases the NH-U14S with that fan.
However I’m not sure if the heatsink is better than the Thermalright Archon, or even the Macho. The Achon has eight 6mm heatpipes, and it is a bit bulkier and taller than the NH-U14S. I think the Archon equipeed with the NF-A15 would offer a better performance.
I believe the Noctua made a huge design flow at the top of the heatsink, as there are lot of wasted space.
It would be really nice if you could test the Noctua fan at 8V@800RPM on those heatsinks as well, especially as we have already seen a huge benefit in case of the Macho at a much more reasonable price.
Hi, Yes we do have the NH-U14S review coming.
The NF-A15 PWM is a very good fan indeed. Unforunately we only tested at PWM and Max (12V) so those are the only results we have in that review. The heatsink has six 6mm heatpipes as far as I am aware and is very dense so it will be better than the Macho but slightly worse than the Archon heatsink. However the fan makes a huge difference and the NH-U14S does better than the Archon SB-E X2 in our tests due to this.
I disagree that space is wasted. 158mm allows it to fit more cases than the Archon which is 170mm+
According to the specification the NH-U14S heatsink is 165mm tall.
What I meant by wasted space is basically the fan way overlaps the heatsink.
They could have easily added a few more fins at the top of the heatpipes to better match the size of the fan without actually increasing the total height of the cooler.
Any chance you could add the Noctua fan to the Archon to see the real difference in performance between the two top of the line heatsinks?
It would be greatly appreciated.
It is more noticeable on this picture:
http://www.noctua.at/images/products/fullsize/noctua_nh_u14s_3.jpg