Noctua NH-L12: Cooling Performance And Noise
Noctua's NH-L12 is the smallest, and, at 415 grams, the lightest cooler in our round-up. We think this is appropriate, given the heat sink's intended role in HTPCs and compact enclosures.
The bottom of the cooler and its four 6 mm heat pipes are made of copper, and the heat sink’s 60 fins are made of aluminum. Performance-wise, the smaller cooler has a more difficult time coping with the Phenom II X6 1090T's six overclocked cores, causing it to drop into last place in our story. Under full load, we record a CPU temperature 45.7 degrees Celsius higher than the ambient temperature. It doesn’t matter if we run the fan at its maximum 1460 RPM or at a slower 1000 RPM. Less overall surface area simply limits maximum cooling performance. At idle, CPU temperatures look better, and are still competitive at 6.6 and 7.6 degrees Celsius above ambient temperature with the fan spinning at 1000 and 1460 RPM, respectively.
Let's look at this with a bit of context: given that we know Noctua's NH-L12 is designed for HTPCs and smaller PCs, its cooling performance should be ample for those applications. If you're instead shopping for a more overclocking-oriented cooling solution, look elsewhere. Then again, you might not have to go very far. After all, Noctua has another down-draft cooler, the NH-C14, designed with more aggressive thermal performance in mind. It’s larger, heavier, and comes with two 140 mm fans.
Although we gave each vendor one spot in today's story, we did go ahead and include the NH-C14's benchmark numbers in our cooler charts. Under full load, Noctua's NH-C14 keeps the CPU temperature at 24.4 degrees Celsius above ambient temperature, and 25.4 degrees Celsius with the fan speed down to 1000 RPM. This is a strong showing for a down-draft cooler.
The NH-C14 is not exactly quiet, though. It registered 44 dB(A) with its fan spinning at 1240 RPM, and 37.7 dB(A) at 1000 RPM.
On the other hand, the NH-L12's 120 and 92 mm fans yield better acoustic results. At a fan speed of 1000 RPM, the cooler produces a nice 32.9 dB(A), which is slightly higher than the two competitors’ noise levels. At maximum RPM, the Noctua NH-L12 is between the other two coolers with 42.5 dB(A).
