With the Socket 1366 platform becoming more and more popular many gamers have been looking for quality heatsinks to keep their rigs cool. This has been even more important with the overclockability of the i7 920. Our friends in Austria, of course, were on top of their game right away giving out free clips to owners of their heatsinks to anyone who wanted to upgrade to an i7 (this deal is still going on if you are interested). Of course, they have also brought out a special edition version of their NH-U12P specifically for i7 owners with a few small changes (socket 1366 mounting and dual fans included) to make sure keep everything cool. Today we will be taking a look at that model to see how it performs against a few other socket 1366 heatsinks.
Product Name: NH-U12P SE1366
Review Sample Provided by: Noctua
Review by: Wes
Pictures by: Wes
Specifications
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Heatsink Specifications |
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| Socket compatibility | Intel Socket LGA1366 |
| Height (without fan) | 158 mm |
| Width (without fan) | 126 mm |
| Depth (without fan) | 71 mm |
| Height (with fan) | 158 mm |
| Width (with fan) | 126 mm |
| Depth (with fan) | 95/120* mm |
| Weight (without fan) | 600 g |
| Weight (with fan) | 770/940* g |
| Material | Copper (base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints & nickel plating |
| Application | all Intel Core i7 |
| Fan compatibility | 120x120x25mm / 120x120x38mm |
| Scope of Delivery |
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| Warranty | 6 Years |
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Fan specifications |
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| Model | Noctua NF-P12 |
| Bearing | SSO-Bearing |
| Blade geometry | Nine Blade Design |
| Rotational Speed (+/- 10%) | 1300 RPM |
| Rotational Speed with L.N.A. (+/- 10%) | 1100 RPM |
| Rotational Speed with U.L.N.A. (+/- 10%) | 900 RPM |
| Airflow | 92,3 m³/h |
| Airflow with L.N.A. | 78,5 m³/h |
| Airflow with U.L.N.A. | 63,4 m³/h |
| Acoustical Noise | 19,8 dB(A) |
| Acoustical Noise with L.N.A. | 16,9 dB(A) |
| Acoustical Noise with U.L.N.A. | 12,6 dB(A) |
| Input Power | 1,08 W |
| Voltage Range | 12 V |
| MTBF | > 150.000 h |
Packaging
Having looked at almost everything from Noctua's product line the packaging of the NH-12P SE1366 looks almost exactly like previous models. As always, Noctua does a great job including everything you need to know about the heatsink on the outside. Inside i was surprised to see they were able to pack a second fan into the same space as always. Of course they were able to save a little space by not including the brackets for AMD and Intel 775 socket chipsets. Overall the Noctua packaging is well informative and well protective of the product, two of the most important things packaging needs too do.
Our Test Rig
Cooler Master Sniper Case Intel 920 i7 CPU 6 gigs of Cruicial Ballistix RamCruicial6 gigs of Cruicial Ballistix RamGigabyte x58 GA-EX58-UD3R motherboard3 one TB hard drivesone 1.5 TB seagate HDone 150Gb RaptorX one 750Gb HDIcyDock 3 hard drive hot swapTwo Sapphire 4870 512mb Video Cards in CrossfireTwo Samsung DVD burners
Installation
I have installed countless Noctua heatsinks on the 775 Socket, with this being my first 1366 Socket install I was interested to find out how the mounting system changed. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it only improved. The back plat has the mounting screws built in now giving you no reason to worry about it moving around and losing its position when reseating your heatsink. The only other issue with Noctua's past design was how easy it was to drop the spring/screw when bolting the heatsink down. This won't be an issue anymore now that they have attached the spring/screw to the mounting bracket. In the end the changes only made an already easy to install heatsink even easier, I hope the other manufacturers are taking notes because this is how it should be done.
Performance
I put the NH-U12P Special Edition through our standard heatsink test. Our standard test consists of letting the pc idle with nothing but RealTemp 2.5 running and recording the lowest average temperature reached. For our load testing, we ran prime95 for an hour on all four CPU cores. The highest average temperature reached is our result. While doing all of our testing no matter the time of the year we make sure the ambient temperature is at 70 degrees. Our CPU clock is set to stock settings and all of the fans on our Antec Twelve Hundred are turned on the max setting. Because of the case, some of our results may be lower than tests run in cases with less airflow.
Putting the NH-U12P against heatsinks from both Cooler Master and Thermalright including the hybrid v10 its defiantly in good company. After testing the original NH-U12P in the past, I knew it would perform well, but I underestimated how well it would perform against the v10. Of course with a TEC cooler, the V10 did outperform the NH-U12P but not by a large margin. Here are the results.
Overall
I hate to sound like a broken record, but Noctua just doesn't miss a beat. Their socket 775 brackets set the golden bar for their competitors. I didn't think they could improve them but they somehow managed to make them easier to use. On top of that, the NH-U12P SE1366 outperformed everything short of the v10 with a TEC cooler. It's no wonder enthusiasts on forums like Hard Forum have been talking up the NH-U12P SE1366, it outshines everything in its class. My only complaint, as always is I wish they produced fans in just about any other color. If you are getting ready to upgrade to an i7 rig, you really should consider the NH-U12P SE1366 from our friends at Noctua.
