Performance

The system being used to test the heatsink is as follows:
Ambient temperature was kept to 22º Celsius (+/- 1 degree) and was measured by a standard mercury thermometer.


At stock CPU settings the Noctua NH-U12P does a fine job, although the idle temperature seems a little high. This is not the case under load, as the NH-U12P does a fine job.


When the CPU is overclocked and the voltage is increased, the NH-U12P does even better than the rest of the air coolers. Amazingly, this is all done with a fan that is very quiet.

Although the NH-U12P can support two fans, the heatsink was tested with only one fan blowing into the heatsink. Noctua's testing showed that an additional NF-P12 fan can reduce temperatures by another degree or two.

Fan Noise

To measure fan noise we used an IEC Type 2 sound level meter on the dBA setting. Measuring distance was 10 cm from the heatsink fan hub. The short distance of 10 cm is necessary to get proper readings with very silent fans. All fans were tested outside of the case at 12V supplied by a lab PSU. On fans that come with a fan controller or allow control of fan speed in any other way, "low" and "high" indicate the settings on the fan controller.


As shown in the chart above, the NF-P12 fan found on the Noctua NH-U12P is very quiet. In fact, it is barely louder then the stock Intel fan while running on its PWM mode.