Noctua NH-D12L, Low-Height Dual-Tower CPU Cooler (120mm, Brown)

Product Information

On the rear side similarly, we get to see why the Noctua NF-A12x25r is an award-winning PWM fan from Noctua;

I'm on a Thermaltake Level 20 VT mATX chassis. It's partially open air, and I intend to continue running it on air cooling instead of switching to liquid, for reasons of positive air pressure and keeping cat hair out, which the liquid setup won't allow for on this chassis. Anyone who has ever heard of Noctua will expect the NH-D12L to perform well and it did! It offers excellent cooling performance out of the box, and is better, as expected, with the second fan attached. It sits firmly between the U12A and the U14S which both have bigger heatsinks. Though, we’d recommend using it as it comes out of the box without adding a second fan as the cooling performance wasn’t all that more with an additional NH-A12x25r fan attached, especially when the load/thermal output was increased. The heatsink is a dual tower design with the NF-A12x25r PWM fan in the centre. This view of the front shows that the front tower is smaller than the second, this is to ensure better RAM compatibility/clearance. The mounting plate is removable and is held in place with a central screw. Two spring-loaded screws are on either end to secure the cooler to the Secufirm 2 mounting kit. The small size of the NH-D12L will make it popular for smaller-sized cases, like ITX, and in the 4U server race space, where cooling performance is a must, and for the performance it offers the NH-D12L should certainly make it onto your shortlist.With the single fan, the Noctua NH-D12L has the following dimensions: 145x124x113mm (HxWxD). The Width may grow as a result of a twin fan configuration. When it comes to the cooler/heatsink depth, it measures 113mm. Talking of the fan in between we receive a Noctua NF-A12x25r with the cooler; though we will talk about it in detail later in the article. Noctua NH-D12L Front View The NH-D12L is priced at EUR/USD 89.90 by Noctua. That's not bad given that it contains the NF-A12x25r PWM fan, which retails for EUR/USD 29.90 on its own. It certainly is a lot of money for a heatpipe cooler though. It comes with a six-year guarantee and is being sold by various global merchants as we speak. Final Words Depending on the environment and used PC case, we can expect different results. However, it clear is that the NH-D12L performs well and we can use it in smaller, more compact ATX cases or even those in mini ITX format.

We discovered that our RAM could be causing some troubles with putting the second fan on the slimmer tower, thus the fan would need to be adjusted accordingly. In our situation, the Corsair Vengeance is 44mm tall, which will raise the height of our cooler with a two fan arrangement because the second fan will need to poke out a bit after adjustment. In our case, the Noctua NH-D12L was fitted inside a large Thermaltake View 71t, which left us with no complaints about the cooler’s upper half. Noctua NH-D12L Clearance Noctua’s asymmetric configuration is such that the heatsink doesn’t overhang DIMM slots on most motherboards, allowing free reign for heightened memory modules of your choosing. There are a couple of caveats, mind. NH-D12L will naturally overhang RAM slots on quad-channel setups such as LGA 2066, and if you choose to add a second fan to the front, cooler height will likely extend based on the profile of nearby memory modules.The NH-D12L is unique also because of other features, but I won’t share everything in the introduction. The cooler will be tested with the i5-12600K CPU which is one of the most popular options for gamers in the last months and perfectly balances high performance with acceptable heat.