The base finish is of highest quality, they were almost a tiny step away from the mirror-shine:

The evenness test on a glass surface and then with a thermal compound imprint on the CPU heat-spreader revealed impeccable quality:

We have already told you about the Noctua NF-P12 fan in our article called Roundup: 11 Fans for Two Super-Coolers and One System Case, that is why we will only offer you its photo here, you can read more about it in the corresponding section of our roundup:

The nominal rotation speed of this fan is ~1300RPM according to the official specifications, and two included adapters allow reducing it to ~1100RPM and ~900RPM with respective lower levels of noise and lower airflow.

In conclusion to our Noctua NH-C12P review I would like to offer a few photographs side by side with a recognized leader among contemporary air-coolers – Thermalright SI-128:

As you can see, the new Noctua cooler is slightly larger: it has longer and taller heatsink plates:

At the same time, the heatsink of Thermalright SI-128 has more plates that are spaced out at half the distance compared with Noctua NH-C12P heatsink plates (1mm by Thermalright and about 2mm by Noctua). If we compare the effective heatsink cooling surfaces, SI-128 will again be superior to the competitor with ~6786sq.cm against 4300sq.cm of Noctua NH-C12P.

Besides, do not forget that the heatpipes of Thermalright SI-128 are 2mm bigger in diameter:

However, it has 2 heatpipes less than Noctua NH-C12P. Overall, Noctua NH-C12P is going to have a very serious competitor, but before we get to the test results, let’s discuss the installation procedure with different mainboards.