Closer Look / Product Photos
The package of the NH-U12S cooler is a bit different than we used to see. Brownish color has been replaced with black tones, which are suggesting what we can find inside.
The exterior of the box, as always in the case of Noctua coolers, has a full product specification, so we don’t have to check any details on the manufacturer’s website.
The total height of the NH-U12S chromax.black cooler is 158mm, so it is the same as that of the previous version of the NH-U12S. It also means that we can install this cooler in most popular PC cases as a common space for the cooler is up to 160mm.
The main difference between the new and old versions is how the cooler looks. The NH-U12S is on the market for a couple of good years, but the black painting is causing that it got a second life.
Noctua coolers are usually for a long time on the market as who would change such good products? There are always some improvements like now with a new color scheme which is more aesthetics than performance-related.
The NH-U12S comes with mounting kits for all popular AMD and Intel platforms. On the list is missing only the TR4/TRX40 for which are dedicated coolers with a larger base.
The NH-U12S chromax.black looks similar to most single-tower coolers, but small differences and quality of production make the NH-U12S better than the competition.
The base of the cooler is made of nickel-plated copper. It’s the best option in the mass market. The base is also well-polished, as you can see in the below photos. It causes that the contact with the CPU is nearly perfect and of course, affects the heat transfer.
Noctua delivers the U12S cooler with a single fan, but since we can test it also with two fans, then we will show you the difference in our tests. Right now you can compare how it looks like on the attached photos
Tests were performed on two motherboards. On the photos, you can see ASRock X570 Extreme4, which was reviewed some weeks ago. There are no problems with tall memory modules on this motherboard. About the same is on mini ITX or micro ATX motherboards.
On the next page, we will show you how the NH-U12S chromax.black performs with the Ryzen 7 3700X processor.
