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

Overview I have used both water and air cooling and this is without a doubt one of the best coolers I have ever used. The cooler is slightly larger than expected, but that's ok and it fits perfectly in my Elite NZXT case. The packaging was great and contained everything you need, especially the AM4 mount which most coolers don't include right out of the box but does require filling out a form and a few days for the mount to be shipped. This beast could drop 20C and my CPU rarely goes above 50C, even when gaming or rendering at 3.7GHz with a Ryzen 1600x. I was so impressed with the Noctuas products that I bought additional fans to run them in a dual fan configuration and it dropped another 6-8 degrees from normal. Highly recommended and I don't miss water cooling at all. Long Recap I lived in a very hot environment and my Ryzen Spire cooler just wasn't working. I was using a Ryzen 1600x (1600x doesn't include a coil cooler but that's a long story) and my temps were pretty high. Games can take it to 70c, and video rendering in Premiere runs up to 95c before shutting down. I tried premium thermal paste and reinstalled the cooler but nothing changed so I started looking for a better replacement. I've spent a few weeks looking into many water and air cooling options like the Corsair AIO and many air cooling options. Although I've used water cooling in the past, I just couldn't pull the trigger because I didn't want to risk a leak, because while the warranty covers eventual damage, I can't be without my PC for very long. I originally really wanted to buy a DH-15 to get the biggest and coolest cooler possible, but I couldn't as my RAM wasn't compatible, so I went with the U12S, or at least I thought I would be. This was my first Noctua product and while they have some of the best reviews the main reason I chose them was because this cooler came with an AM4 mount rather than buying a cooler and form fill out to get it from the company that will send you one. First of all I was very impressed with the packaging, everything is neatly separated which makes it easy to unpack. The next thing I noticed was how big this cooler was. Even though it uses 120mm fans, it was solid and I couldn't imagine how big the DH-15 would have been. No sizing issues and it fits perfectly in my NZXT Elite case. Installation was one of the easiest coolers I have installed. Most impressive and important of all is the performance. The thing is an absolute cooling monster and dropped the temperature by 20 degrees during the game. I was so impressed with the performance that I bought two additional higher speed Noctua fans to run in a dual fan configuration and lowered the temperature even further by about 6-8 degrees. Playing and rendering videos on my Ryzen 1600x at 3.7 at 45C for hours is nice. Money well spent, I am completely satisfied.