The Noctua NH-U12S Redux Cooler Review: Bringing Noctua's Best To a Lower Price
by E. Fylladitakis on August 25, 2021 8:00 AM ESTConclusion
The NH-U12S Redux is a fresh approach to the market from Noctua, as it is one of their first attempts to significantly reduce the cost of their products and make the company more approachable to budget-driven users. Noctua’s reputation may be legendary, but there's no getting around the fact that the mainstream market for coolers is quite price-sensitive, making the development of the NH-U12S Redux a strategic diversification attempt that should open Noctua up to a larger percentage of PC builders.
In order to make the NH-U12S Redux ($50) more affordable, Noctua removed some of the items they usually bundle with their coolers, such as the thermal paste syringe and the low noise fan adapter, and removed one heatpipe from the body of the cooler. The quality of the body was also reduced, as the aluminum fins are no longer welded onto the heatpipes. Such differences may be subtle, even unimportant for typical PC users, yet they will not stay unnoticeable to experienced builders and experts.
However, in terms of performance, the NH-U12S Redux has little to fear from the more expensive cooler it was based upon. As promised by Noctua, when compared toe to toe with the NH-U12S, the NH-U12S Redux offers about the same thermal performance. The only difference is that, all else held equal, the Redux is technically noisier for the same level of cooling performance. And we say "technically" because while there is a difference, you're going to be hard-pressed to notice them, especially as the absolute noise levels are still well below what anyone would consider a noisy cooler. If anything, the NH-U12S Redux is one of the quietest tower coolers with a 120 mm fan that we have ever tested, and it's less noisy than Noctua’s own NH-U12A, a cooler that costs nearly twice as much.
In fact the stock performance of the cooler is so good that there's little benefit to be had from trying to improve it with a second NA-FK1 fan. Using a second fan tends to be counterproductive, as it does not significantly improve the performance of the NH-U12S Redux. Instead, it mostly serves to push the total price of the setup to nearly that of the NH-U12S, making the purchase of the NA-FK1 a practically pointless choice.
We believe that the great overall performance and good build quality make the NH-U12S Redux a very competitive product. It is a product that makes a lot of sense in today’s market – far more than the monstrous, ludicrously expensive behemoths, at any rate. For many users, who just want a plug-and-play solution for a PC that they are not planning to fiddle with for years, the NH-U12S Redux is an excellent, cost-effective choice.
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jordanclock - Wednesday, August 25, 2021 - link
I've always wondered why CPU cooler reviews don't include stock coolers.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, August 25, 2021 - link
https://www.anandtech.com/show/10500/stock-cooler-...jordanclock - Wednesday, August 25, 2021 - link
It would be nice to have at least a couple of those in this reviews graphs, but jumping between them shows that pretty much every cooler in this review performs much better than a stock cooler, and the worst cooler here is slightly better than the AMD Wraith cooler. I'm guessing the Wraith Prism would be a bit better than that for cooling but everything I found elsewhere suggests that the Prism is not much of an improvement over the (regular?) Wraith.sonny73n - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
I spent extra $10 for that stupid over-hyped Wraith Spire. After 2 days putting up with its poor heat dissipation I got the NH-U12S Chromemax Black. Cost me $70 but it's well worth.Does anyone want the useless Wraith? I'm giving it away or it'll go to the trash soon.
Sivar - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
I used a Wraith while I waited my NH-D15 socket adapter to arrive.It performed pretty well. The Noctua only gave me a few degrees C.
One difference is that I used aftermarket head sink paste. Perhaps stock paste or overly thick paste is the issue?
MDD1963 - Sunday, August 29, 2021 - link
If an NH-D15 only netted a loss of a few degrees C , you must have had one hot running and/or overvolted CPU...(some 5000 series Ryzens run a tad warm, to be sure, although this seems semi-normal)Spunjji - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
Any extra context on that? Which CPU were you using it with, was it stock paste, and was it the noise that bothered you or the temperatures?sonny73n - Saturday, August 28, 2021 - link
I've never used stock pastes. It took me more than 15 minutes to clean it off. I've tried both Arctic Silver 5 and MX-4 but they didn't help much with the stock cooler on my non-overclocked 3600x. The NH-U12S took about 10C down with MX-4 paste and it's quieter on high speed.Wraith Spire
Prime 95 max at 84C. Gaming max at 76C.
NH-U12S
Prime95 max at 77C. Gaming max at 65C.
Tams80 - Saturday, August 28, 2021 - link
Something sounds wrong there.But anyway, you paid an extra $60. Of course you got a better cooler.
AntonErtl - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
We use the Wraith Prism with a 3900X, and it performs surprisingly well. The board apparently does not power-limit the CPU, and putting load in the CPU resulted in 190W above idle power, which the Prism managed to cool. We have temperature-limited the CPU to 70C, now power is only 135W over idle after some time. Cooling this much to such a low temperature is impressive; elsewhere I always read about high temps on the 7nm Ryzens. But the Prism makes a lot of noise for this performance, so I would not use it for a deskside machine.