Introduction

It is pretty tough to get the right cooler for the right machine now a days. Everywhere you look some one has bigger and better cpu coolers. This makes companies to compete against each other like crazy. One company comes out with PWM system for cooling the cpu and the whole case and the other company comes up with the biggest and badest cpu cooler on the market. Today we are going to take a look at a newest product from Noctua, NH-C12P. NH-C12P is an active cpu cooler with alot to offer for its users. We are going to compare it to one of the Arctic Cooling cpu coolers, Freezer 7 Pro. Freezer 7 pro is also an active cpu cooler with pwm system build in the fan. Let us take a look at these two great cpu coolers.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Noctua website.

6 heat pipes 6 heat pipes, excellently soldered joints and widely-spaced cooling fins guarantee optimal heat dissipation even at low fan speeds. C-type design with Airflow-Gaps Due to the down-facing design and two large Airflow-Gaps, the NH-C12P provides additional cooling for near-socket motherboard components. NF-P12 120mm premium fan The award-winning NF-P12 has been specifically developed for high-impedance applications such as CPU coolers. Thanks to psychoacoustic optimizations and Noctua's premium-grade SSO-bearing, the NF-P12 achieves exceptional quietness and long-term stability. Excellent compatibility The down-facing c-type design allows for low height as well as excellent motherboard and case compatibility. SecuFirm™ multi-socket mounting system Noctua's professional SecuFirm™ mounting system for LGA 775, AM2, AM2+ and AM3 provides superior reliability and contact pressure. K8 (939, 940, 754) kits are available on request. Noctua NT-H1 high-end thermal compound Noctua's much-acclaimed NT-H1 is an pro-grade TIM solution that provides minimum thermal resistance, excellent ease-of-use and outstanding long-term stability.

Now that we got technical information out of the way, lets take a closer look at NH-C12P.

Closer look

NH-C12P Box Front		Box Rear

The NH-C12P comes in a rather large box. It looked like one of those boxes in which you could buy kettle or maybe a bowling ball. The whole package weighted about 3 pounds and felt very heavy for just a simple CPU cooler. On the front of the package Noctua kept to its standards and has included a see trough window in to the package. On the back side of the package i found a short description of the some specifications of NH-C12P.

Specifications		Specifications

Let me just tell you up front, NH-C12P package is all filled with specifications and helpful information regarding the NH-C12P. By taking one good look at the package you can quickly figure out if this CPU cooler is for you or not. As we look further in to the NH-C12P you will see that this unit is designed for computer enthusiasts and computer gamers. If you have little or no knowledge of inside of your pc, you might want to consider a different model. Never less, lets keep going.

Out of the box		Common Items

The whole package consists of two boxes, NH-C12P and common parts. NH-C12P can be installed on to intel LGA 775 and AMD am2 chips. Noctua provides hardware for both installations. In addition, Noctua provides its best Thermal compound NT-H1. Along with the installation kits Noctua has included a very detailed Installation Manual for both Intel and AMD.

Heat sink and NF-P12		NF-P12

The actual NH-C12P unit is about the same size as your average 120 mm fan but only much much taller. The actual dimensions are 91 x 152 x 126 mm. Just by looking at the heat sink i quickly figured out that it will take close to 45% of my motherboard space. WOW! This is on giant heat sink!. NH-C12P comes with NF-P12 fan. This particular fan is designed to provide accepting cooling at low rpm. This is exactly what we were looking for in our search for ultra quiet case!

1.08W		Heat sink

NF-P12 blades are specifically designed to provide maximum air transfer while operating under low rpm. NF-P12 is comes with two speed cables, 1300 rpm and 900 rpm. Further in our test we will be using the 900 rpm setting of the NF-P12. The reason being is that we are trying to make our testing rig as quiet as possible. NH-C12P unit comes with a protective plastic over the CPU block. This is very helpful when you know your highly polished surface might scratch while the transport.

Size comparison		CPU block

I have took few shots of the NH-C12P and my Blackberry curve to show you just how enormous this heat sink is. Lets hope it performs as well as it looks:) This is one of the biggest CPU coolers i have ever seen. Second best CPU cooler i have see is Rosewill RCX-Z5 Ultra. You can find a review of it by clicking the link.

Highly Polished Surface		6 Heat pipes

CPU block of NH-C12P is highly polished and deserves attention. No it is not mirror like polish but you can certainly see the reflection of the battery which i have placed on top. Smoothness of CPU block is very important when it comes to applying thermal compounds and applications. One cool factor which i found was the Noctua logo on one of the sides of the NH-C12P. This side is not going to be visible but still it is nice to have:)

Heat pipes close up		Well thought design

NH-C12P is equipped with 6 heat pipes which help to disburse the heat from the CPU block to the actual heat sink. One comment on the CPU block, i have seen many different kinds of CPU block designs. Some have heat pipes build in right in to the surface of the CPU block and some have them build inside of the CPU block. The heat pipes which are build inside of the CPU block work much better in my opinion.

Size comparison		NH-C12P vs Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

I have taken few additional shots of the NH-C12P and our test subject Asus P5Q Pro LGA 775 motherboard. As you can clearly see Noctua NH-C12P beats Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro alot by size. Lets take a closer look to the installation of NH-C12P.

Clean CPU		Close up

Our first step was to remove old CPU cooler and clean off the old NT-H1. Yes we do use it for our testing purposes. NT-H1 has proven itself to be one of the best thermal solutions out in the market. It is important to clean off the CPU of any old compound as it plays a big role in the installation of the heat sink.

Installed brackets		Rear support bracket

For installing NH-C12P you would need to completely remove your motherboard from the case, as you need to mount a special bracket on the back of the motherboard for the support of the NH-C12P. Since NH-C12P weight about 600 grams (.6 kilogram or 1 pound) you need a very solid support for it. Last thing you want is to burn your cpu because you have installed the cooler incorrectly. Ha Ha

Noctua NT-H1		Tightly secured

A generous portion of NT-H1 and we were ready to install our NH-C12P. Everything fit pretty much without any problems. I have checked around the solid capacitors and none of them were touch the NH-C12P, which is a good thing. Asus P5Q Pro comes with its own bridged heat sinks that made me worry for a moment but after making sure nothing was touching what it shouldn't, i relaxed.

Tight fitting		Ready to rock!

There is one concern about the right side of the NH-C12P. We are using Corsair Dominator dual channel memory which comes with its own heat sinks and while installing NH-C12P i found out that one of the heat pipes are touching the ram. I have tried to play around with the heat sink and see if i could tighten it up some where and move the NH-C12P to the left but i had very little luck.

Installed

Installation of the whole motherboard and NH-C12P wasn't easy one. This is definitely a level 8 on the difficulty of installations. Never less lets take a closer look at some testing data and what have we discovered.

Testing

We took a little bit different approach for this review. Instead of using Folding at Home for loading up the core, we have used Prime 95 to load up the whole system. Prime 95 is a benchmarking software which allows to load up cpu, ram and other components of the computer. Basically a stress test of the system. Our measurements were taken by SpeedFan application. This application report temperatures of motherboard and cpu and rotational speed of the fan. This is worked out well since we want to look at the idle and load temperatures and fan rotational speeds.

Idle SpeedFan - Arctic Cooling

With SpeedFan application we have temperatures of 26 C on CPU and 30 C on motherboard sensors. This is pretty cool considering that the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro is designed to provide acceptional cooling.

Idle SpeedFan - Noctua

SpeedFan has reported following temperatures with NH-C12P installed. On CPU sensor we got 24 C and on motherboard 29 C. Lets stop for a second and compare the idle temperatures. The idle temperature of CPU with Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro was 26C and temperature of the CPU with Noctua NH-C12P was 24C. That is 2 C difference in temperature. Keep in mind with Noctua NH-C12P we have used a new application of thermal paste NT-H1. Most of the thermal pastes out there require a burn in process of usually a week. So the temperatures could be the same after a week of operation. We have burned in the NT-H1 for two days so the temperatures are pretty much as low as it can get.

Load SpeedFan - Arctic Cooling

Let us now look at the temperatures of Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro and Noctua NH-C12P under full load by Prime 95. With Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro we have gotten temperatures of 32 C for CPU and 31 C for motherboard sensor. Keep in mind we have burned in Prime 95 for 20 minutes before taking these measurements.

Load SpeedFan - Noctua

On the CPU sensor we have gotten 29 C and on the motherboard sensor we have gotten 30 C. Lets compare our two systems together. With Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro we have gotten temperature of 32 C and with Noctua NH-C12P temperature reached 29 C. Not bad at all. A drop of 3 C was achieved.

So what can you expect in form of sonar levels from Noctua NH-C12P? We went further and took sonar readings of the Freezer 7 Pro and NH-C12P. The results are as follow.

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro		Noctua NH-C12P

In our previous review of Noctua NF-S12B FLX fans we have achieved sonar levels as low as 47.4 decibels. In that review we have user Freezer 7 Pro as a cpu cooler. With Noctua NH-C12P we have achieved sonar levels as low as 46.6 decibels. A great aid towards our project of making super quiet system. If you do not know what these numbers mean, following is a list of some of the knows to all applications and their approximate sonar levels.

Decibel Range Chart

Conclusion

NH-C12P is a very well build product with alot to offer to is users. Over all experience was very pleasant with Noctua NH-C12P and this is the first time i have seen a CPU cooler as big as this. Installation of NH-C12P was not an easy one. You are required to pretty much take out your whole motherboard out in order to securely install NH-C12P. But once it is installed, it is not coming off without taking out the motherboard again to disassemble. Before purchasing NH-C12P you could really do some research on how to install it or even if your motherboard supports it. Noctua has a very extensive list on all of the motherboard which NH-C12P could be installed on to. Noctua NH-C12P has NF-P12 fan which uses some of the latest technologies to perform smoother and quieter than your every day fans. With rotational speed of 900 rpm the sonar levels of NF-P12 reach only 12 decibels. While performing a comparison of the performance between Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro and Noctua NH-C12P we have proved that Freezer 7 Pro does not out cools the NH-C12P. We have droped core temperature down by 3 C. It gives me a great pleasure to award Noctua NH-C12P so solid 10 out of 10!

Some pros we found:

Quiet and has variable speed control

Competitive cooling

Copper based with 6 large heat pipes

Comes with a tube of NT-H1

Some cons we found:

Difficult to install