Features:

  • Proven premium heatsink (more than 200 awards and recommendations from international hardware websites), now available in an all-black design that goes great with many colour schemes and RGB LEDs
  • Slim 120mm size for excellent case, RAM and PCIe compatibility: Fits most tower cases (158mm height), doesn’t overhang the RAM slots, doesn’t block the PCIe on most ATX and Micro-ATX motherboards
  • Renowned, award-winning NF-F12 120mm Focused Flow fan with Low-Noise Adaptor and PWM for automatic speed control: Full cooling performance under load, whisper quiet at idle!
  • Includes high-end NT-H1 thermal paste and SecuFirm2 mounting system for easy installation on Intel LGA1150, LGA1151, LGA1155, LGA1156, LGA1200, LGA2011, LGA2066 and AMD AM4, AM3(+), AM2(+), FM2(+)
  • Renowned Noctua quality backed up by 6-year manufacturer’s warranty, deluxe choice for Intel Core i9, i7, i5, i3 (e.g. 10900K, 10700K, 10600K, 10980XE) and AMD Ryzen (e.g. 3950X, 3900X, 3700X, 3600X)
Bought this for my 3800x

Been using the stock AMD cooler since I bought my 3800x waiting for these to release. With the stock cooler while gaming, my max temp would hit 80-84c after a few hours of gaming. With this cooler the max ive seen so far is 73c with with averages in the upper 50s. So I lowered my max temp by about 10c & my average went down closer to 15-18c. At MAX rpm I can barely hear this fan, the rest of my case fans are Noctua so I knew what to expect as far as noise went. The heatsink is a little taller & thinner then I expected. There's plenty of room in my NZXT s340 Elite to add another fan for pull, that might put my MAX in upper 60s but not needed. The install is amazing, very easy. Since these come in black now I have no reason to look elsewhere for fans/coolers anymore.

Best cooler I have ever owned

Bought a 3600x and hated how loud the fan was. Watched Linus, bought this, now running quieter and cooler.

Excellent cooling for my Ryzen 5 3600 - Overclocking is easy!

I've been a fan of Noctua for years, but on my latest build, I had overlooked adding a aftermarket cooler to my list. The stock cooler that comes with the Ryzen 5 3600 is just too weak to keep it cool. The temps while idle would fluctuate between 52-58C, and during load it would easily spike to ~89C. After installing this cooler, my idle temps hover right around 32-34C, and under extreme loads at stock clock speeds, it never gets above 71C, and the fan is never even near 100% power to keep it cool. With this level of cooling, overclocking the chip has been very easy to maintain a stable overclock.

How I missed a GREAT Air cooler...

I've always had a preference for air coolers. So much simpler, so much quieter than almost any AIO. But I do prefer how a PC looks with a liquid cooler... Looks over function then, I decided to give liquid cooling a go again (I've said like 3 times I'd never return to liquid), and after going through 3 AIOs that were either pump noisy, faulty, or didn't really like them, sent from heavens, the blackout Noctua coolers were released. I am one of the many that didn't buy a Noctua cooler because of the hideous colors. But Blacked out.... it's beautiful. No other way to put it. And again, there's no noise coming from my PC, and is keeping a 3700X at 74C at full load running prime95. I(nstallation process is extremely simple and solid. Orange anti-vibration rubbers and other LTT goodies are welcome, even though I didn't use them. For real this time, I'm never going back to liquid.

Noctua is still one of the best air coolers. But for i9-9900k, the NH-D15 will be better suited.

First off, I like to congratulate Noctua for embracing aesthetics improvements to their coolers. With matt black finish and black fan designs, I am certain that it will be one of the most popular air coolers. And with Noctua's credibility in the air cooler scene, buyers can be sure of the cooling potential. That said, my PC setup consist of a Asus ROG XI Gene with Intel's i9-9900k. And I wanted to pair this Noctua NH-U12S, as it has a smaller footprint compared to the NH-D15. In hindsight, I should have gone for that one for the 9900k. On Noctua's website of CPU compatibility with this cooler, it mentions that supports 'medium turbo/overclocking headroom'. Technically it is not wrong, but I must say that become pretty subjective. For the Asus ROG XI Gene, with 'Load Optimized Defaults' selected; and no other settings adjusted. The 'Multi Core Enhancements' will be on Auto (which is enabled). And with this setting, the Vcore applied with this BIOS setting will cause the CPU to reach highs of between 90-100 DegC (ambient of 25 Deg C) on this cooler with a 'Standard Fan Profile' setup. To me, personally, this is too high. But I contribute this temperatures to the 'over voltage' setting by the Asus BIOS setup. And I must reiterate that the Noctua NH-U12S is performing great with dissipating heat and having a fan that is barely audible (even at ~1500rpm max). It is impressive in a lot of regards; and will serve as an extremely good cooler for other support CPUs (less the OC 9900k). With MCE disabled or after using Asus 5-way Optimization, the temperatures immediately becomes acceptable, around the 80 to mid 90s DegC. With MCE disabled, the strict thermal/freq limits to the CPU kicks in and will throttle back the CPU aggressively. With Asus 5-way optimization, the Vcore is 'tuned' accordingly to an 'acceptable' temperature limit; and with this done, I had the 'All Cores' turbo boost at 4.8GHz @ ~1.14. Currently, I am running the stock (single fan) setup for this cooler. I shall be trying different fan (and dual fans) setups soon. And of course, using Noctua's fans, my current favourite. Other good ones are Corsair ML fans, or the old school Sycthe Gentle Typhoon. Cheers, Ken

Excellent cooler, quiet

Was super easy to install, and fit inside my NZXT H510i case without any clearance issues. Their mounting solution is very user friendly. Everything needed came in the box including a high quality tube of thermal paste. Mine ended up being the Linus tech tips edition, which was a plus for me. Has greatly reduced the noise in my PC compared to the stock AMD cooler I was using before with my Ryzen 5 3600X. Would highly recommend this cooler for those looking for a quiet air cooled system with room to overclock.

Goes well with any setup!

Works wonderfully. Is noctuas best revision yet. The orange LTT edition accessory kit makes this cooler look like a beast ready to tackle all of Linus's videos any day. Throw in some ROG lighting and we're good to go!

Sturdy, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing.

Look, the mounting system is worth the price alone. This was the easiest, most stress free installation of a CPU cooler ever. I've got a Corsair H60 AIO, a Deepcool Gammax 400, and a Hyper 212 EVO Black, which, Cooler Master -claims- is AM4 compatible but I had extreme difficulty mounting it to my motherboard (ASRock B450m Pro4). This cools better than all of them, and is nearly inaudible as well. I was very uncomfortable with the amount of torque the board had to endure to get everything to line up with 212 EVO, but this Noctua cooler has a superb mounting system. It's the best. Ever. It took me longer to get the 212 EVO out of my machine than it did to put the NH-U12S into it. Let me be the first to tell you this cooler is worth every single penny. Especially if you're doing a black/white themed build like I am, but looks are the last you should care about. Currently, I have four tabs open in Firefox, am listening to music, and there's a space heater on high basically right under where my PC sits and I'm at 24 degrees Celsius. When gaming, playing Destiny 2, Halo: Reach, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, etc; temperatures hover around 39-42 degrees Celsius, and AIDA64 stress tests yield an average temperature of 55 degrees Celsius under 100% load for 10 minutes, with the peak temperature being 65 degrees. There's no sign of throttling or coming anywhere even remotely close to TJ max on my Ryzen 5 2600. Even overclocked to 4Ghz the highest temperature I saw was 77C. Pros: - Installation is so easy a child could do it - Cools as well as an AIO, within reason - Nearly silent, and under load the tone is a low pitch - Incredibly sturdy construction - Made from very high quality materials - Anti-vibration mounts make color coordination simple Cons: - It wasn't free.

Surprising cooler

Purchased this to replace a loud H60 Corsair for a intel 2600k, I know ancient. This thing runs super quiet for a air cooler, I’m amazed , I over clocked to 4.5Gz and still only max out at 68C the case has two inlet 120mm and one exit 140mm fan on top. I will probably add another cooler fan for funzies but I dont really need it to overclock more, this thing is really well made. The install bracket is far superior to the Corsair which uses standard standoffs. Noctua waited way to long to to come out with this color and it is really nice.

Awesome Replacement for 3700X Stock Cooler

I've been running a Ryzen 7 3700X with the stock Wraith Prism cooler. It was doing an okay job. Most of the time my max running temps were in the upper 60's or low 70's, with the occasional split-second spikes up to high 70's or even low 80's while gaming. So the stock cooler was doing well enough, and I'm not OC'ing my CPU. But the smaller fan of the cooler did generate more noise than I cared for, so I decided to try out this air cooler. I've always admired the Noctua products for a while, but I never bought them because of the brown and tan color scheme. When I saw this all black edition, I decided it was worth a try. Because I'm not OC'ing, I didn't feel the need to go with a twin-tower design, and this NH-U12S had gotten some great reviews. It arrived today (next-day shipping FTW!) and it was literally the fastest and easiest cooler install I've ever experienced (I've previously installed a total of 2 air coolers and 2 AIO coolers in previous systems). For the AM4 boards, the required hardware was minimal--two brackets, 4 spacers, and 4 screws. That was it since it utilizes your existing backplate. I love that it comes with additional fan clips and rubber mounts for adding a second fan if I want. But based on the current temps, I don't think that'll be necessary. Now my system runs around 7-10 degrees cooler. Cinebench R20 multicore maxed out my temp at 68C (with ambient temp of around 25C), which I think is pretty darn good, and even those infamous Ryzen CPU temperature spikes are only popping up to very low 70's. I couldn't be happier, as I didn't expect significantly better performance--I just wanted it to run quieter. I definitely recommend this for anyone looking to replace their stock cooler for a Ryzen 3000 chip.

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