The Test System

To test out the Noctua NH-U12P, I ran it on our Intel Core 2 Duo test platform which was then run at default and overclocked settings. I will be comparing the NH-U12P to the stock Intel cooler as well as the recently tested ZEROtherm NV120 Nirvana. All the temperatures were obtained by using Core Temp 0.95 after sitting at idle for 30 minutes and then again under 100% load for 30 minutes. To obtain 100% load I ran two instances of Super Pi 32m calculation with the affinity of each set to a different cores. I used two profiles to test the coolers and they have listed them below. The room temperature was kept a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit for all benchmarking.  All of the coolers were tested with Arctic Silver Lumiere as the thermal interface material.

The rest of the test system is as fallows:

• Motherboard: Intel 975XBX2
• CPU: Intel E6300
• Ram: Kingston Hyper-X DDR2 KHX9600D2/1G
• Hard Drive: Western Digital 250gb
• SATA Case: Antec P190
• Power Supply: Antec NeoLink 1200w

Profile 1: The Normal User (No Overclocking)

• CPU Multiplier: 7x
• CPU voltage: 1.2000V
• FSB Voltage: 1.20V
• FSB: 800MHz
• Memory Voltage: 2.20V
• Final CPU Frequency: 1.86GHz

Profile 2: The Average Enthusiast (Mild Overclocking)

• CPU Multiplier: 7x
• CPU voltage: 1.4000V
• FSB Voltage: 1.30V
• FSB: 1600MHz
• Memory Voltage: 2.20V
• Final CPU Frequency: 2.80GHz