Noctua NH-L12 Low Profile CPU Cooler

Product(s): Noctua NH-L12 CPU Cooler
Provided By: Noctua
Price: ~$59.99 USD at time of publishing

Introduction: 

We've taken a look at a bunch of different Noctua products in the past, but today we are going to be looking at the lowest profile Noctua cooler we've ever seen, the Noctua NH-L12 low-profile CPU cooler.

In the past as soon as you say "low-profile" you can probably expect the performance to drop significantly. Noctua however is pretty well known for producing coolers that have a great balance between performance while still remaining nice and quiet so it should be very interesting to see how the NH-L12 does.

Thanks to a removable top fan the NH-L12 can drop down to a very skinny 66mm in height if the job calls for it, making it one of the slimmest coolers we've ever reviewed. If you don't need to go quite the low you can leave the 120mm fan on the top for extra performance while still maintaining a nice low profile.

Let's go ahead and take a look at the NH-L12 and see what it's all about.

First Impressions: 

Noctua NH-L12

Noctua NH-L12

 

The Noctua NH-L12 features 2 Noctua fans strapped to the top and bottom of the heatsink. On the bottom of this cooler you've got a Noctua 92mm fan, and on the top you've got a Noctua 120mm fan (which we reviewed separately here). 

Noctua NH-L12

Noctua NH-L12

 

As you can see in the pictures above and below, the NH-L12 is definitely not very tall, but if you need it to fit into an even tighter space you can always go ahead and remove the top 120mm fan and let the lower 92mm fan do all the work. We'll test this cooler with both configurations in our testing section.

Noctua NH-L12

Noctua NH-L12

 

Included with the NH-L12 is everything you need to get your cooler installed on pretty much any recent AMD or Intel CPU. You even get a free screwdriver included with the package which will make the installation a breeze (we will go into more detail in the installation section).

You also get a bunch of fan adapters that when plugged in will let you fan spin at different speeds and will let you customize how fast you want your fans spinning and will let you decide between lower temperatures and less noise.

Noctua NH-L12

Noctua NH-L12

 

So there we go, that's the Noctua NH-L12 low profile cooler. In the next section we'll take a closer look at the fine details then move onto some good old testing action.