At Dragonsteelmods, we have reviewed
several Noctua products which have received a fair amount of
accolades from our site and others. With the release of the Intel
LGA1366 based CPUs also known as the Core i7 series, there is a need
for new performance coolers. Instead of designing a totally new
cooler, Noctua took their acclaimed cooler the NH-U12P and modified the SecuFirm mounting system to work with the LGA1366
based motherboards.
Acoustic
PC was kind enough to send us not only the NH-U12P SE1366 CPU
Cooler, but they included the Noctua NH-C12P for comparison, which
can also be mounted with the SecuFirm 2 system onto an x58
motherboard. Although the NH-C12P is not sold with the mounting
equipment for the LGA1366 based motherboards; that problem can be
easily resolved by picking up the LGA1366 SecuFirm2 Mounting-Kit from
Noctua.
If you’ve read Kris’ previous
Noctua reviews, you will notice that Noctua have set a high standard
with their products. So let’s see how the NH-U12P SE1366 pairs up
with the Core i7 builds. Let’s get started, shall we?
Noctua
NH-U12P SE1366 CPU Cooler
Reviewed by: Tomas Ratas
Sponsor: Acoustic
PC
Tech Specs,Features or the
Basic Info:
Recommended by more than 100
leading international websites and magazines, the NH-U12P has become
a benchmark in premium quality quiet cooling. The NH-U12P SE1366 is a
special edition for Intel Core i7 that includes the highly reliable,
easy-to-use SecuFirm2™ mounting system for LGA1366 as well as Noctua’s pro-grade NT-H1 thermal compound and two NF-P12 120mm fans for superb quiet cooling performance on Core i7 CPUs.
Please note that the NH-U12P SE1366
is only compatible with LGA1366 and that we can’t supply mounting
kits for other sockets. If you’d like to use the cooler on LGA775 or
AM2+, please choose the standard NH-U12P.
Award-winning NH-U12P Heatsink
The
NH-U12P SE1366 is built around Noctua’s premium quality NH-U12P
heatsink that is renowned for its excellent quiet cooling performance
and has received more than 100 awards and recommendations from
leading international websites and magazines.
SecuFirm2 for
LGA1366
Designed to combine outstanding reliability, optimal
contact pressure and easy, straightforward installation, SecuFirm2™
is an enthusiast-grade mounting system that meets the highest demands
in safety, performance and ease-of-use.
2x NF-P12 Premium
Fan
Including two of Noctua’s award-winning NF-P12 120mm fans
with Low-Noise and Ultra-Low-Noise-Adaptors, the NH-U12P SE1366
offers full flexibility in fine-tuning the cooler for supreme
quietness and maximum performance in push-pull mode.
NT-H1
Thermal Compound
Noctua’s much-acclaimed NT-H1 is a pro-grade
TIM solution that provides minimum thermal resistance, excellent
ease-of-use and outstanding reliability.
Special Edition
Premium Kit
Bundled with a tube of NT-H1, two top quality
NF-P12 fans and SecuFirm2™ for LGA1366, the NH-U12P SE1366 forms a
complete premium value package that’s backed up with 6 years
manufacturer’s warranty and contains everything you need in order to
achieve superb quiet cooling performance on Intel Core i7CPUs.
A Better Look at Things
:
The packaging of the Noctua NH-U12P
SE1366 is almost exactly the same as the standard version. The box
looks familiar with the additional labeling for the Special Edition
for Intel Core i7. Even the side of the box lists the
Dragonsteelmods Editor’s Choice Award from previous Noctua reviews!
On the front is a window with a glimpse
of the Noctua NF-P12 fan, the rest of the contents hidden away inside
the package.
Opening the package, we find the fan
and cooler in the center of the package with a white box behind it.
Inside this box is an extra Noctua NF-P12 fan, mounting
brackets, anti-vibration strips, a screwdriver, fan-speed adapters
and Noctua’s own thermal compound, NT-H1.
The fans are beige and brown, which
seems to be the official Noctua colors. They are 120mm fans with a
rotational speed of 1300 RPM at full power. They feature a silicon
sleeved cable with plenty of length to reach even the farthest
motherboard fan header. At the end of the cable is a three pin
connector. The Noctua NF-P12 fan features nine fins with a serrated
edge, so watch your fingers near these bad boys!
A Better Look at Things
Continued:
The CPU cooler is the same as the
standard NH-U12P version and has the Noctua logo on the top between
four protruding heat pipe ends. The base and heat-pipes are composed
of copper, while the cooling fins are aluminum and the joints are
soldered and nickel plated. Without the fans, the NH-U12P SE1266
weighs in at 600 g and is 15.8 cm x 12.6 cm x 7.1 cm. With the fans,
the cooler weighs in at 770 g (one fan) and 900 g (two fans) and
measures 15.8 cm x 12.6 cm x 9.5 cm (one fan) or 12.0 cm (two fans).
The base is flat
but has micro grooves which Noctua claims allows the high-viscosity
thermal compounds to be dispersed in a uniform thin layer. Thus
don’t expect a smooth mirror finish, it’s not supposed to be that
way.
Included in mounting parts bag are the
Socket 1366 back plate, two fastening brackets with compressible
screw, two mounting bars, four plastic spacers, four thumbscrews,
screwdriver tool and four short screws.
The common parts bag contains two sets
of fan adapters: one called the Low-Noise Adapter which drops the fan
operating speed to 1100 RPM and 16.9 dB(A) and the Ultra Low-Noise
Adapter which brings the fans to 900 RPM and 12.6 dB(A). Other parts
in this bag are the NT-H1 Premium Grade Thermal Compound, four fan
mounting brackets, four anti-vibration strips and a Noctua case
badge.
In addition to sending us the Noctua
NH-U12P SE1366 cooler, AcousticPC sent us some other materials to
test this cooler including ArctiClean1 Thermal Material Remover and
ArcticClean2 Thermal Surface Purifier solutions for prepping the
cooler base and CPU surface, some OCZ Freeze Thermal Extreme
Conductivity Compound and a Noctua NH-C12P cooler.
The Noctua Noctua NH-C12P is designed
for LGA 775, AM2 and AM2+ Sockets but can be mounted on other sockets
with additional mounting kits which can be acquired separately from
Noctua or other retailers. Using the mounting bracket from the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 and the SecuFirm 2 system, we are able
to test this cooler against its brother.
{mospagebreak title=Installation,Testing and Comparison}
Installation, Testing and
Comparison:
Installation of the Noctua NH-U12P
SE1366 is quite simple, but does require the motherboard to be out of
a case for the installation of the back plate. Once the back plate
is installed by sliding the screw thread through the mounting holes
on the motherboard, install the spacers over these thread screws,
followed by the two mounting bars.
These mounting bars are locked into
place with four thumb screws. Depending on how you orient these
mounting bars will determine the final orientation of the cooler. If
you want some additional cooling aimed towards your power supply and
GPU, then place the bars parallel to the PSU, if you want more air
blowing towards the other components, and then place the bars at a
90-degree angle from this position.
For my test system using the Noctua
NH-U12P SE1366 I aimed it towards the graphics card.
The next step involves attaching the
fastening brackets to the heat sink using the four short screws.
Once this is done, we can apply our thermal paste of choice to the
CPU and then fasten the heat sink to the x58 mother board. At this
point, you can attach one or both Noctua NF-P12 fans. First stick
two anti-vibration strips for each fan on the cooling fins, then
attach the fans using the steel brackets.
Adding the second fan in a push-pull
configuration will give average temperature drops of 1-3 degrees
Celsius. Finally, plug one of the fans into your CPU fan header and
the second into one of the auxiliary fan headers. You may use on of
the Noise Adapters if you plan on keeping your PC as quiet as
possible. Running the fan off a Molex offers no benefit as long as
the BIOSes fan control is disabled.
Installation, Testing and
Comparison Continued:
The installation of the Noctua NH-C12P
using the SE1366 back plate was basically the same process at the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366. The only difference between the two
coolers is the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 has pre-made fastening brackets,
while the one on the Noctua NH-C12P requires
the fastening screw and spring to be manually attached to the back
plate, which can be a tricky proposition.
For testing I used this system kept
outside of a case, resting on a flat surface:
System:
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe
CPU: Intel i7 920
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX –
3GB
Video Card: MSI n260GTX
Hard Drive: Seagate 200 GB 7200RPM
PSU: Ultra
X-Finity 800 Watt Power Supply
OS: Windows XP
Professional SP2
Thermal
Interface:
Noctua NT-H1
Premium Grade Thermal Compound
Arctic Cooling
MX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound
OCZ Freeze Thermal Extreme Conductivity
Compound
Coolers:
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366
Noctua NH-C12P
using the SE1366 Backplate
Intel Stock Core
i7 Cooler
The ambient room
temperature was 66-69 degrees. Temperatures were measured using Real
Temp 3.00 and Prime95 was used
for stress testing. For idle, I let the system run without any
additional applications open for a half hour. For load testing, I
ran Prime95 v.25.8 build 5 running in-place large FFTs in Torture
Test mode which produces maximum heat and power consumption. I ran
the system at stock settings and turned off any CPU throttling. The
Core i7 920 ran at stock speed – 2.8 Mhz.
Initial testing
pitted the Noctua coolers using their branded thermal paste against
the Intel stock cooler with Arctic Cooling MX-2 applied.
Surprising in
this setup, the Noctua NH-C12P bests the other two coolers during
load testing. The lowest temperature measured on one of the four
cores is 53 degrees as compared to 60 on the Noctua NH-U12P
SE1366 with the single and dual fan setup. I would assume the better
cooling performance of the NH-C12P may
be related to the fan blowing directly down onto the heat sink.
The next test involved using the
Low-Noise Adapter (LNA) and Ultra Low-Noise Adapter (UNLA) on both
Noctua coolers. On this graph we see the best performance with the
dual fan with the NH-U12P SE1366 and the LNA. Cooling using the UNLA
will be poorer because of the lower fan speed than the LNA or non
throttled fans. The trade off is fan noise. At baseline the Noctua
NF-P12 runs at 1300 RPM yet is pretty quiet even at that speed.
Since the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 is a
dual fan cooler, I ran tests using the fans in a Push-Pull, Pull-Pull
and Push-Push configurations. Here we see the Push-Pull orientation
was the winner.
Finally, I tested the Noctua NH-U12P
SE1366 cooler with our three thermal compounds. Between each
application, I would clean the cooler and CPU with the ArctiClean1
Thermal Material Remover and ArcticClean2 Thermal Surface Purifier
solutions. Here the OCZ Freeze came out the winner, but all three
compounds fared well and should provide more than adequate cooling
for the Noctua coolers.
Summary and Comments
The Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 performed as
expected, producing the stellar cooling performance that we expect
from Noctua coolers. With the ability to add a second Noctua NF-P12
fan, you can improve your cooling performance by a few more degrees.
The cooler is fairly tall, so that is something to keep in mind when
building your system.
Surprisingly using a Noctua NH-C12P
with a x58 mother board produced slightly better temperatures
decreases than the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366.
Hopefully Noctua will be selling a SE1366 edition of this cooler
shortly.
DragonSteelMods gives the Noctua
NH-U12P SE1366 a 5 out of 5 score and our Editor’s Choice Award.
and the Noctua NH-C12P
with Socket 1366 backplate a 5 out of 5 score and our Editor’s
Choice as well.
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366
Pros:
– Excellent construction
– Outstanding performance
– Includes two Noctua NF-P12 fans and NT-H1
Thermal compound
– Simple to install
– Whisper quiet at low temperatures
Cons:
– Large cooler size may be an issue
Noctua NH-C12P
Pros:
-Smaller profile
-Outstanding
cooling performance
-Whisper Quiet
Cons:
-Not natively
sold for Socket 1366 systems
-Mounting screws
can be frustrating in tight spaces
I would like to thank Acoustic
PC for the chance to review Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 and
for their support of DSM. A special thank you to Eric for providing
us with the additional testing materials listed above.
review#555