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
