Heatpipe CPU cooler roundup review

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 06/11/2008 01:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

3 - Noctua NH-U12P

The Noctua NH-U12P

First up, Noctua. They brand name is slowly getting more ground here in Europe. And we've certainly have tested their products before, and there's no way ignoring it .. they offer some really good product. They are not cheap though.

For this test we'll be using their newer NH-U12P cooler which is a complete kit for all sockets. The cooler is equipped with a four heatpipes design. It has aluminum cooling fins with a total surface area of more than 3800cm² and soldered joints for most the favorable heat-transfer, at 600 grams it's actually one of the lighter models tested today. The kit is very complete up-to rubber stands to prevent fan resonation and even a sample of their new NT-H1 thermal paste is included.

The new model 120mm fan is just awesome .. completely silent, very high performance and it even looks good. As our tests will show, Noctua offers a leading product.

CPU Heatpipe coolers 2008

Leading; yet at over 50 EUR the Noctua is the most expensive kit tested today. Very complete though.

Installation
Alright, after unpacking everything and grabbing the items we need to install the cooler on a Socket LGA 775 platform (Core 2 Duo) we stumble into the fact that a backplate needs to be seated behind the mainboard. I find it to be a growing annoyance to have to remove a mainboard to just install the cooler. With the Noctua kits that's unfortunately the same. Where everything about this kit is near perfection, the installation is a tad messy.

You remove the mainboard, fit a backplate, then at the front you secure two metal guides to the backplate. For the cooler block you fit two retention shims, and then you mount it together with two screws and springs.

The next step in the development applying decent cooling, has got to be finding a better solution that this.

CPU Heatpipe coolers 2008

Very high performance versus really silent noise levels. Noctua shows to offer a real good quality product as our tests will confirm.

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GeForce 9600 GT passive review -- Noise always has been an issue with graphics cards. The past few years however manufacturers has put more emphasis on cooling solutions that though are high performance, are silent. Every now and then however there are some companies out there releasing a product completely passively cooled. Today therefore we test the first in a two-fold of passively cooled GeForce 9600 GT products. This one comes from the lads at Galaxy, and is completely heatpipe based.

Heatpipe CPU cooler roundup review
Today we review five heatpipe based coolers from Noctua, CoolerMaster Z600, Tuniq, OCZ Vendetta 2, Coolink. Over the past month or six several new heatpipe based coolers where introduced onto the market. And I already can disclose this .. not one single cooler was doing a below average result. So for this test I decided to go a little more extreme. We'll crank up the usual system requirements a notch by using a fairly high-end PC as we take a Core 2 Duo Q6600 Quad Core processor and then overclock it to 3600 MHz to see how well these coolers still do.

Noctua NH-U9 and NH-U12 heatpipe coolers
A new trend that started over the past two years is heatpipe based cooling. Several advantages directly come to mind as the principle is quite simple. You move heat towards another spot other than the source. That way you can get rid of that heat not directly away from that source, yet effectively can cool it down optimally on location B. This means less resources and effort is needed at the original point of heat. The less resources I'm talking about is a direct active form of heat dissipation e.g. loud fans. More cooling these days equals more noise, and don't we all hate it ?