Noctua NH-C12P 1366 CPU cooler Overview
A CPU cooler is necessary to run a PC at its full potential, no matter whether it’s for gaming, coding, or day-to-day usage. The Noctua NH-C12P 1366 CPU cooler is such a powerful cooler that you can install it on your PC to make it a powerhouse. Let’s see what’d you get with this modern-designed fan.
Package
The packaging of the NH-C12P cooler is your standard cardboard box. The box colors are brown and blue-white lettering, certainly not the most complementary scheme on the color wheel, but on the flip side, it certainly creates brand recognition.
A small, clear plastic window in the front gives a glimpse of the cooler’s fan, and adequate information on the reverse is displayed to inform you of the product basics. When you open the box, you will see that the cooler and fan are packed in very thick foam.
The accessories here are extensive, including Noctua’s NF-P12 fan that runs silent and has higher back pressure specifically designed for the heatsink used. There is an entire tube of their renowned thermal paste, as well as the necessary mounting brackets for various AMD and Intel sockets, fan clips, fan speed adapters, noise-dampening strips, and an installation manual.
The screwdriver we saw included with the U12P product isn’t here this time, likely because the C12P isn’t a tower-style cooler and won’t require the extra length when installing it inside a case.
Closer Look:
The installation manual is top-notch, well-written, and easy to understand (and grammatically correct!). It is also worth noting that the C12P package doesn’t include a 1366 backplate, but a free upgrade is available from Noctua. If you’re in a hurry, the upgrade kit can be purchased online here for a few bucks.
A Detailed Look
Design
Unlike its tower-styled sibling, the U12P, the Noctua NH-C12P 1366 CPU cooler is a top-down style cooler that rotates the heatsink by 90 degrees to face down toward and parallel to the motherboard instead of standing vertically, pointing to the rear of the case.
The overall design is quite conservative in its aesthetic presentation, slightly on the austere-looking side of the design spectrum, as Noctua isn’t exactly known for its blinking LEDs and ostentatious accouterments.
However, what one may find as boring, another may find to be refined. The C12P is indeed a premium product. We’ve come to expect from Noctua, it showcases an attention to detail and refinement that is often rare in today’s industry, as Noctua Chromax CPU Cooling Fans, one of the high-quality cooling solutions for computer systems demonstrates its compatibility with most modern CPU coolers.
The C12P isn’t terribly bulky and should fit easily into any mid-tower case due to its slimmer profile as a top-down style cooler. The bonus here with this design is that the heatsink’s fan also forces air down onto the motherboard itself, helping to cool components adjacent to the CPU socket.
Heat Pipes
The Noctua NH-C12P 1366 CPU cooler features six heat pipes made from nickel-plated copper that transfer the large quantity of heat which the CPU produces. Still, they emanate from the base itself rather than wrapping through the base and directly touching the CPU, as we’ve seen with some recent HDT coolers with that technology.
It will be interesting to see the efficiency comparison between the two distinct base styles soon.
Cooler Fins
The cooler’s fins are fairly tightly spaced together but shouldn’t pose any problems with the included fan, as the NF-P12 is known to have enough back pressure to force air through the tower.
The fins are ridged along the edges and are not sharp, saving your fingers and knuckles from potential disaster when installing the NH-C12P in a case. The top-down design here does create more workable space, though.
The C12P is slightly different from the tower-style coolers, as it has a second row of smaller fins below the main larger ones.
Whereas there is a void space below a tower cooler, the C12P has fins filling that space down to the cooler’s base. There isn’t a need for a void since the top-down design blows air onto the surrounding motherboard components, while a tower cooler needs to maintain airflow through, from front to back.
Installation
Noctua’s SecuFirm2 installation method is considerably easier than the antiquated push-pin method that Intel insists on employing. This also helps ensure solid pressure against the processor, and a backplate shouldn’t pose any concerns with pressure stress on the motherboard.
This cooler is not very heavy, to begin with, however, but a backplate installation is definitely the preferred approach. The only drawback is that you will likely have to remove your motherboard unless your case has a hole cut out in the motherboard tray to allow for a quick swap.
As we’ve seen, even most push-pin coolers require motherboard removal, so it’s nothing unique to this Noctua cooler.
Looking at the contact area at the bottom, we see the surface at the contact point for the CPU. The base is machined with a reasonably decent finish. You don’t really see a mirror finish, but it is quite well done. The surface is sufficiently level, though.
The NF-P12 fan rotates at a default speed of 1300RPM. However, you can connect the optional in-line Low Noise Adapter to reduce the fan speed to 1100RPM or the Ultra Low Noise Adapter further to reduce the speed to 900RPM for utterly quiet operation if you so choose.
Frankly, we think this fan runs awfully quiet, to begin with, at 1300RPM, so we’re not convinced you’d even need to go slower.
A standard 3-pin motherboard connector provides the necessary power, and the cable is entirely sleeved. The finish and build quality here is exceptional; every minute detail has been studied and designed with the purpose of addressing concerns, and Noctua NH-C12P 1366 deserves every bit of its renowned reputation for quality.
Conclusion
Hope this article was helpful for you to know about Noctua NH-C12P 1366 CPU cooler. The amazing CPU cooler is undoubtedly a good choice for AMD and Intel users. I personally used it for 2years and found the CPU was performing as expected.
