Noctua NH-D12L, Low-Height Dual-Tower CPU Cooler (120mm, Brown)

Product Information

Results in the comparison are showing maximum values, so during typical gaming, the CPU won’t run all the time at 80°+ and more often we will see around 60°C. When compared to previous Noctua coolers, both towers have a total depth of 86mm, resulting in a larger surface area on the Noctua NH-D12L. The fins are great, with a few flaws due to the fan mounting clips, but otherwise, the cooler has a flawless fin lining. The fins are factory soldered to the copper heat pipes, ultimately resulting in a cooler with a longer lifespan without sacrificing cooling performance. Noctua NH-D12L Top View Make sure you know the direction you want to install your cooler before putting the mounting bars in place. Once you’ve decided, put the mounting bars in position and attach them using the thumb screws provided. Ascertain that the connection is solid and secure. Noctua NH-D12L Installation Despite its reduced height, the NH-D12L easily outperforms 92mm coolers. It can even surpass renowned 120mm units such as the NH-U12S and often comes close to Noctua’s award-winning 120mm flagship model NH-U12A. Then what's the point? Don't get me wrong, I'm an overt Noctua loyalist, but I don't see the point of creating new products just to create new products. If the round version of this fan has exactly the same performance characteristics as the square version, and is the same color scheme, and doesn't have any other purpose to it other than being an additional model to offer, then it makes zero sense. This is not something Noctua is known for doing. They invest a great deal of time into engineering and developing new products and it baffles me that they'd do that for a product that doesn't offer something, anything, new.

In BIOS, we set the CPU voltage to 1.15V, the Performance-Cores (P-Cores) to 4.9 GHz, and the E-Cores (E-Cores) to 3.9 GHz. As a result, we can consume roughly 140W. We ran the Aida64 benchmark tool test for 5 minutes with the CPU and memory boxes turned on. With active power conservation settings, idle data are monitored. Delta temperatures are utilized for ranking between the ambient temperature and the related test. Single vs. Dual Fan Configuration Noctua NH-D12L Single vs. Dual Fan Benchmarks It’s now clear why Noctua made the decision to reduce the size of the front tower to offer universal RAM clearance. Very nice! The newest Intel Core i9-12900K will be our testing companion; the remainder of the specifications are as follows; We mentioned it in passing earlier, but the new round-frame version of the NF-A12x25 fan is worth a closer look. Noctua says the new round-frame variant of the 2018 classic is officially named the 'NF-A12x25r PWM'. The fan frame changes don't impact the cooling by any measurable degree, it seems. Noctua says that the new round frame model "provides the same renowned quiet cooling performance, as its square frame sibling.The fan itself uses Noctua’s SSO2 bearing design and terminates with a 4-pin header. It has an rpm range of 450-2000, but remember Noctua includes the NA-RC14 low-noise adapter if you wanted to keep things quieter at 1700rpm. Finally, the fan pushes approx. 60CFM at 2000rpm. Noctua’s asymmetric configuration is such that the heatsink doesn’t overhang DIMM slots on most motherboards, allowing free reign for heightened memory modules of your choosing. There are a couple of caveats, mind. NH-D12L will naturally overhang RAM slots on quad-channel setups such as LGA 2066, and if you choose to add a second fan to the front, cooler height will likely extend based on the profile of nearby memory modules. Noctua has become well-known among the general public, and some may even consider it their best option. After such a big success, Noctua has now produced the Noctua NH-D12L for consumers who desire a smaller, more compact, but still capable air cooler.

Many users may find clearance a difficulty when using a large air cooler, especially if they are operating in a compact PC chassis. Noctua NH-D12L Clearance

With the single fan, the Noctua NH-D12L has the following dimensions: 145x124x113mm (HxWxD). The Width may grow as a result of a twin fan configuration. When it comes to the cooler/heatsink depth, it measures 113mm. Talking of the fan in between we receive a Noctua NF-A12x25r with the cooler; though we will talk about it in detail later in the article. Noctua NH-D12L Front View At automatic settings, we could see about 140W under load which is less than in the processor’s specification. To test each cooler under load, we run Cinebench R23 for 60 minutes using the multicore CPU test. The mean of three tests is recorded. This temperature is deducted from the current room temperature and our final delta temperature is provided. Results The performance of the NH-D12L cooler has been tested on the gaming platform, which contains the i5-12600K CPU, Colorful CVN Z690M Gaming Frozen V20 motherboard, Acer Predator 16GB DDR4-3600 CL14 memory kit, and ASUS Strix RTX3070 graphics card.