Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4, Premium CPU Cooler for AMD AM4 (Brown)

I've been building computers for 20 years and outside of an SSD this is one of the best purchases I've made. The only downside is the color is not very pretty, but I have a way to fix that as well.I read about some complaining the installation is hard, but it's not. I did it by myself, very simple. I'm using MSI Tomahawk B450 with Ryzen 5 2600 and a case with the back open to get to the motherboard while installed. I put the case on a table facing up. Moved it off the edge so one hand could hold the backplate up, put 2 spacers over the backplate and then slowly tightened a screw to just make it catch a little. Once one of them catch it's even easier, you don't have to hold it up anymore.I have 3 intake fans on the front 2 top and 1 rear. I put the cooler vertical to the ground with the fans faced the same way as the intake fans. The stock fan is pushing air coming from the front thru the heatsink and I put a 120mm rhermaltake riing on the other side pulling the air and pushing it a few inches to my 140mm exhaust fan which pulls it out. I wanted to try this first to get a baseline before swapping the fans to make it look better.Going to swap the 2 fans position so the led fan is seen more from the cases glass side and the ugly brown fan is on the back out of sight. I think this might actually work even better since my other fan is a very high static pressure fan great for pushing air thru. You could also swap the stock fan and put it somewhere in the case it won't be seen.As good as they are suppose to be in not paying 25$ for another fan from noctua, it's just too high. You can get 3 riings with a rgb and speed controller for 30$ on sale from 60$. Credit to noctua for giving us another clip and having this to work with any other fans. It was very easy to put my other fan on.Now to the temps which are very impressive. I played Madden 19 no frame cap, max settings @ 1080p for 10 minutes and the wraith stealth was between the upper 50s to mid 60s and highest temp was 70. During benchmarks, it would hit as high as 72, but I didn't stress it that much. CPU idles in the upper 30s and during very light usage like browsing or Netflix it is in the mid 40s with spikes to low 50s.Now I can idle as low as 27 with ambient temps of 24, but typically idle right at 30. I out the cpu under full load stress test 100% across all cores for 6 minutes. It went from 30 to 50 really really fast, within a couple seconds and then over 6 minutes climbed to only 53. Stock cooler can hit 70c in a 2 min benchmark and this can't even clear 60 over 6 minutes. Highest temp I hit so far after overclocking +450mhz is 56.The fan is insanely quiet, I can see why they charge 25$. My case is naturally quiet though with the fully sealed sides and a filter over front and top, it keeps the sound in. Even during every fan at 100% I can only really notice it if I am not doing anything. Any sort of light sound going on will cover it.If you want your cpu to run crazy cool, but don't want a huge heatsink that will block your RAM then buy this. I have so much ram clearance that I'm actually considering returning the memory I have to get something with big heat spreader and rgb lights.

Short reviewI've used both water cooling and air cooling and this is hands down one of the best coolers I have ever used. The cooler is a bit bigger then expected but that's alright and fits just right with my NZXT elite case. The packaging was great and came with everything needed, especially the AM4 bracket that most coolers do not include right out of the box but require a form to be filled out and a few days for the bracket to be shipped to you. This beast was able to shave off 20c and my cpu rarely goes beyond 50c even when gaming or rendering at 3.7 ghz with a Ryzen 1600x. I was so impressed with Noctuas products I bought additional fans to run a dual fan configuration and it brought normal temps down an additional 6-8c. Highly recommended and I dont miss water cooling one bit.Long reviewI lived in a very hot environment and my Ryzen spire cooler just wasn't cutting it anymore. I was using a Ryzen 1600x (1600x doesn't include the spire cooler but it's a long story) and my temperatures were pretty hot. Gaming could bring it up to 70c and rendering a video in Premiere would run it all the way to 95c before shutting down. I tried premium thermal paste and reinstalling the cooler but nothing changed so I began researching for the best replacement. I spent a couple weeks looking into many options in both water cooling and air cooling such as the Corsair AIOs and many air cooling options. Although I've used water cooling in the past I just couldn't pull the trigger because I did not want to risk any leaking because although the warranty may cover any damages I can't be without my PC for long. Originally I really wanted to purchase the DH-15 to get the biggest and baddest cooler possible I was not able as my ram was not compatible so I settled on the U12S or at least I thought I was settling. This was my first Noctua product and although they have some of the best reviews around the main reason I went with them was this cooler came with the AM4 bracket right out of the box as oppose to buying the cooler and filling out a form to have the company ship one to you. Firstly I was very impressed with the packaging, everything nicely separated making it easy to unbox. Next thing I noticed is just how big this cooler was. Although it uses 120mm fans this thing was solid and I couldn't imagine how big the DH-15 would have been. No issues from the size though and it fit nicely in my NZXT Elite case. Installation was among the easiest of all the coolers I've installed. The most impressive of all and the most important is the performance. This thing is an absolute cooling monster and cut my temperatures while gaming by 20c. I was so impressed with the performance I bought two additional Noctua fans with higher RPMs to run a dual fan configuration and brought temps even lower by about 6-8c. It feels great to game and render video on my Ryzen 1600x at 3.7 at 45c for hours. Money well spent and I'm a fully satisfied customer.