Noctua NH-U12A chromax.Black, 120mm Single-Tower CPU Cooler (Black)

While not as flashy as the AMD Wraith Prism, this Fan really lived up to the hype. Reason I upgraded was I was annoyed by the constant throttling of the wraith fan which would keep my AMD Ryzen 9 3900X below 58 C, I just got tired of the constant fan throttling since my case sits on my desk. I tried to adjust the fan curves in BIOS but that didnt help. Wraith prism was just an adequate design that did its job. It thought about water coolers, but never dealt with them before and was not ready to commit to that, which would be a bit more work to setup. After reading the reviews, I thought Id give this a try and go from there.

It does keep my Ryzen 7 5800x cool even under heavy loads. Max temps have only reached up to 70 C and that is without undervolting.

When it comes to air cooling a CPU there is no better choice than noctua. The product arrived in perfect condition and is very visually appealing. Mounting was easy and the product quality was typical noctua - excellent. Im running a ryzen 7 5800x and cinebench r23 multi core peaked at 69 degrees celsius in a Lian li Lancool 2 mesh case. Also - I had the nh-d15s before and found that mounting the nh-u12a and installing the fans were much easier.

Can keep high end chips cool with decently quite operate. Where this cooler really shines is when it is paired with lower end chips like a ryzen 3600 or i5 11400f. With these chips the cooler operates at 300-800 rpm which is absolutely silent and temps rarely climb higher the 50 degrees.

This is insane.

Using this with a 12700k & It idles around 30c and is around 50c-60c while gaming, max temp Ive seen was 85c under 100% load but thats expected with the 12700k and air cooling. (ambient room temp is around 25c)

Very quiet fans, mounting system is great. Really nice to have LGA 1700 supported out of the box. However cooler is extremely large and was pretty much touching my ram.

Shipping was fast. Once i got the product it was wrapped in an Amazon box, then the original package.

So, the first case and build I bought this for, it didnt fit. This wouldnt be an issue with the cooler itself, but just the design of my ITX motherboard. If you have an Z690-I motherboard, this cooler will not fit. Just adding this to let other people know.

Works like a charm, keeps cpu temps nice and cool, and was so effortlessly installed. A great choice for an Air Cooler!