Noctua have attempted to strike a balance between performance and profile with the NH-U12S, slimming it down to allow for tall heatspreaders to be used on RAM but without shaving off too much performance. From the tests performed at [H]ard|OCP it seems that Noctua did exactly what they claimed, there is plenty of space to fill all your DIMM slots with any brand of RAM and the performance at stock speeds was better than average. It is a little more expensive than some alternatives and is not the best at cooling an overclocked CPU but but of you want a slim profile and reasonably quiet performance this is a good choice.
"The Noctua NH-U12S is well known in enthusiast circles for a few reasons. Noctua states it is because, "the NH-U12S is a complete premium quality solution that combines outstanding performance, quiet operation and excellent compatibility." And quite frankly Noctua would be very correct. Where does the value stand today?"
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these are some good fans
these are some good fans 😉
But their design is outstandingly ugly that’s why I still prefer the BeQuiet! Silent Wings 2…
I just bought a Noctua
I just bought a Noctua NH-U12S a couple of weeks ago to use with my 4770k. It easily fit on my motherboard and into my case and it provides great cooling, but the main reason I got it is because it’s so quiet, specifically at idle. It has a great PWM fan that is capable of running as low as 300 RPM! That means while I’m busy typing emails or reading a web page and the system is mostly idle, the fan truly is silent. If I do some number crunching or play a game, then it steps up the RPMs and it becomes audible, but it’s still pretty darn quiet until you hit near max RPMs. It’s the first Noctua cooler I have tried… the weird color scheme aside, I like it a lot.