Page 3 - Test Results
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
Motherboard: ASUS Prime X470-Pro
RAM: Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB
Graphics: EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 ULTRA GAMING
Chassis: Thermaltake Core P6 TG Snow
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN500 NVMe SSD 500GB, OCZ ARC 100 240GB, Patriot P200 512GB
Power: FSP Hydro PTM Pro 1200W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared hardware:
- Noctua NH-U12A chromax.black
- Cooler Master MasterAir MA624 Stealth
- DeepCool AK620
- Noctua NH-U12A
- Thermaltake TOUGHLIQUID Ultra 240
All tests were run in our custom-built computer to best reflect real life performance. The computer remained in the same location in the same room throughout all tests. The room temperature in our testing lab was around 22c. Stock thermal paste respective to all coolers were used to rate its performance; all thermal pastes were given a proper amount of time for them to fully settle. The fans on all heatsinks were connected to the motherboard's CPU 4-pin fan header. The test computer was turned on and idling for at least one hour for the idling tests. High CPU load results were obtained using the Prime95 in-place large FFTs test with a maximum number of worker threads for the tested CPU for a minimum of ten minutes or until the temperature was deemed stable. Temperature results were measured with HWiNFO, which reports the CPU's integrated digital thermal sensor for maximum accuracy. Each temperature result was calculated by taking the maximum value of the cores inside the CPU.
After idling for a while, I checked the temperatures of my processor under the Noctua NH-U12A chromax.black. You can see from here that the NH-U12A chromax.black is a strong contender with an idle temperature of 34 to 35c, depending on if I had two or one fan attached, respectively. It should be noted that these are practically the same results as the vanilla NH-U12A, which again should not be much of a surprise. The single degree of difference is not exactly something too noteworthy, but just shows that the chromax.black treatment does not negatively affect the heatsink's ability to disperse heat. Even so, these are idle results and are generally not interesting, so I kicked off Prime95 and ran the tests to simulate a full load experience.
With a sufficient amount of time to load the processor, you can see how all of the coolers performed with the peak temperatures recorded. From here, you can once again see the NH-U12A chromax.black is once again an excellent performer, matching up with top liquid and air coolers. The two NF-A12x25 chromax.black fans worked excellently in tandem to keep the maximum load temperatures at 61c. Reducing this to a single fan resulted in an increased temperature of 64c. We were also able to observe the same boost frequencies from the processor throughout the test across our coolers, indicating we still had more than enough headroom on these coolers.
As for the sound analysis section of the Noctua NH-U12A chromax.black, on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is silence, and 10 is the definition of loud, I would rate the NH-U12A at 2.5/10 during idle and around 4.0/10 under full load for both fans. Once again, the NF-A12x25 chromax.black fans, on a day-to-day use, are very quiet and rotates about without much noise. When you push your computer to greater loads, as we did in Prime95, you will start hearing the fans whirring on, but this is not much louder than even some of our single-fan competition. The noise that it does emit is lower in frequency and thus is not as noticeable to the ear as some of its competition, which again shows Noctua's expertise in the cooling field.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware; Installation
3. Test Results
4. Conclusion
