Unlike other coolers, the solutions from the Austrian Noctua Company cannot boast any memorable or bright names. The first models to please the overclockers were NH-U12 and NH-U9, and about a year and a half later they launched enhanced NH-U12P and NH-U9P. Noctua fans, chipset coolers and even thermal interfaces also have very plain names that do not give you any idea of the product. It could be Noctua’s engineering origins and scientific approach to coolers design as well as their naming. Although we sincerely believe that a nice meaningful name will certainly help the cooler to succeed in the market.

Anyway, if you are willing to order yourself our today’s hero, you should be very attentive, as there is only one new letter in the model name: NH-C12P, although the constructive changes made to it are more than significant compared with the previous models.

Package and Accessories

The package of the new cooler didn’t really change that much compared with that of Noctua NH-U12P. The box is made of the same thick cardboard with a cut out window in the front panel. It is designed in the traditional brown colors matching the overall Company style:

The box contains a lot of technical info: detailed cooler specifications, a lit of compatible platforms, description of key features and technologies employed in this solution, the list of online and printed media awards the Austrian Company received to day. Well, anything you can think of is actually there.

Inside the box is separated in two sections. The large section contains a heatsink with a fan and the small one is actually a small plastic box with bundled accessories:

The bundle is pretty traditional for Noctua products. There is a plastic bag with a retention kit for each socket type marked accordingly. The third bag contains the rest of the bundle including Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound, two adapters for fan rotation speed reduction, sticky silicon stripes, springs and screws and two fan retention wire clips. The beautifully designed foldable installation manual is included separately.

The retention kits for different types of processor sockets include the following components: 

Socket 754/939/940/AM2 & AM2+

LGA 775

Well, you can see everything on the photo’s above, so I will not list all the components here. Instead, let’s move on to checking out the constructive design peculiarities of the new cooler.