The purpose of this TekSpek is to delineate the publicly known features of Intel’s next generation desktop microarchitecture. Furthermore the base is slightly convex which will deliver superior contact in combination with the SecuFirm2 hardware. Established in 2005, Noctua took international silent enthusiasts’ hearts by storm and quickly developed into one of the most acclaimed suppliers of premium quality quiet cooling products. No matter how tiny the case, the NH-L12S fits almost anywhere and provides sufficient cooling at low volume.

According to what I saw, I believe this cooler is a very good choice to work with low and average grade processors working at normal frequencies with some serious load for a lot of time even inside small form factor or HTPC systems. Or you can place it on top, then if you want to increase cooling performance, you can install a thicker fan, thus the more potent fan on top and finally you can even go in to dual fan mode. Noctua puts a pretty severe bend in their cold plates which might not be giving you the best results.Unfortunately, mainboard manufacturers tend to change certain components and heatsinks without pointing it out by using corresponding revision names. Well, here would normally lie a bunch of graphs comparing the coolers to other models, in various use cases. Now I have in my hands its successor bearing the name Noctua NH-L12S, which promises a lot of improvements and definitely better performance. Using a supplied low-noise adapter, it is possible to limit the maximum speed of the fan to 1,400 rpm and make the fan even quieter.

The NH-L12S also matched the temperature of the Big Shuriken 2 when using the same fan (Noctua A12x15 PWM), but not quite when compared against Scythe’s own fan, although it should be noted that Scythe’s fan achieves this at much louder noise levels. And to complete the performance conclusions, I would like to mention that I was expecting a bit worse temperature results bearing in mind the TPD capabilities of the cooler and the TPD performance of my processor.The separation of the flows being more marked at low speed, the acceleration created by the flow channels markedly reduces this dispersion phenomenon. We ship all products in unopened boxes directly as received from our manufacturer in brand new and in perfect condition. Just make sure if you get it on an ITX motherboard that you measure twice the height of VRM heatsinks, since most modern boards have a lot of ‘architecture’ on them especially X570 ones.