Noctua NH-U12S DX-3647 (LGA3647) CPU Cooler Review

Bohs Hansen / 6 years ago

Test System and Methodology

Setup Location and Ambience

The test system is run in a separate room with as little interference from anything as possible. It is located as far away from any home appliances as possible.

The ambient temperatures are around 19-22 degrees unless otherwise specified here.

Thermal Transition

In order to keep our reviews as consistent as possible, we will always use Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste on every CPU cooler we review. We want to test the efficiency of the cooler and not the pre-applied thermal paste. While the pre-applied might be good, we need comparable results.

Testing Methodology and Results

We record the figures for the idle state around 5 minutes after the system is booted. The load figures are taken after a 20 minute run with OCCT, a CPU load of 100% and a memory load of 90%. OCCT is run for 30 minutes (1/24/5) to calculate the load results.

We pick the package temperature to show in our graphs as they show the average of the chip’s cores effectively. All the fans are left to operate at default PWM profile speeds, again, unless otherwise stated.

The acoustic measurements are taken 10cm horizontally and 10cm vertically away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled.

There is approximately a 1-degree Celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software CPUID HW Monitor and there is approximately a 1.5dBA margin of error with our Sound Level Meter.