Noctua NH-L12S Review

Noctua NH-L12S is a high performance low profile CPU cooler at 70mm in height. The height can be increased using an additional slim 15mm fan or 25mm thick top fan for slight increase in cooling performance.

SPECIFICATIONS

NOCTUA NH-L12SNH-L12S
DIMENSIONSL: 128 x W: 146 x H: 70mm (including 15mm thick fan)
MATERIALSCopper (base and 4x heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins)
COMPATIBILITYIntel: 115X/1200/1700
AMD: AM4
FANS1x NF-A12x15 (1800RPM)
RAM CLEARANCE33mm

TEST SYSTEM

Testing is carried out on BC1 Mini v2 (open testbench), using the following hardware, in 20°C ambient room temperature. We noise normalised the cooler fan speed to 35dBA at distance of 50cm. This helps eliminate brute force cooling from higher RPM fans.

CASEBC1 Mini v2 (Open Testbench)
MOTHERBOARDRog Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi (paid link)
CPUR5 7600X / R7 7700X (paid links)
CPU COOLERNoctua NH-L12S (paid link)
PSU Extreme 850R (paid link)
RAM32GB Gskill DDR5, 6000MHz, CL30 (paid link)

THERMAL BENCHMARKS

We use Cinebench R23 multicore (stability test), for period of 30 minutes. This provides worse case scenario for a given CPU. CPU coolers are tested across range of CPU’s for data validation and to reduce risk of errors in testing. This also helps account for variables between CPU platforms.

CONCLUSIONS

Noctua NH-L12S has good build quality and is straightforward to mount. It has quiet operation, even at full load. The NF-A12x15 fan reached maximum of 35dB at 100% load; recorded from distance of 50cm in our testing.