Today I'm taking a look at two heat-pipe, tower-style coolers from Noctua (based in Austria). The two units in question are the NH-U9 and NH-U12. Both coolers feature four dual heat-pipes through 38 aluminum cooling fins mounted to a copper base, all soldered for maximum thermal convectivity. The NH-U9 is designed to be used with 80mm and 92mm fans; the NH-U12 with 120mm fans. Both coolers can mount two fans at once and are compatible with Intel Socket 478, LGA 775, and AMD K8. Both of these coolers are quite large: the NH-U9 has over 3,800 square centimeters of surface area and the NH-U12 has over 5,000.



Nocuta included a total of 5 fans to use with these coolers in the review: two 120mm, two 92mm, one 80mm.

Let us continue on and take a look at the NH-U12 first.