Review on Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4: Top-Tier CPU Cooler for AMD AM4 (Brown) by Patrick Carlson

I've been building computers for 20 years and other than an SSD this is one of the best purchases I've made. done before. did. The only downside is that the color isn't very pretty, but I have a way to fix that too. I've read about some complaints that installation is difficult, but that's not the case. Do it yourself, very easy. I am using an MSI Tomahawk B450 with a Ryzen 5 2600 and an open back case to access the motherboard during installation. I laid the suitcase open on the table. Slide it off the edge so one hand can hold the back panel, place the 2 standoffs onto the back panel, and then slowly tighten the screw so it hooks in a bit. Once one of them catches it gets even easier, you don't have to hold them anymore. I have 3 intake fans in the front, 2 on top and 1 on the back. I placed the cooler perpendicular to the ground to make the fans look the same as the intake fans. The stock fan pushes front air through the radiator and on the other side I fitted a 120mm grommet which sucks in air and pushes it a few inches towards my 140mm exhaust fan which pulls it out. I wanted to try this first to get a baseline before swapping out the fans to make them look better. I will swap 2 fans so the LED fan is more visible from the glass side of the case and the ugly brown fan is on the back. Vision. I think it might work even better as my other fan is a very high static pressure fan which is great for pushing air. You can also swap out the standard fan and put it somewhere if you can't see it. As good as they thought they wouldn't pay $25 for another fan from Noctua it's overpriced. You can get 3 rings with RGB and speed control for $30 on sale starting at $60. Many thanks to noctua for providing us with another clip and making it work with other fans. It was very easy to attach another fan. Now for the pace, that's very impressive. I was playing Madden 19 with no frame cap, maximum settings @ 1080p for 10 minutes, and the Ghost's stealth ranged from the top 50s to mid 60s, and the max temperature was 70. During testing, it hit 72, but I pushed myself not on. it is so. The CPU idles at over 30 seconds and with very light usage like surfing or watching Netflix it sits in the middle of 40 seconds with peaks up to 50 seconds. CPU stress test at 100% full load on all cores for 6 minutes. It went from 30 to 50 very quickly in a few seconds, and then only went up to 53 in 6 minutes. The stock cooler can hit 70 degrees in a 2 minute test, and it can't even hit 60 in 6 minutes. The highest temperature I got after overclocking +450MHz is 56. The fan is insanely quiet, I can understand why they charge $25. My cabinet is inherently quiet, although with fully sealed side panels and a filter front and top it keeps the sound inside. Even with every fan running at 100%, I only really notice it when I'm not doing anything. Any slight tone will cover it up. If you want your CPU to run really cool, but don't want a giant heatsink clogging up your RAM, then buy this. I have so much RAM that I'm actually considering getting the memory back, I should get something with a big heat spreader and RGB lighting.