Noctua NH-L12 L-Type Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

This is my first encounter with a Noctua CPU cooler here at eTeknix and I can honestly say I am thoroughly impressed with the Noctua NH-L12. As always I’ll start off by revealing to you the price, if you don’t already know. The Noctua NH-L12 costs £43 from Scan, and between £40-50 more broadly from other retailers. Thus you can safely say this Noctua CPU cooler occupies a high end part segment of the market, priced similarly to other high performance CPU coolers. Being a Noctua product, it is widely available across Europe and North America as Noctua are a big brand in the world of computer cooling.

At that price you are getting a unique , yet cost effective proposition. On the one hand you have a CPU cooler that is compact enough to fit into the smallest of systems of mini-ITX, micro-ATX and ATX form factors, and on the other you have a CPU cooler that is capable of running Ivy Bridge at 4.5GHz without breaking into a sweat.

We agree if you consider other cooling solutions for the same price, the performance is below-par however this is a foolish way of looking at it since this cooler is specifically designed for small form factor systems where the height of your CPU cooler is an important consideration.  You wouldn’t spend £6000 on an Nvidia Quadro GPU and complain it sucks at running games, so why make a similar mistake here?

Acoustic performance was excellent, and we really can’t rave enough about how good it was. The Noctua NH-L12 was probably the quietest CPU cooler we have ever tested. Add to that the fact it looks the business, is extremely high quality, offers highly competitive performance for its unique form factor and is well priced.

Awarding the Noctua NH-L12 is a tough one. It could have our innovation award for being such a unique product in the HTPC/SFF market. It could snatch the Bang For Buck award for being one of the best performing and best value HTPC cooling solutions on the market we have ever seen. Yet the Noctua NH-L12 ticks so many boxes that we feel it is more than deserving of our highest award, the Editor’s Choice award.