Revisiting Noctua’s Best Coolers – NHD15S and U12A 2023 Re-Review

Performance

OK, so I am doing something a little different here as we’ve already reviewed all these products, it’s Noctua we’re retesting in pretty much a straight-up who’s best at what. Which is what we normally do, but a little more laser focused this time. The results highlighted in green are the best results for any air cooler in that category. The two Noctua coolers are also represented in bold to make them easier to see.

Temperatures

Well, the performance of Noctua is good here, delivering a temperature of 74c at full load on the D15S, but the Assassin IV has it beaten on both the Idle and the Load scenarios here. The U12A has a slightly lower idle, but a higher load of 83c.

Using our optimised settings, the Intel Core i9-12900K is fixed at 4.9 GHz on all P-Cores and 4 GHz on all E-Cores and an optimised voltage of 1.3v, which we find often results in higher performance and lower temperatures for most coolers. The D15S actually runs 1c hotter, while the U12A dropped by 8c, both very good results. However, both the Assassin IV and the Stealth deliver a max temperature that was just 74c, 1c cooler than the D15S, and the Assassin IV also has the lowest idle for an air cooler of 29c.

Acoustics

The D15s has always been regarded for its ultra-quiet performance and that is still true. At just 37c at full load, it’s a whisper, and while the 212 Halo Black had a lower idle and similar load acoustics, it did run significantly hotter, keep that in mind. However, the Assassin IV delivered just 31.2 dBa idle too, and that actually delivered better cooling performance too.

Even when using the optimised settings, the Noctua still holds the quiet spot, with the MA8245 very close at just 40dBa, ad the Assassin IV was 45.7 dBa, just a little louder than the U12A’s 44 dBa. Now, this is interesting as we saw that the D15S got 1c warmer using optimised settings, while all the others got cooler, and this is clearly due to the much quieter and lower RPM fan curve it uses.

CineBench R23

Silence and heat are one thing, but what about actual CPU performance? In a flat-out score run in Cinebench, Notuca takes the crown on a stock CPU, crushing the Assassin IV and the MA824 with a score of 26751 on the NH-U12A. However, the D15S actually performed similarly to the Assassin and the MS824.

Finally, with our optimised settings, everything changed again! The D15S and U12A performed remarkably similarly to each other, but the D15S is now on top. The Assassin IV dropped way down, and it was the MA824 that scored top for Cooler Master!