The Noctua NH-U12P CPU cooler is from Austria by a team of engineers that have won many international awards for form and function. It’s cool, it’s quiet, and it works.

The little owl, Athene Noctua, is the symbol of the Greek goddess Athene, who represents wisdom, science and strategy. Is this card similar to its name? Let’s see.

Specifications:

• Socket compatibility: Intel Socket LGA 775, AMD AM2 & AM2+, Intel Xeon on request
• Height (without fan): 158 mm
• Width (without fan) : 126 mm
• Depth (without fan) : 71 mm
• Height (with fan): 158 mm
• Width (with fan): 126 mm
• Depth (with fan): 95 mm
• Weight (without fan): 600 g
• Weight (with fan): 770 g
• Material: Copper (base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints, nickel plated
• Application: Intel all frequencies, AMD all frequencies
• Fan compatibility: 120×120x25mm / 120×120x38mm (2 fans can be installed)

Included:

• NF-P12 premium fan
• Mounting-clips for 2 fans
• Ultra-Low-Noise-Adaptor (U.L.N.A.)
• NT-H1 high-grade thermal compound
• SecuFirm™ mounting kits for LGA & AM2(+)
• Warranty 6 Years

Fan specifications:

• Model: Noctua NF-P12
• Bearing: SSO-Bearing
• Blade geometry: Nine Blade Design
• Rotational Speed (+/- 10%): 1300 RPM
• Rotational Speed with U.L.N.A. (+/- 10%): 900 RPM
• Airflow: 92.3 m³/h
• Airflow with U.L.N.A.: 63.4 m³/h
• Acoustical Noise: 19.8 dB(A)
• Acoustical Noise with U.L.N.A.: 12.6 dB(A)
• Input Power: 1.08 W
• Voltage Range: 12 V

Testing

To test out the Noctua NH-U12P, an Intel Core 2 Duo test platform which was then run at default and overclocked settings. To obtain 100% load, the room temperature was kept a constant was skyrocketed to 90 degrees. Joke…we just put a shit load of load on the thing. All of the coolers were tested with Arctic Silver as the thermal interface material.

The rest of the test system is as fallows:

• Motherboard: Intel 975XBX2
• CPU: Intel E6300
• Ram: Kingston Hyper-X DDR2 KHX9600D2/1G
• Hard Drive: Western Digital 250gb
• SATA Case: Antec P190
• Power Supply: Antec NeoLink 1200w

Profile 1: The Normal User (No Overclocking)

• CPU Multiplier: 7x
• CPU voltage: 1.2000V
• FSB Voltage: 1.20V
• FSB: 800MHz
• Memory Voltage: 2.20V
• Final CPU Frequency: 1.86GHz

Profile 2: The Average Enthusiast (Mild Overclocking)

• CPU Multiplier: 7x
• CPU voltage: 1.4000V
• FSB Voltage: 1.30V
• FSB: 1600MHz
• Memory Voltage: 2.20V
• Final CPU Frequency: 2.80GHz

As one would expect from a $70 high-end air cooler, the NH-U12P overtook stock Intel cooler. At the stock clock speed of the E6300, the NH-U12P beat the stock cooler’s idle temp by a good 3 degrees under load. The thing works as stated. NH-U12P is on par with the NV-120 but running at 900 RPM and 12.6dBA, that is quiet for an active air cooler, something we can be thankful for.

ATI has been busy the past couple months getting the Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series out the door and today is the day! ATI has moved on to the 55nm process which is an improvement over the 65nm manufacturing process and both the Radeon HD 3650 and 3450 are built on the new process. You might have heard rumors about these video cards under the code names RV620 and RV635, but now that they are official they have been given real product names. The ATI Radeon HD 3650 and Radeon 3450/3470 cards all range between $49 and $99 so they are competitively priced entry-level DirectX 10.1 compliant GPUs that offer full UVD support with all the latest technology that ATI uses.

The ATI Radeon HD 3650 is the direct replacement for the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro as you can tell. The ATI Radeon HD 3650 is active cooled with a core clock of 725MHz and a memory clock of 800MHz and will be available with two kinds of memory ICs - GDDR3 and GDDR2. The slower and older GDDR2 memory chips will be used on the $79 price point cards, while the $99 cards will feature faster GDDR3 memory ICs. The reference Radeon HD 3650 that we have today uses GDDR3 memory IC’s, so it is the $99 card. The faster clock speed and memory frequencies improve the memory bandwidth and math processing rate on the Radeon HD 3650 when compared to the older Radeon HD 2600 Pro. Also keep in mind that both the Radeon 3400 series and 3600 series are PCI Express 2.0 compliant and support DirectX 10.1 features as well as ATI PowerPlay software.

LightsMark Demo Results:

Lightsmark 2007 v1.3 showed the ATI Radeon HD 3650 doing pretty well against the ATI Radeon 3850 256MB and was able to turn in good numbers at even 1920×1200. The Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 needs more muscle to break 30FPS, but it was close.

The ATI Radeon HD 3650 and Radeon HD 3450 didn’t turn in great benchmark results, but at $49-$99 these are entry level cards and aren’t supposed to be geared at hard-core gamers. At lower resoltions with low quality settings they will easily play older DirectX 9 games, but as you saw in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. benchmark section DirectX 9 games with high quality settings are still demanding on graphics cards. If you are looking for gaming performance the ATI Radeon HD 3850 is leaps and bounds a better choice.