Verdict: Bigger than Andre the Giant, but much cooler

The NH-U12 is an enlarged version of the NH-U9, and like the NH-U9, the NH-U12 has a large copper base that transmits heat into eight heatpipes. These transfer heat up and into a huge nest of 38 aluminium fins, which have a combined surface area of more than 5,000cm2. It's so big that it won't fit inside compact cases.

The NH-U12 isn't supplied with a fan, but has mounts for two 120mm fans, one on either side of the fins in a push-pull configuration. The NH-U12 simply screws into the standard Athlon 64 CPU mounting bracket, but has to be bolted through the motherboard of a Pentium 4 system.

Despite its huge dimensions, without a fan, the NH-U12 was unable to cool the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 test CPUs enough to prevent them overheating and shutting down. However, fitted with a quiet 120mm Akasa Amber fan, the NH-U12 cooled the Athlon 64 test chip to 12ûC below the reference AMD HSF and cooled the Pentium 4 test CPU to 10ûC below the reference Intel HSF.

While the NH-U12 is a more powerful cooler than the smaller NH-U9, it still isn't capable of passively cooling an overclocked and overvolted CPU, and without this unique selling point, it's hard to justify its premium price.

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