Noctua NH-U12A chromax.Black, 120mm Single-Tower CPU Cooler (Black)

Its extremely quiet (basically silent when at idle). My intake fan is louder than the two fans running on the air cooler (I put the low noise adapters that came with the cooler because why not). AM4 installation was a breeze for a first time pc builder pleb like myself. Also nice that the cooler came with mounting brackets to fit AM3, AM4, and Intel CPUs.

There is an almost unbearable harmonic beating tone produced at almost every fan RPM level regardless of whether the LNAs are used. Certain PWM percentages are worse than others where the oscillation of the tone becomes intense and fast, but its never anything that can be escaped from entirely. Really disappointed as I quite like the fans themselves, I think Noctua needs to resolve how its fans negatively interact with heatsinks.

The only thing I do not like about it is the lack of installing information you have to pull on the tabs much harder than you would think to mount the fans but it may be user error

Noctua products are well built. Their fans are quiet. Will buy from them again.

The U12A is a great air cooler albeit the most expensive one. I use it in a small mATX case (inwin 301) where airflow is poor. Does a great job cooling an r5 3600 idling in high 30s to low 40s. In cinebench r23 max temp 74 degrees and while gaming up to 78 degrees max spike. I know the 3600 is not hard to cool. The U12A gives slightly better cooling performance than the wraith prism. About 4-6 degrees delta but its much better at being silent. At 100% max fan spin, while audible it is not very loud. Ive also used this cooler with a 5900x in the same case and that CPU is a hot one! It can cool the 5900x in cinebench r23 at high 70s to mid 80s and idle at around 45-50 degrees. While gaming I saw the 5900x temps spike really high. CPU package up to 89 degrees and CCD1 go up to 93. That being said the U12A chromax black is still a great cooler that I can easily recommend. If your case is limited to 158mm cooler height and youre thinking about purchasing this... do it, you wont regret it.

Let me start by saying i got rid of a custom loop for this and i do not regret it one bit.

The Noctua NH-U12A makes cooling an i5-12600k look like Childs Play! The average temperature dropped 8-10c on average after installation. The PC is used mostly for games and schoolwork.

Does the job runs quiet and keeps CPU cool ! Looks nice too

My cpu temperature was above 90c degrees for a while that I realized the water cooler pump stopped working, then I bought this air cooler and it solved the heating problem and even cooler than the water cooler, very satisfied with the results. Highly recommended.

This cooler is extremely quiet and definitely outperforms most of the other coolers out there. I would highly recommend.