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

I picked this up to replace a msi coreliquid aio that failed on me after only 3 weeks. With that being the 2nd aio to bite it for me I decided to give air cooling a try and read a ton of good reviews about the u12a, and boy did it live up to them.

Seems a little louder than the bigger styles but fit and performs well.

It doesnt look as good an AIO in my opinion but still the chromax black edition doesnt look that bad compared to the brown original version.

Was expecting nhd15 levels of performance, at best. What I got was far superior cooling. I cant guarantee there wasnt an issue with the mount of my nhd15 to my i7-12700k, however, temps are a solid 8c cooler during Aida or p95 stress tests. You can tell this cooler was engineered very thoughtfully. Its densely constructed with a thick copper base. Heat pipes saturate every point of contact with the IHS. If I had to nitpick, the fans can get quite loud at full chat, but they perform excellently even at idle. Cant fault this cooler in basically any way, its very impressive. Installed in Fractal Torrent Nano.

El ventilador es una maravilla. Es caro, si, pero es bueno

The only thing I do not like about it is the lack of installing information you have to pull on the tabs much harder than you would think to mount the fans but it may be user error

The Noctua NH-U12A chromax.Black 120mm Single-Tower CPU Cooler is a high-performance and reliable cooling solution for computer enthusiasts and gamers.

Works great. Much easier to install than other tower air coolers Ive used. Just follow the included directions and dont put too much thermal paste and youre set. Postal service lost my package and it took me an extra week to get this but not Amazons fault so no stars taken off.

Like all Noctua products, the quality is exceptional. It is a touch difficult sometimes to get the screws going when mounting the cooler, but thats about it. Keeps my Ryzer 7 at good temps. I did try out their smaller 92mm single fan cpu cooler version for a bit. Compared to that I got 5 degrees lower on idle, and around 9 degrees cooler on load on Cinebench. That is going from a single 92mm cooler to dual 120mm, so the improvement makes sense. That just goes to show how good their smaller coolers are! If you dont plan to overclock your cpu I would go with their smaller cooler as the difference isnt massive. This particular all black version is on the pricier side (thats the 1 star drop). Nonetheless, Noctua is my go-to for anything cooling. I thought hard about buying an AiO from another brand but didnt want to have to worry about pump issues, leaking, or fitting the radiator in my case. Im happy I went with Noctua.

I ordered this cooler based upon PCPartsPickers compatibility recomendation for the Asus ROG STRIX Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4 motherboard. But when I checked on the Noctua Compatibility Centre site, I discovered that it is NOT compatible with this motherboard. So, I returned it and ordered a Noctua cooler that IS compatible: the Noctua NH-D12L.