Noctua NH-U12

Gentlemen, behold! A bigger and better heatsink, designed to be used with two fans!

We have a confession. We love monster heatsinks. Sure, the proposition of thumping on and bolting almost one kilogram of finned monstrosity to your board at first seems a little nerve-racking, but we’ve yet to see any real side effects from the more modern beasties.

Enter the Noctua NH-U12, as it is. To kick things off, a disclaimer – the NH-U12 has already been superseded. There is now a new revision available, the NH-U12F that comes with Noctua’s own 1200rpm fan and an AM2 bracket.

The heatsink is held solidly in place by an excellent mounting system, requiring the usual multi-socket kit screwing, whether you be on the Intel or AMD side.

Two custom arms are screwed to the base, and then a custom backing plate is added to the motherboard. AMD readers need go no further. If you’re in the Intel camp, you’ll need two further extension arms to connect the initial arms to the backing plate.

It’s a hefty bugger weighing in at 790g; and potentially two 120mm fans could be mounted on it – unfortunately the retention clips included for these fans need to be longer, as Noctua has assumed there are attachment holes on the bottom of every 120mm fan – simply not the case. As a result, some creative clamping ensued with our single Nexus Real Silent 120mm fan.

Obviously this is a flaw that is overcome with the F variant due to the inclusion of the Noctua fan.

Setting the almighty Chernobyl to the predefined and long used 80W, we let things settle a little before strapping the Noctua down and seeing what it could do. In an ambient temperature of 26°C, it managed a decent 43°C – just a little above the original Scythe Ninja which managed a 42°C for reference. Not bad at all considering it’s air cooled and extremely low noise.

Two thumbs up.