Noctua NH-U12S & NH-U14S CPU Cooler Review for AMD

Introduction

Hey Folks , this time we will be reviewing Noctua’s 2 Mid-Range CPU coolers viz. NH-U12S and NH-U14S. These days the trend on forums is such that , if there is no mention of Nocuta in serious discussions relating to CPU Coolers than its considered incomplete; Hmm. Noctua Products are now synonymous with Quality Stuff. Customer Service wise Noctua has been in the lead and with 6 years warranty you could ask for nothing more! NH-U12S is a slimmer version of NH-U14S. This means that, with NH-U12S the real estate surrounding your RAM slots won’t be Hijacked! For NH-U14S that won’t be a problem for LGA2011. With more bulky Air Coolers swapping RAM sticks has been a real big pain in the ass.

NH-U14S features a 6×2 heat-pipe design and U12S features a 5×2 heat-pipe design. Obviously U14S has more Surface area for dissipating heat and 2 additional heat-pipes as compared to U12S. So how much difference is that gonna make, thermal performance wise? Well, we’ll see that shortly. The design of the aluminum fins for both is similar. Its much like a symmetric butterfly design elongated along the horizontal axis when viewed from top. I kinda like this design. The base and the heat pipes, as usual, are copper with soldered joints and have Nickle plated coating.

Fans in Air Coolers are one of the most important part which regulates the air flow through the fins and directly affects the performance of the coolers. The goods news is that NH-U12S comes bundled with 120mm NF-F12 PWM Fan which is one of the quietest CPU cooler Fan around , while NH-U14S comes bundled with 140mm NF-A15 PWM Fan which has performance similar to NF-F12. These fans have very low noise levels and also feature a Low Noise Adapter which reduces speed from 1500 rpm to 1200 rpm to further reduce the noise. And yes , not to mention that these fans support PWM by which the FAN speed can be controlled. Frankly, NF-F12 is one of my favorite CPU Fan. Noctua also bundles extra fan clips and an extra set of custom-designed anti-vibration pads if you want to add a second NF-F12(U12S) or NF-A15(U14S) for creating a push/pull setup. We will see, in our results, if push/pull setup configuration offers any significant advantage over single fan setup for both the coolers.

Compatibility wise both these coolers are good. The SecuFirm2 mounting system used for these coolers offers a, sort-of, broad spectrum compatibility for both Intel(except LGA775/1336) and AMD sockets. These coolers are compatible down to LGA775 and LGA1366 socket with ‘optional’ NM-I3 mounting kit which can be obtained from Noctua for free if you can provide them the proof of purchase , which as far as I recall is needed for both CPU Cooler and Motherboard. For future compatibility Noctua says (on their website) :

“If technically possible, Noctua will also provide upgrade kits for future sockets.”

Well, fingers crossed!

Finally these coolers come with NT-H1 Thermal Compound which is Noctua’s very own ‘professional grade TIM solution’. Equipped with high performance Fans and Thermal Compound – How will these coolers perform as compared to V8GTS , NH-D14 ? We’ll check that out in our results.

Product Showcase – NH-U14S

Packing and contents :

Bundled Accessories including TIM :

Heatsink Closeups :

NH-U14S mounted on Test RIG :

NH-U14S in Push-Pull configuration :

SecuFirm2 Mounting System for Intel :

SecuFirm2 Mounting System for AMD :

Product Showcase – NH-U12S

Packing and contents :

Bundled Accessories including TIM :

Heatsink closeups :

NH-U12S mounted on Test RIG :

NH-U12S in push-pull Configuration :

Note that both NH-U12S and NH-U14S have same Mounting systems.

Specifications

Now, lets quickly take a look at the specifications for NH-U12S and NH-U14S.

Test Setup and Benchmark Results

Test Setup:

Benchmark Results:

We benchmarked both the coolers in Single Fan and Dual Fan(Push/Pull) Configuration. As with our previous CPU Cooler reviews we always wanted to test these coolers on FX-8150 since we wanted to find out their performance under Higher Thermal load Conditions. We tested them 3 times on our FX-8150 system with 3 different Clocks speeds with corresponding Voltages as shown in the table (and graph) below.

During the whole benchmarking process an ambient temperature of 22 degrees’C was maintained. For stressing the CPU we used OCCT lin pack with AVX and ran each of the tests for 30 minutes. And yes all the tests were performed with side panel closed (Corsair 600T).

When we first benchmarked these coolers and saw the results, frankly, we were a bit surprised since we expected them to perform better than what we got. With 4.5 Ghz and above, CPU thermal throttling would kick in and we couldn’t benchmark these coolers at 4.5Ghz and 4.7Ghz on FX-8150. Initially we thought that we might have done something wrong when installing the cooler hence we removed the cooler, removed the left over TIM and then reinstalled the cooler with utmost precaution and ran the tests again. Even this time we got almost results. Still not satisfied we repeated the same procedure next day and ran the test. The results were same. Well , these coolers seem to perform very good on newer Intel CPUs (as seen on many leading review sites) which present lower thermal loads as compared to FX-8150. On the other hand you cannot expect slim tower air coolers like NH-U12S to perform exceptionally well on something like FX8150 which really heats up a lot when stressed. For such CPUs you are bound to use a beefy Air cooler or a Water Cooler.

Acoustics & Conclusion

A word on Acoustics:

Yeah , you got it right! As expected both of these CPU coolers are extremely silent. The low noise adapter (LNA), anti-vibration pads indeed do their job. Do we need to mentioned that NF-F12 and NF-A15 are extremely quite in operation? I have already mentioned it earlier that NF-F12 is one of my favorites – Acoustics being one of the main reason.

Conclusion:

As mentioned earlier we expected these coolers to perform a bit better than what we found out. NH-U12S with its Slim tower design is more suited for mid-range system builds and will also not eat-up the real estate surrounding the RAM slots. NH-U14S seems to be more inclined towards ‘upper-mid-range-ish’ systems. As claimed by Noctua the NH-U14S is fully RAM compatible on LGA 2011. Also we didn’t find any RAM space crisis on AM3+ system either. If you are planning to buy NH-U14S for your FX8100 or FX8300 Rig then we would recommend getting something like NH-D14. Well, that’s not because of any performance issues relating to these coolers – its rather an issue with Power Hungry AMD CPUs which AMD needs to work on. Finally coming to the price – it seems a bit on the higher side as compared to the results we saw.

Pros:

• Good overall CPU Socket Compatibility
• NF-12 bundled with NH-U12S , NF-A15 bundled with NH-U14S
• Full Ram Compatibility for NH-U12S
• 6 years Warranty
• Quite Operation

Cons:

• Both seem a bit Pricy
• Both Not suited for Overclocking High TDP AMD CPUs like FX-8150