Noctua NH-D12L, Low-Height Dual-Tower CPU Cooler (120mm, Brown)

Product Information

This is a modification of the well-known NF-A12x25 where a round frame is used instead of a typical square frame. The NH-D12L is 145mm tall – 13mm shorter than typical Noctua models – and uses a custom-built NF-A12x25r fan with rounded edges that can be lowered between the fin stacks without tainting neighboring components. Noctua is back with today’s review, and they have graciously sent over their new NH-D12L dual tower 120mm fan CPU cooler for us to take a look at, along with an additional NF-A12x25r fan just to see if it helps or not.

The AIO Cooler showed up very quickly and exactly as described, brand new, still sealed in it's fancy box! Read more about the condition New: A brand-new, unused, unopened and undamaged item in original retail packaging (where packaging is applicable). The heatsink easily attaches to the Secufirm 2 mounting kit using the 2 spring-loaded screws attached to the base of the cooler. This did offset the front fan slightly due to the DDR5 module height but still provided just enough clearance to be able to close the lid on the 4U server case. Not only does Noctua capture air with the tabs on the sides, but they all interlock to ensure fin spacing is always correct.

If you have the room, you can also locate the larger and somewhat stronger Noctua NH-D15, or for a little less money, the be silent! However, the front tower is significantly thinner than the rear one to avoid physical conflict between the heatsink and the DIMM slots for RAM on Intel LGA 115x/1200/1700 or AMD AM4 socket boards (including the already announced future AM5 support).

Unlike other cooler manufacturers, Noctua does not directly indicate in watts how powerful a processor the cooler can handle. When installing a second NF-A12x25r, for which additional brackets are included in the kit, 3 RAM slots close to the socket will be blocked. It is literally a work of art, and one of the goals was to make sure that the cooling performance was not degraded in any way after this intervention.

We also see that the sides are enclosed, which traps air and keeps it flowing through the tower, and lastly, the fan cannot go much lower, as it will eventually meet the mounting hardware. In the autumn I tested their flagship cooler Dragonfang 360 and today we will test its smaller brother, the Dragonfang 240. They will fit if you install the second propeller slightly higher, but in this case the total height increases to 148 mm. In terms of efficiency, it has been fitted with five heatpipes and a dual-tower design paired with an NF-A12x25r 120 mm fan allow it to exceed many full-height 120 mm variants in performance.

Valkyrie’s previous coolers have not fared badly in absolute numbers at all, hopefully this trend will continue in today’s article. This year, the product portfolio of the Austrian company Noctua was replenished with a very unusual solution – the Noctua NH-D12L.

The NH-D12L includes Noctua’s offset mounting bars for AM5 that make it possible to install the cooler shifted towards the south side of the socket by 7mm, thereby achieving better contact quality right above the CCD(s). Owners of non-standard and rather narrow cases that do not allow the installation of a processor cooler with a usual height of about 162 mm, previously had to look either towards cooling systems with a Top-Flow design, which are generally less effective than a classic tower, or towards a classic tower, but with a 92-mm fan. As mentioned before, the presentation of the product itself is premium, and that quality is evident throughout. In addition to supporting our site through advertisements, you can help by subscribing to Phoronix Premium.

We certainly appreciate Noctua's dilemma; Gigabyte uses Blue, ASUS ROG uses Red, and each firm has its own house color scheme and so trademark for corporate branding.However, without testing many of the 92 mm-based cooling solutions over the years, all we know is they cooled alright, but the noise was atrocious. With a height of only 145 millimeters, the cooler would also fit in the popular Lian-Li O11 Dynamic. This view of the front shows that the front tower is smaller than the second, this is to ensure better RAM compatibility/clearance.