Noctua NH-D12L chromax.black
For users who don’t sympathize with Noctua’s traditional brown and beige color scheme, the NH-D12L cooler is now out in chromax.black. The cooler differs from most competing models by its lower profile (while still having plenty of fins). And the NH-D12L chromax.black is also one of the few dual-tower CPU coolers which never collide with memory modules on the motherboard when oriented vertically.
The new Noctua NH-D12L chromax.black cooler is the “standard” NH-D12L model that you already know from our tests, just in black. The key design details are unchanged – the heatsink is made up of two towers around one fan – only the color is different. In the case of the aluminum fins of the heatsink, it is just a coating, the fan is black through and through. The only place that has a surface color other than black is the base. However, this is out of the field of view when the cooler is installed on a CPU.
Among other dual-tower coolers, the Noctua NH-D12L (chromax.black) with its 145 mm is one of the shortest. Of those that retain a 120-millimeter fan, the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 Mini, for example, is still shorter. It has a height of 135 mm. The Noctua cooler’s potent weapon in this comparison is the top-of-the-line LCP fan, which within its format (also defined by its 25mm thickness) is still unbeaten on radiators at most speed settings in terms of airflow at comparable noise levels.
The NF-A12x25r PWM ch.bk fan on the NH-D12L ch.bk cooler differs from the more popular NF-A12x25 PWM model mainly by the trimmed corners, which do not affect the aerodynamic or acoustic properties. The speed range is 450–2000 rpm, with the LNA adapter being able to throttle the maximum speed to 1700 rpm at 100% PWM. At very low PWM duty cycle, a passive zero speed mode is also supported.
In width, the NH-D12L ch.bk is 113 mm, while the tower near DIMM slots is slimmed down. Thanks to this, the cooler normally avoids collision with memory modules. However, this is not the case for horizontal mounting (which is also an option and in the case of Noctua’s mounting system also on AMD platforms). In this case, the fins from the top already cover the entire first slot with partial overlap into the second slot as well. However, for narrower modules (with smaller heatsinks), it might be possible to use dual-channel connection without having to look at the height of the memory when selecting it. To fully control things, you can measure the distance from the center of the CPU socket to the memory module and then compare that dimension to half the width of the cooler (i.e. 62.5mm). If it is smaller, there will be no unwanted contact between the memory and the cooler. The stated total weight of the Noctua NH-D12L ch.bk is 890 grams.
Performance-wise, Noctua categorizes the NH-D12L ch.bk (NSPR 148) quite significantly below the NH-D15 (NSPR 183),but at the same time above the most powerful top-flow cooler NH-C14S (NSPR 119), and the single-tower but higher variant NH-U12S (NSPR 129) is also supposed to be weaker. It trails the NH-U14S in Noctua’s internal system for cooling performance information, by 13 points.
The standard accessories support all current (AMD AM5, AM4 and Intel LGA1700, LGA1200, LGA1156, LGA1155) and future (Intel LGA 1851) platforms from both AMD and Intel.
The NH-D12L (ch.bk) cooler is also referenced by its manufacturer in connection with only the 14.7-liter DAN C4-SFX case, in which the NH-D12L’s height is equal to the supported maximum. In selected dual-chamber cases with a vertically divided interior, the headroom may be larger. But, for example, a significantly taller tower cooler than the NH-D12L (ch.bk) won’t fit in the Lian Li O11 Dynamic either.
Noctua’s suggested retail price for the NH-D12L ch.bk is 110 EUR. This new cooler is already available at Amazon and can be expected at smaller retailers in the coming days.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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