Noctua NH-U12P

Results Table

Conclusions and Value

As you’ve seen on the previous page, the Noctua NH-U12P is a great performer and this isn’t just down to the improved fan that the company has designed. Along with better performance, you also get absolutely everything you would expect – better compatibility, better corrosion resistance, premium thermal paste, the improved fan, extra clips for another fan, U.L.N.A. and even tools to install it.

Top that with a cherry flavoured warranty of six years, and I literally cannot think of anything else you'd need from a heatsink, Noctua has every base covered.

If you have an uncompromising fetish for silence, then there's no other choice: you have to get the Noctua, or, at least its £15 fan. After all given that there are many heatpiped heatsinks already on the market you could just throw the NF-P12 120mm fan on any one of these for a similar effect.

At £15 a pop, the NF-P12 is the Crème de la Crème of fans and an investment and a half on top of that heatsink purchase. And even if you can match the Noctua's 19dB, like the Zerotherm Nirvana NV120 at its lowest setting, there's still a performance difference in favour of the Noctua.

The cheapest place in the UK is currently QuietPC but it's still selling for a significant £43.00 (inc. VAT). There is a lot of value within this price, but I fear most people will see it and develop a cold sweat straight away – probably going for the £35 Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme instead, throwing on a cheap 120mm in the process. At least Noctua is upfront about how much it costs though – if you were to buy the same fan and the Thermalright heatsink (since it comes sans-fan) it would cost you easily in excess of £50.

Noctua claims the price should drop down to a competitive £35 as soon as there's a decent supply for the heatsink in the channel and that it's simply because of the huge demand that's sending prices spiralling.

At £35 this is a must have product, probably even joining the Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme with a bit-tech Excellence Award, but it's currently in excess of £40, which makes it slightly less rosy. That’s especially the case knowing the price might drop in the near future.

There's never been a truer time to cite the old "you get what you pay for" cliché – that little bit of extra performance always costs just that much more, it's the same situation with the Thermalright, and to us it's an investment worth making.

• Features
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• x
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• 10/10

• Performance
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• -
• 9/10

• Value
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• -
• -
• 8/10

• Overall
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• x
• -
• 9/10

What do these scores mean?