Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler Review

The Test System

To test the cooler we ran it on our Intel Core 2 Quad test platform, which was then run at default and overclocked settings. As a baseline all coolers will be compared to the stock Intel cooler; we will also compare the NH-C12P to the other recently tested air coolers. All the temperatures were obtained by using Core Temp 0.95 after sitting at idle for 30 minutes and then again under 100% load for 30 minutes. To obtain 100% load, I ran four instances of Super Pi 32m calculation with the affinity of each set to a different core. I used two profiles to test all of the coolers and they are listed below. The room temperature was kept a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22c) for all benchmarking. All of the coolers were tested with Arctic Silver Lumiere as the thermal interface material.

The rest of the system is as follows

• Motherboard: Intel 975XBX2
• CPU: Intel Q6600
• Ram: Kingston Hyper-X DDR2 KHX9600D2/1G
• Hard Drive: Western Digital 250gb SATA
• Case: Ultra M998
• Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad

Profile 1: The Normal User (No Overclocking)

• CPU Multiplier: 9x
• CPU voltage: 1.2000V
• FSB Voltage: 1.20V
• FSB: 1066MHz
• Memory Voltage: 2.20V
• Final CPU Frequency: 2.4GHz

Profile 2: The Average Enthusiast (Mild Overclocking)

• CPU Multiplier: 9x
• CPU voltage: 1.435V
• FSB Voltage: 1.30V
• FSB: 1336MHz
• Memory Voltage: 2.24V
• Final CPU Frequency: 3.0GHz